yes im back from hongkong, though very much hate the sad fact of it. though hongkong had really bad air(and smell) the weather wasnt as unforgiving as singapore's for sure. and besides, it felt totally awesome to be away from the the mundane work life and just to let go off everything and just go on a holiday for a while. yeah my first properly holiday overseas, not counting those trips for training purposes.

well, hongkong was every bit what i expected it to be. you know, from what you see on the television and stuff. and yet at the same time the trip was packed with erm.. a series of 'what!?' events(sorry i lack a better word). i probably wont be able to fit everything into one post should i have the urge to spell everything out but for memories sake i shall fill up as much as i can remember.

well for starters i kinda arrived at singapore airport with the wrong passport. well not exactly wrong as in someone else's, but just not my latest one. yeah i know dumb me. well singapore said it's fine to let me through since my passport aint expired yet, but apparently after arriving at hongkong i was barred entry. okay so the plan was to wait for ivan on the later flight to bring in my newer passport. seems like a perfectly sound and okay plan, just try to explain that to hongkong immigration officials who dont really understand english well, and to convince them you arent some illegal immigration or smth. okay so i waited a total of 5.5 hrs.. (yes sitting there). i got to see a fair bit of the immigration police at work. met all kinds of people in there, from bombay, mumbai, vietnam, thailand, china, india, america blah blah. all kinds of people on all kinds of business brought in. it was interesting to see the police interrogate them though, and how they really pay attention to the intricate details and all. sad to say though, i witness a fair bit of racism displayed by them, like refusing to point the toilet out to this indian man when its just some 10m away, even after 1.5 hrs..

oh well. basically the entire hongkong trip was one mad rush. at least the first two days felt like so. we've probably been to every mall known to exist in hongkong in the first two days alone. walked till our knees ached and feet blistered.

the hotel room's design is rather amusing though. you know the wall that usually separates the bathroom from the bedroom area? yeah this one's made of glass. those foggy glass kind, so while watching tv on your bed, you could very well glance over and watch the silhouette of your friend bathing haha.

the main problem was the communication barrier though. like everyone there mostly spoke cantonese and the main common language we used was mandarin. haha some even mistook us for being taiwanese/jap when we spoke english.

oh and the power of our 11B though. i think im gonna bring it as my ic even after i ord, everytime i go overseas. i remember there was this once after we left lang kwai feng(their clarke quay area) -hope i spelt it correctly- we got stopped by two policemen. yeah that area's quite notorious for triads and drugs apparently. they were about to probably take us back for further questioning till they saw the huge 'SINGAPORE ARMED FORCES' at the top of my 11B. then let us go when i told them we're in the army.

okay all in all spend close to 1k, excluding travel and accommodation. yeah i know its quite a bit but its mainly a shopping trip so i should be pardon. the prices there werent much cheaper than singapore anyway, just probably a little due to the non-existant tax. oh well.

there, i wrote it down.