I'll give you a piece of my mind: Oct. 11, 2018 Hong Kong day 23

I woke up tired again today and it took me so long to pull myself together i almost missed breakfast. There’s a fairly calm sea drifting by with an overall colourless sky and it’s rather bleak looking out there. But the temperature is about 74 degrees F. so i’m not complaining.

As i wove my way back from the buffet i spotted Sujata; the lady from India in the Atrium so i stopped for a little visit with her to see how she’s managing. She looked well but was still lugging around her huge heavy purse and she had another bad luck incident to tell me. It was a little hard for me to grasp it all as the details came all out of order. She is the lady who’s son was denied boarding the ship back in Tokyo. They had thought the remedy would be easy enough: she boarded and the son would order the documents he needed via his phone and then he would fly to Hong Kong and be able to join her on the ship either tonight or tomorrow.

Turns out he was either robbed or lost his phone. He thought of buying a new one but for some reason it would have to have a Japanese phone number which he and his mom said wouldn’t work for them. It was hard to sort out, her English was about 50% understandable but the only communication she was able to figure out was through her daughter who lives in Boston, Mass. And then her credit card was denied as she had maxed out due to all these changes. So the daughter was working on figuring out how to handle this so she sent money to her brother. Meanwhile the brother had by then found out his papers hadn’t gone through to be able to board in Hong Kong and now there was another delay and he’d have to make plans to fly to Vietnam to get a visa there. All of us on the ship have had to get a visa for Vietnam and Cambodia as well even if we don’t plan to debark so whether this all pans out time will tell. I felt so badly for these people going through all this hassle and all i can do is give the mom some moral support and watch her purse while she attempts to get help at the front desk.
I then headed off to the cabin because i suddenly remembered that i hadn’t taken down the Do not disturb sign which would mean our room hadn’t been serviced as of yet. Annie was resting and then she left so i decided to hit the casino because there was nothing on the agenda that i wanted to do so far today. I played my new fav slot machine Haunted House for awhile and picked up a few bucks and then blew it on a different random choice machine. So i went back to the HH where it immediately cleaned me out. Oh woe is me. No, i will never learn my lesson!

I went to trivia “When they were young” and they showed 20 old pics of celebrities. I recognized the first guy (Matt Damon) but couldn’t remember his name and that pretty much summed up my whole game because a lot of them looked familiar. It’s hard when you recognize someone but can’t get the name. I actually wrote down 12 names and every one of them was wrong!

So off i went to have dinner in O’Sheehans Pub and was seated in a lovely booth by the window. I ordered mozzarella sticks, a corned beef on rye with chips, and a mixed fruit plate with a slice of banana bread. The pics i took from there is the terrain leading in to the harbour of Hong Kong.

Once i got back to my room the city was starting to come into view. The pics i took from the cabin aren’t great because our window is quite salty but i took them anyway. I then went up to Spinnakers and got the last chair left on the starboard side and it turned out to be the best side as we could watch our ship gently belly up to the bar in the twilight. I might be amongst the first to be able to disembark tonight as my excursion is scheduled for 6:50 p.m. My tour is called “Open top bus and Temple street by night” But passengers have been advised that it might take 2 hours to disembark everyone so not sure what’ll happen.
I debarked with the first group; 14 buses full of passengers and i got the front seat on mine. My tour guide was named Patrick and he was witty and funny and full of good info about Hong Kong. He seemed to know what he called Hongcouver really well and he said it has a pop. Of 25% Chinese. I didn’t even know that about my own city! But of course i knew Vancouver has a lot of Chinese and a wonderful Chinatown.
It took about an hour to drive through the city and there was so much to look at my neck and eyes got sore. But a very good sore if you know what I mean. I love Hong Kong!

And then horror of horrors my camera said “battery exhausted” I could have bawled right then and there on an open top bus on Temple St., Hong Kong!
But i got over it, after kicking myself in the butt a million times, but what can you do. Maybe it was just as well otherwise i would have snapped a million pics. and maybe not been able to simply enjoy seeing the city and the people.

I absolutely love the Chinese people and their ways. We heard how much the average person earns per year, the education system, medical, schooling, types of cars, the weather, the price of homes, their love of the number 8, politics, you name it Patrick had the best words to explain everything in an interesting and funny way.

We all got off the bus at about 8:30p.m.to visit the night market which has an amazing ambience, so colourful and busy. I tried to stick around with Betty and Louise, the ladies i had hung out with a lot at the botanical garden in Kotchi. It was inevitable that we’d be parted as there were so many people you could hardly move. Anyhow, i was looking for totally different items than they were and i was determined to find some art supplies like paper in particular which I didn't think would be an odd thing to look for at a Chinese night market. I forged on until i was scared of not knowing my way back and suddenly there was a stall that had Chinese paint brushes and small handmade books so i was elated with this find and bought a few of those things along with a huge sheet of very thick paper, almost like felt but not. The man spoke no English but he indicated to me that it’s mostly used for ink art. I’m looking forward to experimenting with it. I then started heading out of there as it was getting close to the time to meet back at the bus when i spotted some beautiful paper cuts in another stall. They were so nice i bought a few and the price was so very little for such treasures. Then a book of coins caught my eye and i would have loved to buy it but the lady started at such a high price and she wouldn’t drop down very much. So i hummed and hawed and tried my best but i think she knew i really wanted it and so was holding onto her price. So i took off for the bus and it turned out that several people were late and i wish i would have spent more time trying harder to wear her down. We had been told that we could expect to buy things for less than 50% because the sellers all recognize who they think are rich people from a cruise ship and so they double their prices. Maybe those coins really were worth her price but now i’ll never know.

The ride back to the ship was amazing with all the huge buildings lit up. I love that there’s still a lot of old along with the new in the city. The last time I was here was in 2002 and i don’t remember seeing much new, everything seemed old. They now also have some of the big changing billboards like Manhattan so it was an awesome sight to see. Patrick kept us in stitches all the while talking of interesting things about his beautiful Hong Kong and then we boarded the ship and i went straight to bed because i’ll go on another tour of Hong Kong early in the morning.