Dave the Nomad

I was fortunate enough to get a double entry visa into China, which meant I was able to visit Hong Kong whenever I wanted, as it requires its own visa entry, although considered a part of China. I took a flight from Hanoi to Guangzhou, which is a few hours outside of Hong Kong, and took a series of taxis and buses to Hong Kong, where I planned to stay with one of my good friends Kristin. Kristin and I went to high school together, and shortly after getting married, Kristin left with her husband Grant to live in Hong Kong.

I was excited to catch up on life, and talk to friends from the states. Before I could do that I had a small run in with the authorities while leaving Vietnam. I approached the immigration desk at the airport like so many times before, expecting a wave of the hand. There was no queue, and I walked up to the smiling officials who stared at my passport and then at my face for quite a while. Then they pointed at my ear, and asked me if I had surgery on it. I was completely taken back by the question and said no. One of the officers left to get a second opinion, and after a few moments a three star official was brought over, who kindly ushered me into a back room. The whole time the officers seemed to be suppressing a certain level of smiling and laughing, but were stoic enough for me to be concerned.

Once I was in the small sparsely filled office I was asked to produce as many pieces of identification and photos possible for comparison. They then asked me to turn my head in various odd contortions which reminded me of the awkward positions the photographer seemed to love for school portraits while growing up. After 15-20 minutes of indecisive examination of my ear, they asked me to reproduce my signature a half dozen times, and than started going through the pages of my passport. They asked me to recite when and for how long I was in each country… I chuckled a bit to myself, and then started racing through any benchmark dates on my trip. Thankfully, they were happy with my answers and I was finally allowed to proceed to my plane.

I found my friend’s apartment without any difficulty, and after a brief 2 am conversation I got to sleep in a real bed without a check-out time, figuring out what I was going to eat for breakfast, or what to do / see all day. Since Grant and Kristin had to work all-day, I occupied myself with sight-seeing around the island group, until they were free in the evening. The spectacular sky-scrapers hugging the coasts of the hilly islands are great to marvel at, but otherwise this hub of commerce isn’t much else than a cosmopolitan city. There were a couple morsels worth seeing, including taking the tram to the top of Hong Kong Island, and hiking around the beautiful pathways, and my favorite the free open-air aviary in Hong Kong Park. Probably the most impressive aspect of Hong Kong is its versatile, efficient, and widespread transportation system, and its oh-so-easy Octopus Card. The Octopus Card not only lets you breeze through ticket queues, but you can use it similar to university cards at participating stores as cash!

My visit to Hong Kong was quite unique for two reasons: Grant and Kristin. Grant and Kristin play on an ultimate frisbee league, and they have traveled extensively to other asian countries for tournaments in their spare time. They happened to be having an inter-league game my second night there, and asked if I would like to play. Now, my experience playing frisbee has been limited to pick-up games in university, and out-of-season with my swim team which usually turned into muddy tackling sessions by the end. The least to say, I was a bit nervous, but happy to give it a shot. Even if they pulled me off the field after a few minutes.

The Hong Kong league was divided into four teams, and Grant and Kristin’s team was aptly called ‘the Smurfs.’ We went out for some cheap and delicious sushi in Causeway Bay before the game, and I got to meet some of the other players. Everyone was really nice, and very helpful in explaining the rules while we warmed up. The explained their strategies and lingo, and before long we were starting the game against the black team. The humble smurfs were hesitant to tell me, but this was the best team in the league, and they were hoping to not get too squashed.

The smurfs put me in as what they called deep-deep position, which meant I basically tried to stay open and wait for the Hail Mary pass. I ended up scoring twice! It was a good moral boost, and I was happy to be running around doing some physical exercise again. The smurfs played really well, and managed to beat the black team with a considerable lead. Grant and Kristin were both superbly better than I, and were very good team players. I was proud of my friends, their abilities, and the traveling they got to do because of it. After the match, we went out for a few celebratory drinks, and left to get some much needed rest.

The second night, Grant and Kristin brought me to the horse race track. Several other frisbee players had never been, so we all went off to the races! We met at a restaurant / bar called ‘the Chapel,’ and had some spicy Indian food before walking a short distance over to the track. I’d never been to the races before, and found it to be quite an experience. We bought the non-tourist tickets for 10 HKD (~1.50 USD), and spent a little money placing bets based on stats, funny names, or pure chance. As a group we faired… poorly. I managed to only loose a few dollars a race, while others like Grant who would bet all-or-nothing on one horse were charitable causes to the track owners. We took an inconspicuous elevator to an upper level filled with race junkies gripping their stat sheets and smoking through a flurry of cigarettes.

Nonetheless, we had a good time filling in punch cards (unlike standardized testing), and watching the race. The next day, I said goodbye to my friends, and more importantly fantastic hosts, and headed off to Shanghai. Its always hard to leave friends, even harder to leave a home, and yet I am off again.