Last Weekend of Summer!

Friday night one of the student helpers organized a big group to go out to an open bar club in Wan Chai. We head out and Rachel and I are starving since we didn’t eat dinner with the rest of the group. We figure we’ll find out where the club is and then go get food and come back. However, when we get there the bouncer is being really strict about the forms of ID. All us Americans brought our state drivers license because the consulate said not to take your passport out if you don’t have to so we were all in jeopardy of not getting in. Luckily, the guy realized he’d be losing out on HK$150 each person and let us in. But I didn’t want to risk not getting in if I left for food and came back so Rachel and a group of others said they’d bring me back food if they could. Well, long story short, my dinner was smuggled in inside Joel’s pants and then once inside hidden like contraband. I’m sitting in the club, trying to hide my fries and I asked Logan if he wanted any. His response, “What is that? Drugs?!” Yeah, that’s how stealth we had to be with just some cheap fries. Well, got my dinner and then enjoyed the open bar. More CUHK kids ended up showing up later in the night so the club was about half CUHK half other people. By the end of the night we had overrun the dancing stage and it was like 20 of us just dancing our hearts out and trying to push off this creepy guy who kept dancing inappropriate with as many girls as he could. We ended up leaving the club around like 3am and since Jia speaks Cantonese we didn’t get lost this time and even got dropped off right near the dorm! Pretty nice.

The next day, CUHK organized a Hong Kong city tour. The group of us who were out at the club were kind of out of it at first, but we dragged on and eventually got a second wind. We visited Stanley Market, which had rocky beaches and lots of shopping (like most places in Hong Kong so far). Then we went to Victoria Peak, where there’s an AMAZING view of Victoria Harbor, and of course another shopping area. The last time was the Avenue of Stars. It was like a mini-Hollywood Walk of Fame. They had stars and cement hand imprints for some of Hong Kong’s (and China’s?) biggest stars. We found stars for Jet Li, Chow Yung Fat, and Jackie Chan. Bruce Lee didn’t have a star since it was built after his time, but they had a statue of him flexing every muscle in his body at the same time. The Avenue had a fantastic view of the skyline and had this huge hotel that was actually built on the water. The tour bus headed back, but a group of us wanted to stay behind to see the skyline laser light show. At 8pm music started playing on loud speakers all along the water front and a booming voice said stuff in Chinese that I didn’t understand but could only assume was talking about the show that was about to begin. The show lasted a lot longer than I was expecting. It was amazing to see an entire city’s downtown area have its lights choreographed. It reminded me of the Electric Light Orchestra Parade that Disneyland has, except on a much grander scale. The whole 5 minutes of the show, Rachel, Zarina, Leann and I just stood there and gaped in awe.

We then hopped on the Star Ferry and headed into Central to get sushi. I paid less than US$2 for my sushi dinner. CRAZY! It was the kind where the conveyer belt just has the sushi go by and you pick all the plates you want.

Classes have started so the posts will probably more spread out from now on. Hopefully I’ll have a great adventure to write about after next weekend. Tentative plans are to go to Taiwan or the Phillipines since we have Monday off. So we’ll see…

Photos: the view from my dorm window. Stephanie, Zarina, and I at the Wan Chai club (you can’t tell but we’re on the dance stage). The view from Victoria Peak. Logan, Rachel, Zarina, Leann, Etienne, and me at the Avenue of the Stars. Central HK skyline just before the light show. And of course, more photos are on facebook.