Expatriate Games

Hong Kong Baby!

Day 3 – Shenzhen to Hong Kong

The plan was to take the 11:30 ferry from Shekou to Hong Kong which would put us in the city around 12:30, more than enough time to get settled into the hotel before meeting friends for a three o’clock photo walk. Already hot and humid when we left Nanshan and the forecast was more of the same over the weekend. We arrived at the ferry terminal with time to spare, bought our tickets and had to wait for a while before heading upstairs to clear immigration. Ah, immigration… remember when I wrote this in the
last post?

Plus, Hong Kong is less China than Shanghai and I wanted to at least feel like I was leaving the country. To get to Hong Kong you have to at least go through immigration!

Yeah, well that sentiment was just about to bite me in the rear.

The line wasn’t very long but the air conditioning was faltering. Clearing customs to go to Hong Kong should be a fairly simple thing for me. I have a residence permit that allows me to leave and re-enter China and aside from what seemed to me to be an inordinate amount of time spent checking and re-checking my passport, said residence permit and the computer screen, I was cleared on through to Hong Kong. As I looked around for Lily I found she was still at the window with the customs agent, pained and confused look on her face. I’ve seen that look before, not a good sign. I walked around to the station where she was trying to get through and it was explained that Lily’s travel permit to enter Hong Kong was only valid if she was traveling with a group! No one had told Lily about that small detail prior to THAT MOMENT. It meant she had to go back downstairs, find a group (and pay a tidy sum) with which she would be  allowed to travel and then hopefully make the next ferry. There was no guarantee she was going to be allowed to leave on that one either.

What to do? I had already cleared customs, which meant that if I was going to wait for her, I would have to go to the other side of the building and re-enter China. Lily insisted I go on the first ferry without her and simply wait for her at the terminal in Hong Kong. The ferry was about to leave so after a bit of teeth gnashing I went on alone. While still near land I called Lily to get an update. She assured me that she had been assured she would have no problem getting out on the next ferry (one o’clcok) which meant I would be waiting for her for an hour and a half. Normally that would be so bad… normally. Remember when I wrote this in the last post?

We packed very conservatively, jamming only what we would absolutely need into one small bag. In addition I was in charge of all the camera equipment and Lily was to take care of all the finances.

Allow me to go through that step by step for you. We had packed one small bag. Lily had the bag. I had my passport, two cameras, five lenses, a tripod, batteries, memory cards, the clothes on my back, and exactly ¥23. Lily had all our cash and credit cards. I had just landed in one of the world’s most expensive cities with about $3.30 US in my pocket. Oh, and Lily had the Hong Kong SIM card for my phone too. I couldn’t even buy a sandwich! I was praying she was on her way, otherwise I was going to have to call Arnd or James or Steve and ask them to loan me some money! Not good, I was imagining the conversation, “Hey buddy! Listen I know we’ve never actually met in person but I was wondering if you could see your way to loaning me a few thousand dollars? Really I’m good for it, I’d say $10,000 HKD ought to do it for the weekend.” Right. I couldn’t actually have called anyone anyway! Thankfully Lily showed up about 2 o’clock and we somehow managed to meet up with everyone just a little past three. Here is a bit of the gang standing in front of the infamous Chungking Mansions.

Left to right, that’s Louise, Brian (looking back over his shoulder), Ok Chan, James, Arnd and Lily. Lincoln was there as well and we later met up with another Arnd, in town from Shanghai. The local contingent took us around for an afternoon of street shooting and camera shops. Miraculously, I somehow made it out of Hong Kong without buying one piece of camera equipment. I was white knuckling it for sure but didn’t buy so much as a memory card! Here are a few shots from day one in Hong Kong…

As surprising as it may be to some of you, my boyish charm with the camera doesn’t always work. These gals clearly wanted nothing to do with me. I think it probably made a more interesting photograph.

After a couple of hours in the heat and humidity Lincoln led us to a Mexican restaurant/bar and we cooled down with some cold drinks and good conversation. The place featured this kitsch tiki island-like decor with a lot of primary colors. Second Mexican restaurant in two days, I sense a theme developing…

A few of the guys left us at this point to go have dinner with their families. The rest of us  wandered toward the harbour. On the way I met this friendly fella’ from India. He was more than happy to let me take his photograph and I WISH I had actually taken the time to pull out the flash to use off camera for a more dynamic shot. When walking with other people I’m always sensitive to taking too much time in one spot, still, if I had it to do over again I would have pulled out the flash.

The Hong Kong light show was set for eight o’clock and the viewing area at Victoria Harbour was packed. I managed to change lens and get the tripod set up in the back when I noticed another photographer was breaking down his tripod in the front row. I scrambled up and over a few hundred people and somehow managed to take his spot at just about 7:50. The guy next to me said he had been set up there since 6:20. This cityscape is one of the most photographed spots in the world. The size restraints here don’t really do it justice.

We still wanted to get the requisite shot from The Peak but by the time we got to the other side of the ferry we were both hungry and I hadn’t had a (real) steak in more than three years. After saying goodbye to the rest of the gang we headed over to Ruth Chris Steakhouse and left, $1,500 HKD later. Worth every penny. The Peak will have to wait.

Thanks to everyone who’s already registered for the September giveaways. Remember, we are giving away prizes throughout the month to celebrate the launch of the new website, including an Apple iPad, a Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 MACRO lens, autographed limited edition prints and copies of Saving Faces – A Portrait Collection. All you have to do to get registered is subscribe to the feed and leave a comment somewhere on the site. I hope you’ll please spread the word.

I have my first morning class of the new term tomorrow. More joy.

Tomorrow:  Day 4 – Hong Kong to Taiwan Tai O

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 31st, 2010 at 8:46 PM. It is filed under Blog, Post Slider, Travel and tagged with china, expat, expatriate, flickr meet up, flickr walk, hong kong, immigration customs, laowai, photo of the day, photography, photos, street, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.