What a journey, what a destination
Seventy-two hours: that’s how long I went without sleeping on a bed during my travels from Tempe to City University of Hong Kong (CityU). Those 72 hours doesn’t even include the 15 hour time change, so during that period I slept on planes, grass and benches before settling into my cozy, yet very firm bed here in Alumni Civility Hall at CityU.
To review my itinerary, I started from Phoenix and flew to San Francisco. From the Bay Area, I took an 11-hour ride on a Boeing 747 to Tokyo. Surprisingly, the landscape of Tokyo as viewed from the plane was very green and hardly developed. I know that Tokyo is one of the densest cities in the world, so the airport was clearly on the outskirts. My final flight was on a newer 767 operated by ANA Airlines, “The Inspiration of Japan.” Not surprisingly, they offer better amenities and customer service than any of the airlines in the U.S. I got into Hong Kong International Airport at 10 p.m. local time, and my two-week stay had officially begun.
The Initial Struggle
My buddy, Alen Jakupovic, got in late at around midnight. I waited at the airport for him and we both got a cab to City U. We had no plans; we didn’t know if we’d have a place to sleep or a place to set our bags down, but we just went for it. We got dropped off in the Kowloon Tong region and found our way to the student residence.
Everything would’ve gone perfectly smooth had we gotten in on Saturday like everyone else, but Alen and I got in a day early so our dorm rooms weren’t available yet. We slept out in the grass and on benches in the school courtyard until around 6:30 in the morning when Jennifer Carter, our TA for the trip, came out and graciously offered to store our bags in her room until we could check into our own rooms. So Alen and I finally had some time to explore the city of Hong Kong.
Learning the City of Hong Kong
We hopped on the MTR, Hong Kong’s train system. For 12 Hong Kong dollars ($1.50 U.S.), you can get from our dorm in Kowloon to Central station on Hong Kong Island. The transit system is incredibly cheap and incredibly efficient. It makes the Phoenix light rail look like a joke.
We made two trips out to Central station on Sunday. On our second journey, we found an excellent nightlife and restaurant area called Lan Kwai Fong. We spent a good portion of the evening around there gazing at the skyscrapers and eating excellent food.
Learning CityU
CityU is a mostly commuter university, and it’s the summer semester, so the university is quite empty during the evenings. There’s a high amount of security here. That appears to just be a characteristic of Hong Kong in general and not of CityU in particular. Security guards are everywhere across the city. Many things are locked; the lack of accessibility was annoying at first, but I quickly got over it because the university and the City of Hong Kong have a lot to offer.
More to come in the next few days. So long from Asia’s world city, Hong Kong.