Hong Kong

Hong Kong

“Well this sucks.”  I was standing in a glossy red room in front of an ATM that had just rejected my card twice.  Eden was sitting on our backpack half asleep in a corner and Sam was next to me looking intently worried.  “Don’t worry Sam we can get this sorted out.”  Winding up in a country without money is among my least favorite feelings. 

And it got me thinking about how much of the safety and certainty I feel as an experienced traveler comes from the fact that I have the funds to travel with.  Could it be that I’m not getting to be a better traveler just richer.  Standing next to that ATM I felt the same panicky feeling that I had on my first trip abroad.  Suddenly I was 15 alone in Paris and feeling totally out of my element. 

The frozen ATM card wasn’t the end of the world.  It took a phone call, a little time in line and we were back on our tourist way.  But it was humbling to see just how small a thing could flabbergast me.

Church

My husband grew up with Tim, but I have only met him once before.  Still, when I asked him on Facebook what to do in Hong Kong he offered to show us around .  Score another point for nice people!

  Tim and his wife said they moved to Hong Kong to become “unstuck”.  They did it on faith.  They sold everything they had and showed up in Hong Kong without a job.  And, as is so often the case, everything worked out.  Tim now has a dream job with three months off a year and international trips.  They were able to adopt three amazing kids.  They are happy.  I love this story.  Not just because it has a happy ending but because of the courage it took to get to that happy ending.  They weren’t miserable in their old lives.  They just didn’t feel like they were progressing.  And that was reason enough to try for something more.  No “life of quiet desperation” for these two.  They found a different option and took it.  You’ve got to admire that.

Eden was feeling sick so we had to curtail the full tour.  Still we met up for church.  It felt so peaceful to walk into the 10 story church building in central Hong Kong.

Tim and his wonderful wife helped shepherd the kids to their class and I joined them in Sunday School.  The congregation has 26 different countries represented.  While this is isn’t uncommon for Hong Kong it was surprising to me.  They were studying Isaiah just two lessons past what we last heard about in Pahoa Hawaii.  I almost wanted to make a montage of all of the Isaiah lessons I’ve had in the past 5 months.  Different teachers, different locations, sitting on different chairs…but all Isaiah.

History Museum

The History Museum lets you walk through the history of Hong Kong.  You could enter into a medieval house or a British exchange post.  You could go to the 1950s herbal tea counter.  And you could see the starvation that happened after WWII. 

Generally I like explaining things to my kids.  But this one wasn’t great.  We live on a cruise ship and food is so abundant I have to limit the kids to 3 deserts per meal.  Even when we aren’t on the cruise ship my kids live in the US, which is pretty much (in terms of food) its own cruise ship.  In our world you don’t even need to get hungry to eat.  But there, in a black and white photo, were skeleton-thin people lying on hospital beds.  Eden asked me why they were in the hospital and I tried to rehash what the informative blurb said (something about crop failures and a wave of refugees escaping Mao).  But she still looked confused.  “Yeah, but why didn’t they eat something”  “Because there wasn’t anything to eat”  She looked at me sideways in a “not really believing you” kind of way and we went on. 

I’m pretty lucky that my kids are so far removed from starvation that they get a little Marrie Antoinette about it (“If they haven’t any bread, let them go to the buffet line”).  They have a privileged up bringing.  It is rare in time or space to have as easy a life as my kids and I have it.  Traveling is good for the soul because you see over and over again that you have what you have primarily through luck. 

City Living

Sam hates cities.  He doesn’t like being around so many people.  He doesn’t like the noise or the stink or the honking cars.  Sam would rather we skipped cities altogether.  I completely see where he is coming from.  I’m not sure how high up the extrovert scale goes…but I’m pretty sure I’m one notch above ridiculously-is-she-drunk extrovert.  Still cities and all of those people aren’t my favorite either.  Something about strangers being near each other but not seeing each other is unnerving.   I feel like I’ve stumbled into a horror film where the town is completely populated by zombies.  Hong Kong is more of a city than NYC is a city.  Everything is high rises as far inland as you can see.  I bet over 90% of the population lives above the ground.  There just isn’t that much ground to go around.  They are building more of Hong Kong…filling the sea in with cement and pylons to make more high rises.