For Monday, November 7, 2011
Narita
Yama, the hostel owner, gave me a free ride to the Narita airport in the morning. I flew from there to the Shanghai Pudong airport. The architecture of the terminal was lofty and impressive. The airport had wifi, but Facebook, Twitter, and Dropbox were blocked by the Great Firewall. I then flew to Hong Kong and arrived in the evening. It was much warmer than South Korea or Japan had been, to the point where you would sweat just by standing there.
Hong Kong
I rode a bus from the airport into the city and got off in Causeway Bay. The hostel, Hong Kong Hostel (love the name), hadn’t provided any walking directions from there, so I floundered for the next twenty minutes or so trying to figure out what street I was on, which way was which, and finally found 47 Paterson Street. I checked in, and found the staff to be disinterested and bored and the facilities to be seedy, cheap, and dirty. The common room sucked. It wasn’t a good vibe. But the location was great and the price couldn’t be beat. I dropped off my stuff in my room and met my roommates, Doug (from the U.S.) and Mahesh (from India). It was late, about 10 PM, and I hadn’t eaten, so I went back on the street and wandered around for a few minutes. I didn’t see any local food restaurants, but I did see a McDonald’s, and it was late, and I was hungry, so I decided to just eat there.