Chungking Mansions In Depth.

A
B
C

D

Above are some interesting pictures I took from inside the Chungking mansions from my last blog post. Image A is the view looking down from my window and image D is the view looking up from my window. Image B is an interesting picture of the building superb electric wiring, and image C a picture of the haphazard commercial centre on the first few floors of the building.

The inhabitants of this place are truly international, it's an odd mix of backpackers, of all nationalities, Indian and Pakistani businesses, African businesses, and a few elderly Hong Kongers running shops. I've also bumped into and had conversations with loads of girls (usually) who have come from the phillipines, who are mostly doing "Domestic Hygiene" work. I also found out that this was named as one of the best places of globalisation in action, and that's certainly true.

The businesses are made up of money changers, electronics shops, guesthouse, indian restaurants, food shops, local convienience stores and so on.

At first I found the environment quite threatening, with being pushed and shoved in all directions by various people after my business. The constant callouts, massive queues for tiny lifts, serving large parts of a building. By far the scariest thing that happened was when I was trying to get out of the building. After waiting 25 minutes for the lift and finding it full 3 times, I decided to brave the buildings poorly maintained stairs. I went down to the ground floor but found the door to be blocked by a shelf from a shop someone had set up on the other side. One more floor down took me to the buldings back alley exit, all I could see was one scrawny cat and a load of rubbish, undettered I went outside. This was a big mistake.

I immediately found myself in a tiny alley, it was nighttime so it was occasionally lit by several out of date poorly repaired flourescent lights, most of which did not work, casting errie shadows along the alleyway. The path was covered in planks, rubbish empty cardboard boxes and general filth, from above, what I hoped was water (but was more likely airconditioning vent waste, or possibly something much worse) dropped down frequently almost like rain, and I did my best to avoid this. While walking around shady characters emerged out of the darkness, occasionally leering, or greeting me with the immortal "hashish?" With a sense of panic growing I doubled my pace, expecting to find the familiar sight of the main road just around the corner. To my horror, I just found another alleyway even worse than the one I had already passed, with no way out and no way back, I was thinking that perhaps this was going to get very very messy. Just when I thought I was out of luck and out of time, I spotted a giant double decker bus moving in the distance, inspired, I ran as fast as I could and found myself on the familiar surroundings of Nathan Road.

Aside from this one major mistake (and in reality I probably was never in any danger, but the sheer unfamiliarity with the situation is what almost caused me to panic) I've really warmed to this place. I even found an article on "Time" which sums up the place very well. http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/best_of_asia/article/0,28804,1614524_1614473_1614447,00.html

What it says about Hong Kong's multiculturalism is very true. Hong Kong does pride itself as being a world city, but this is just as much proved by the existence of places like Chungking Mansions as it is by the skyscrapers of Central and Admiralty.

In fact it's hard to believe that this rabbit warren of a building, the absolute opposite of what Hong Kong is known for (wealth and prosperity) exists barely 5 minutes accross Hong Kong bay from skyscrapers built by tycoons who made their billions. It's the first time I've seen such a polarising wealth gap since bangkok. The wealthgap definately exists in communist countries too, but it's no where near as polarising as it is in capitalist ones.

Aside from marveling at the great place to stay, I've found that exploring Hong Kong on foot as revealed many hidden treasures, such as the kowloon walled city park and A SARS memorial.

I'm expecting to stay in Hong Kong for another few days, leaving for Macau on Wednesday and flying back to Vietnam on Friday.

Hong Kong

I arrived in Hong Kong about 5 days ago and since then have been taking in the atmosphere of this incredible city. Here is totally different to mainland China, it's kind of like a Chinese London except with more high buildings, one of which I'm currently staying on the 17th floor of, for the foreseeable future until I can obtain a new visa for Vietnam to continue my travels for perhaps another month or so. I'm now staying inside of a rather legendary backpackers haunt, inside a large building complex, but inside is somewhat anarchaic. Inside is a disorganised mixture of budget shops, budget hotels and budget restaurants, stretching up over 20 floors with no real organisation. It's a fascinating place to stay, but the first I've stayed in, in some time that's made me nervous. I have the luxury of a window in my room but under no circumstances will I open it again. I made this mistake once and was overpowered by the stench of exhaust fumes from a restaurant exhaust fan being sucked up a few floors below here. It's also totally dark outside the window, despite being so high up, and the view accross from me is a broken airconditioning fan and a grimy window. The good point is it's only 8 pounds a night and I need to tighten my belt a bit for this next month in order to stretch out the money. The sooner I can get back to vietnam the cheaper and better things will be. As long as I can actually find my way out of this building, which seems to follow no logical patterns on the inside. Anyone interested in further information check out this website http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chungking_Mansions

My travelling partner is working for the next few days but we've arranged to meet up in Ho Chi Minh City in about 12 days. I even managed to find cheap flights from the neighbouring territory of macau, so that should be a bit of an adventure. hopefully we'll be able to work are way north using the famous reunification express, and stop by the ancient capital of Hue, although that one may be a tad difficult.

Hong Kong as a City is a fantastic place which has really caught my imagination, especially as the culture swings strongly from Cantonese-Chinese to being scarily similar to the UK in many places. I really want to write more but i'm a bit hungry and so now am going to explore the rest of this building looking for food.

Hope everyone at home is well :)

Chaos

Ok, it looked like that last post worked! Well to keep everyone up to date I'm now in China, I wasn't affected directly by the earthquake, but the knock on effect it's having through society here is incredible, and I'm amazed to see it being so underreported on other news websites. The amazing thing is the governent decided to call three days national mourning, and the result was that all websites changed their font to grey and featured candles and other memorial information. All "fun" activities were suspended for three days too. If it was considered fun, then the government wouldn't allow it as the country was in mourning. I observed the 3 minutes silence along with many others while I was in Long Ji. Not much more to be said on this.

My impressions of China so far is that it is a very beautiful country, stunningly beautiful in fact. The people are hard working, generally friendly although quite firey at times. (example, our tour leader tried to convince a very persistent street seller to stop following us, the smiles on the street sellers face faded to an angry mask and loud yells, stamping of feet etc) the people are very curious of foreigners. The one thing I majorly dislike about China is the government. After having spent over a month now in countries that curtail freedoms in some way or another, I'm really starting to get fed up of having to censor what I say all the time. I'm fed up of having my ability to search for information covered up or blocked out by the government filter. I'm fed up of being treated like a terrorist every time I cross a border.

When crossing the Vietnam-China border passports were checked over 8 times by different officials, our bags were checked throughly. The X-ray machine was available, but switched off. So we were forced one by one to open our backpacks to border control police and go through every single item one by one. They were particularly interested in my books, they opened them up flicked through all the pages and asked me what the book was about. Another person from our group had copied some of her photos onto CD's, these were instantly taken away by the border police because they wanted to know whether she was a spy! After about 25 minutes they came back again.

The most insulting part was after all this, there was ANOTHER X-Ray machine (which this time was switched on) and then we were asked to put our already checked luggage through this as well!

Of course frustrating as this all was, there was nothing we could do but grin and bare it.

Another interesting experience was my 19th Birthday, my last ever one as a teenager. On that day, I found myself in a remote village called the Dong Village in very rural China. I was not expecting much of a birthday, more of a repeat of Christmas, which was quite lonely sitting alone in my apartment in Japan. But the most fantastic and wonderful surprise, was that my tour group had rallied for me, bought an absolutely MASSIVE cake (which someone had transported about 20 miles from the nearest town on the back of a motorbike) and surprised me by singing Happy Birthday! I was so incredibly moved I couldn't really put it into words here, but if any of you are reading, you have my grattitude, you can't imagine how much that meant to me.

This is especially moving for me as I've really missed spending time with my family, whom I have such a close relationship with. In a way the group has really helped me to get over that homesickness, although I know it won't be long now until I'll be back living at 9 Keats Close. Things are definatly coming to an end now, I can feel that the I don't have a reason to stay travelling much longer. I can't quite believe I've been out of the UK now for over 9 months. I'm pretty much last man standing, almost everyone else has already gone home. People who I've met from all corners of the globe, I'm kind of proud to have lasted this long.

Despite this however, I'm strongly considering staying for another four weeks. But this is of course dependent on the PRC officials in Hong Kong issuing me another visa (which they may or may not do) at the moment it seems to be very much on a whim, for example some days visas are available, some days they aren't, some days certain types of visa are available and other types aren't. Border controls and visa issuing is very chaotic at the moment, as the government is strongly trying to control the flow of people to all different regions, which is understandable of course. My advice to anyone thinking of going to China is, don't. Until things calm down a little. Visiting the special zones (Hong Kong and Macau) and major cities such as Shanghai (apart from ones in Sichuan) should be fine however.

I'm sure I'll get time to make another post sometime in the near future... until then everyone take care and might be seeing you in another month! :D

Test

This is just a test post to see whether I can actually get past the government filter. I've been able to access my post screen but I am unable to view my actual blog, likely because it contains some controversial terms. (I've discussed politics and all sorts on here)

If this works, please email me if you can view my posts...

In Laos... where electricity is only a possiblity....

Things have moved on quite a lot since I last posted... To sum up, I spent about a week in Bangkok before going to Phuket for 3 days and then returned to Bangkok to join the intrepid tour, which has consequently taken me northwards through Thailand, into Laos PDR up through the Mekong River before entering Vietnam this morning. A note to anyone who was worried about the Burmese cyclone... we were well out of it's path, and we're completely fine (although we did have a rather noisy night) we saw a lot of things going the other way, probably to the Burma border however. Anyone who was concerned about the facebook status that stated I got shot at, don't worry I didn't get chased by police or anytihng, me and a few friends just wondered a little to close to one of the many public firing ranges in Phuket.

Of course with travelling you get sick from time to time, so a long with the normal stomach complaints I have managed to get sunburnt a couple of times as well. But by far the most spectacular injury so far took place while tubing on a river in Laos. Tubing down the river takes about 3 hours, and along the way there are many bars and such, just float up to the bar get off and have a couple of drinks, get back on the tubes, continue the leasurely float down the river. One such bar also contained an extremely high jump into the river (about 8 metres, doesn't sound like much, but once you get up there... trust me, it's like jumping from the roof of your house) also on this jump was a huge swing which swung out a good twelve metres into the river, this swing was spectacular fun, and me and two other crazy people had much entertainment swinging from this thing and then dropping into the river from the lowest point (probably about 4 metres above the water) On my last go I decided to try and outdo the other two and decided to drop the the highest point while swinging (about 8 metres!)

Falling from that height was absolutely bloody terrifying as well as the most thrilling thing I've ever done. The problem was the way I landed. After falling through the air I hit the water at an awkward angle in which my shoulder entered the water first followed by my face. The sensation was not to dissimilar to being punched in the head (that's happened to me too) When I came to the surface I felt something crunchy in my mouth... turned out the force of hitting the water actually managed to chip a chunk of one my incisors off. Fortunately it was only enamel and there's still plenty left protecting the tooth, and the tooth is not currently painful four days later. Even more fortunately I still have the piece of tooth and I am happily carrying it around in my wallet until I get home where I'm hoping my dentist can reattach it, or at least fill it in. Any relatives. Any dentists reading this please "chip in" your advice (ho ho ho)

Laos was peaceful and sleepy, Vietnam is loud and dangerous, is one very simple way of summing up the places just visited.

The fascinating thing about Laos is it's government. The government is officially communist, hence Laos PDR people's democratic Republic. But the best way of describing it is half-heartedly communist. It has characteristics of communism, as in big monuments to the revolution, hammers and sickles, and other strange random thing like every single hotel or guesthouse we stayed in (about 5) used the same soap from the official soap factory. There's also a government curfew that comes into force around half eleven, to ensure all residents are back home for midnight, although this is more strictly enforced in places that actually have a police force (or more likely, an army division) nearby. And trust me, those guys are scary. Despite this, Lao Thai and Vietnamese people are all very friendly and it's no wonder these two countries are nicknamed the land of smiles.

But apart from this and a few other things, Laos is very similar to any other developing country, it's definately the little brother of all of the East Asian countries. Being landlocked and very isolated with a poor road system, it's not exactly been touched by tourism that much... although I realise that ironically by visiting and writing about it this will only increase interest. Infrastructure is unreliable, internet comes and goes, and electricity is not available in all areas, or sometimes just between certain hours! Powercuts are random and frequent. The best way to get around Laos is by boat. We spent a great two days floating down the Mekong drinking Beer Lao and taking in the sights.

Vietnam roads are legendarily dangerous. Crossing the road is even scarier than Bangkok, when stepping out into the road traffic flies at you from all directions and the only way to gurantee safety is to walk in A VERY STRAIGHT LINE and hope that buses, millions of mopeds, cars, motocyclos and pretty much everything else find their way around you. crossings, where they exist are useless as no one stops at traffic lights anyway :D

The bus we came on would regularly pull out on blind corners, swing on to the wrong side of the road, overtake other vehicles with a shockingly narrow margin. Enough to make all of the backpackers on the bus (including myself) cry out in alarm. Another thing that seems to be popular in Vietnam is horn honking, from the second any journey starts horns are blaring, sometimes even to customised tunes, and sometimes seemingly for no reason at all other than to alleviate boredom.

As is always the case when travelling I'm not sure when my next post will be, especially as within a week or so I will be heading into China, up there I'll be behind the infamous great firewall, which blocks horrible anti-government behaviour, including many blogging websites I've heard.