I am so painfully far behind in my blogging. Argh. I have failed utterly to blog or upload proper photos of my Hong Kong trip. So sorry. Options available to you: make do with 100 uncaptioned photos on my Google account, or you can join Facebook and look at the 60, properly captioned selections in my album there. Your call.

Instead of writing the very lucid travel journal I had started to outline before I caught the deadly avian SARS flu or whatever the hell it was that laid me up in bed for a week, you’ll have to make do with the following disjointed feverish notes. Maybe it’s more fun this way?

NOTE ON FASHION AND CUISINE
If you’ve ever wondered what it must be like to have body image issues, I mean serious anorexia or bulimia, I recommend an eye-opening visit to Asia. Body image nightmare. In tiny asian sizes, I am an XXL. No trying clothing on in the changeroom. Frustrating. No idea how the people who live here remain so tiny (and yes, I am stereotyping). The foodstuffs available are not exactly diet-friendly. There are bakeries everywhere selling egg tarts and wife cakes and croissants and sticky rice buns. Bakeries in the subway stations, on every corner, in every suburb and on all major avenues. It’s as though the bakeries are in a territory war with the 7-elevens to see who can fill the locals with the most sugar-based carbohydrates. KFC and McDonalds are in wild, untamed abundance, and the restaurants that purport to be selling “Chinese” cuisine are serving up noodles bathed in a sheen of hot oils, deep fried rolls and steamed dumplings that are white flour cocooning a mash of fatty ground meats. It’s a calorie-counter’s nightmare. The Spaghetti House and Charlie Brown Café are both foreign-sounding establishments that I’ve never seen anywhere else, but that are also ubiquitous in their presence on every major street in Kowloon. Body image is a two-way street, however. Much as I might envy the petite physiques of my Asian sisters, they are pining away for my complexion. Every drug store has a complete aisle full of skin-whitening creams and cosmetic lightening scrubs. Creepy.

NOTE ON WEATHER AND AIR
Despite the insane cement onslaught of the downtown core of Kowloon and on Hong Kong Island, there is abundant greenery here as well, and the air is soft and warm and doesn’t carry a hint of that thick, polluted viscosity that New York air can sometimes feel like in your lungs. Always thought the grey fog was pollution, but it really is just water suspended in the air. My glasses fog up each time I go outside. Humidity is extreme here, creating an amazing frizz in my light Caucasian locks. Frizzy doesn’t begin to describe the situation. For my compadres with curly hair, I recommend a hat, shellac, or investing in an inexpensive wig from the night market to keep the frightening white afro at bay. The rain, when it comes, is heavy and soaking, big full drops – if you’re lucky, it can be warm as well, like a shower from heaven. The smell of the air was instantly familiar to me – salty and perfumed and wet, like expensive oyster sauce spilled on a hot plate. It was the smell of my aunt’s suitcase when I was little; the locks would pop and a gust of imported air would escape, stolen from this place. Now it’s my luggage that will smell that way when I get home.

NOTE ON GREENERY, CLEANLINESS, TRANSIT
Bougainvillea, tulip trees, banyan trees with their long, straggly vine tendrils hanging like Confucian beards. Palm trees, plants with fleshy rubber leaves and vibrant pink, orange and yellow flowers. There’s also a complete lack of litter. Such a clean city, given that 7 million people are living in such close proximity to one another. The MTR (mass transit railway) is so unbelievably clean you could practically eat off the floor. Absolutely high-tech with air conditioning, light-up maps, glassed in platforms to prevent jumpers, fully automated computer-driven nav systems. At the museum of natural history there were outdoor escalators, which I haven’t seen since Barcelona. Our Canadian health and safety rules have been revealed to me as stuffy trappings of a restrictive society. Here, within minutes of arrival, we saw a bus driver actively engaged in operating a double decker monstrosity, maneuvering it through the heavy traffic to the city over the bridge from the airport, while smoking a cigarette and talking on his cell phone at the same time. Awesome.

NOTE ON CULTURAL IGNORANCE
Visiting the Avenue of Stars was a revelation in cultural ignorance. Out of the dozens of names emblazoned on the pavement, over which many local tourists were oohing and ahhing, I recognized six or seven. Bruce Lee, Jet Li, Stephen Chow, Chow Yun Fat and Wong Kar Wai were the ones I recall. I’m proud to report that my hands are the same size as Michelle Yeoh, but much smaller than Jet Li’s. I used to consider myself as someone who appreciated Chinese cinema, on a limited level, but now I understand that I am nothing but a deluded dilettante. If you know who Li Tit is, or can even read his/her name without giggling, you are a better person than I.

NOTE ON SAFETY
There’s a comforting police presence everywhere and I personally made it through my visit unscathed, but one can’t help but imagine that in a city with a population density second only to Monaco and Macau, no unemployment and no minimum wage, there have to be some bad apples among the bunch. How much is that poor woman handing out pamphlets being compensated for her day’s labour? How many mouths does she have to feed on her meager income? What’s her rent? When will she, or one of her dependents, reach a point of desperation? But these are just the ruminations of paranoia, and as I’ve said, they pass in a few moments after you’ve walked a city block of two and can finally stop panicking every time someone reaches out to you asking “copy watch?”

That’s all for my notes on Hong Kong. General update coming next.