day 31! hong kong, taipei

Woke up the next morning feeling not-so-much better. My flight was at 2:30 and I didn't quite know how to find the bus stop that would take me back to the airport (not the same place that I got off) so I did some frantic googling to find the right stop.

Left Andrew's apartment and did a bit of shopping to spend the rest of my $100 (which actually went a long way, btw, having only spent money on octopus card/traveling expenses, and some milk tea). Didn't spend all of it but bought a couple of like, $8 shirts.

Oh this was random and sort of cute. There were a lot of aquariums around where I was staying. They sold a lot of their fish like this -- in little carnival bags tied to a wall. Makes me want to play darts. >)

Walked abooooout 3 blocks before realizing I had no idea where the fuck I was. Time for plan B! Take the Metro there. Aahhh the good old metro.

The good old metro. :D This is a particularly clean/airy stop. In terms of cleanliness, from best to worst, hmmm I'd have to order them as: Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, London, New York -- of the metros I've been on. To be fair, Taiwan metro system is the newest, which is probably one reason it looks so clean and modern :) (since the rest of Taiwan sure as hell ain't clean).

And of course America is the filthiest cesspool of them all. :D

Took a couple of transfers but here it is! To airport!

Had some minor issues getting my ticket, I bought from HK Airlines but the flight was actually operated by Eva Airlines. Had a super paranoid moment at the HK Airlines checkin counter, when I told them I was departing at 2:30 and they were like "we don't have a flight at that time". So I asked "....it is...Saturday...right?" O_O;;;; *sweating buckets* But yah. Wrong counter. :3

Then I played wifi tag with myself. Thought I'd be able to access it from here, so I got the milk tea + thick toast set advertised in the banner on the right.

More like nonexistent toast *grumble*.

But the signal was too weak, so I snarfed down the toast, took a coupla swigs of the milk tea before chucking it (I wasted T_T) and tried my luck on the other side of security. Nothing at the food court, but I saw a protected network with the same name as a fancy cafe I'd passed.......

Followed the signal to the restaurant where I impressed all the patrons by splurging on this very expensive piece of the cheapest menu item I could find:

Damn you airport foods. It wasn't even good!!!

But I got what I came for. Wifi use for the next two hours, killing time till my flight (which was actually 3:30 btw). Then I did a dumb thing, and totally didn't head off to my gate in time, even though I had checked in for my flight 3 hours early! A good sprint through the HK airport, into a shuttle, where I joined forces with a smiling-but-seething flight attendant with a sign for my flight, past the disapproving glares of all the remaining flight attendants was enough to make me kick myself in the head quite a few times. Figuratively, of course. There was no time for actual kicks.

My guilty airplane food lunch. Don't know if it was the cold or the guilt, but it was not very good. :(

When I got back to Taoyuan airport I took a different bus back to Taipei Central Station (instead of the one that we usually take, which dumps you near my grandmother's apartment), and it thankfully did not epic fail and epic strand me somewhere. Made all the proper calls, sent all the proper emails, and then went to sleep for a long, long time. :)

So to sum up my trip to Hong Kong....I definitely didn't get to see as much of it as I had wanted to, but I at least got a feel for what the city is like. It reminded me of a cross between Japan and Taiwan. Had the big big city feel of Tokyo, but more of the...urban...lively openness of Taiwan. Would I go back? Maybe. I didn't see enough to make me really excited to explore more. But it does seem like a cool place and I'm a little sad that illness and fatigue took away from that. :) Until next time!!