King Kong

My one short day in Hong Kong was phenomenal. Our ship was docked across from the main area, Hong Kong island, in a port connected to a mall. We had a prime view of the Hong Kong skyline, which lit up at night.

I split up from the main group of friends because they all wanted to go have “camera day” and look at lenses. I find this incredibly boring and worthless, so me and Ari set off by ourselves to find some Dim Sum.

We took the Star Ferry (the first of many trips) across from our island to Hong Kong Island and walked through a giant mall and found only overpriced stores. A hotel gave us directions to the bus station and how to get to Stanley Market, which is on the other side of the island. At the bus station we ran in to Cara and Andrew and together we took the bus to Stanley Market.

The bus ride was around half an hour, and when we got there we did a little browsing through the market but our main focus was to find Dim Sum. We did and the waiter we had must have had a chopstick up his butt because he was quite stiff and not very customer friendly.

The Dim Sum was GREAT! We ordered six varieties, including beef, pork, vegetarian, and shrimp. They were all really good. The rest of the time in Stanley we did some shopping and I bought two Spider-Man ties.

We took the ferry back and met up with the camera day people and then took the ferry back again to grab some dinner before the 8 PM light show. I got noodles and beef, and then a hot dog but it was really gross. During dinner, Taylor told a story that made Isaiah laugh unexpectedly and he spat the water he was drinking all over his food and couldn't finish it.

We got on the ferry with something like 15 minutes to spare before the light show, and we wanted to be in the ship to watch it. Taylor, Butters, and I booked it off of the very, through the mall, and onto the ship in time to see the lasers on the city shoot out and do cool stuff. It was beautiful.

Someone joked with me if I was having another piano performance in Hong Kong, like the one in Viet Nam. I wish I could have played piano here and all over the world. I was asked by the man in charge of the service jobs on the ship if I wanted to work on the ship as a pianist for the Fall 2009 voyage. My duties would include playing piano in the piano bar, like a pianist at a mall. I haven't decided what I want to do, but he offered me good money and putting school on hold for a little bit doesn't sound like too bad of an idea. One thing I've learned on this trip is to take advantage of any opportunity, and getting a chance to have a professional music job is a hard one to pass up. I'll probably return to Chapman after the voyage, assuming they don't extend my contract or it doesn't turn into a larger career opportunity. I haven't decided for sure yet, but he needs an answer by tomorrow night so I'll be thinking about it a lot on the bus and on the plane (I'm blogging now from my hotel in Beijing).

I wish we had more time in Hong Kong. The atmosphere was great, the city was cool, and it was just such a unique place. I'd definitely like to go back there one day.