I promised Andrew I’d meet him in South East Asia, and being a man of his word, departed February 10th for Bangkok. Seeing as I was connecting in Hong Kong however, I arranged a brief 12 hour stopover to get a chance to explore a teeming Asian metropolis. The plane arrived almost an hour early, meaning my flight thankfully was only 15 hours long. I slept almost the whole way, and felt no feelings of jetlag, despite the 12 hour difference. The customs officers letting me into Hong Kong couldn’t have cared less who I was or what I was doing, and I hopped a highspeed train to Kowloon, the “other” big city in Hong Kong. The train was incredible – so cheap, easy, fast, and comfortable. It seems every time I leave Toronto I realize what a cruel joke the TTC is, but then I return and after a few months I’m once again defending it for being the best it can under harsh circumstances or whatever. I have to stop doing this. Our system is a joke, the laughingstock of cities the world over. Even Bangkok , where I am now, puts it to shame.

The first thing about Hong Kong, and now Thailand, that really jumped out at me is how little pedestrians are respected. Crosswalks are unheard of, and cars never slow down for anyone on foot, whether going straight or turning. This made walking along any main street quite treacherous until I figured out the whole driving on the left thing, and even still you have to be completely alert at all times.

After walking around for a bit I met a Canadian from Thornhill, and we spent most of the day wandering together. First stop was the bird market, and this just blew us away. All businesses in Hong Kong are grouped by type, and you have to walk to each respective district to get what you want. The bird market was just laneway after laneway of people selling all manner of bird, cage, and bird food. I guess most of the pet birds here are insectivores, because bird food was predominantly grasshoppers, and some stalls just had these huge cages that must have contained tens of thousands of grasshoppers each. You could buy bags of 20 for one Hong Kong dollar, or about 13 cents.

Next stop, the goldfish market. Again, this was just a street with hundreds of fish stores, all selling pretty much the same things. I don’t understand how they all stay in business, but I guess they do. The craziest part here was how they sell the fish – not in aquariums like North American pet shops, but pre-bagged and hanging on pegboards. It must be a nightmare to clean and rebag all the fish every morning, and this is what most shopkeepers kept busy with. And yes, turtles and the like were also available, prebagged.

Lunch was at some little noodle shop that seemed almost the same as the cheap sitdown places around Yonge and College, and was mediocre and uneventful. Next we got to the Jade Market – this is where stuff got really crazy. Everything was for sale, and it was all thought to be edible. Dried lizards, dried and fresh penises from every animal, pig snouts, fish of every colour and kind. The most incredible, to me anyways, was the coexistence of live animals with the meat. Chickens would be running around, or their cages stacked right next to the butchered chicken on sale. Hair was getting scraped off pigs’ heads right into the public sewers. It was something else.

To finish the day, we walked down Nathan (the main street) to the water, through a neighbourhood indistinguishable from Yorkville. Every store sold overpriced western brands – Lacoste, Gucci, Victoria’s Secret, you know – and the streets were full of tourists. Before this point, I was blown away at how few white people there were in Hong Kong… we had counted maybe 5 over the first 7 hours of the day. Turns out we were just looking in the wrong places.
Clearing security to get back into the airport was as much of a joke as it was getting out, and soon I was on my way to Thailand.