Arrival

16 hours on the flight to Hong Kong honestly flew by. I thought it'd be hell, but well planned sleeping, accompanied by well dosed Xanax enabled me to catch a good amount of Z's, still take advantage of the three spectacular meals of airplane food (which, categorically, I have never felt was worthy of complaint) and land in Hong Kong content. Jet lag isn't really an issue when you're flying from west to east--you lose more time on the clock than you do since waking up and especially if you arrive in the evening, you can hop right into bed and get a full night's rest. Since I arrived at 8pm, I booked a hostel-style guesthouse in the airport (FREE wifi, might I add. There's not an airport in the US that can lay claim to that luxury). The airport is located on one of the more remote islands of Hong Kong, so you need to get yourself into Kowloon or Hong Kong island by bus, taxi or train. The bus was the most economical option and I did try to find it, but to no avail. So I caught the high speed train for $60HKD to Kowloon, followed the directions given by the guest house to take advantage of the airport express shuttle bus to the Holiday Inn and then the Chungking Mansions, where the guesthouse was located, are around the corner. Tall white girl with gigantic backpack on back and medium size backpack on front is not exactly inconspicuous, so approaching the Chungking Mansions I was mauled by men of Indian-ish decent. At first I was a bit frightened and uncomfortable that I was a walking target, but later I realized it was only the men's jobs to wrangle incoming travelers for their respective guest houses. As it turned out, the Chungking Mansions is a huge apartment-style building, in which there are about 15 different hostels and guest houses. Since I had pre-booked, I was destined for Ashoka and after getting over the initial assualt, I entered the lobby and quickly found someone with my name on a paper saying "reservation!" It was a bit disconcerting that there were so many men around, but shortly thereafter a young British girl showed up looking for a room and her being so at-ease allowed me to relax a bit. Culture shock is just culture shock, after all. I made my way to my room. Paid $180HKD (about thirty bucks) for a private room with a bathroom--and that was probably over paying--and settled in for my first night.