So our first 3 hours were spent back at the Mansion, with Nazma guarding the packs while I raced up and down 16 floors, asking at and getting rejected at every guesthouse. This was a competition: other backpackers could be seen across the central courtyard, trotting along the outdoor corridors in their own vain rummage for rooms. Nazma found out from one of them that Hong Kong is in the throes of a series of trade fairs until the end of April, and places that aren’t already full are sporting newly doubled rates. Alrighty then.

Finally we bunkered down in a grim little triple, with the requisite phone-booth shower/toilet, for a whopping HKD400 ($59CAD). We secured the room after a large, very hairy man was seen leaving it. We discovered that he’d already christened the toilet for us, remnants of his golden shower leaving amber trails down the side of the bowl. Thank you, Sasquatch. After almost 4 months of ups, downs, twists and turns, as we dumped our bags on the third bed and sat down things seemed about as low as things had ever been.

Nazma went off for some retail therapy while I tried to troll the internet for a vacant cot somewhere in the city that wouldn’t cost us hundreds of dollars (seriously: the Holiday Inn wanted $370CAD a night!). Lo and behold, my cousin Joanna had written me to say her mother is out of town, and why don’t we stay with her. A grown man crying in a public place is never a pretty thing, no matter what the movies might say, and I will never show my face again at that internet cafe.

We’d already paid for the roach hotel, so we managed to doze a full night tucked into our Vietnamese silky sleepsheets. First light saw us beelining toward the nearest subway station, to be whisked off to an unexpected, serendipitous salvation.

For one, in the past I’d always travelled with my family, so it would always seem more like a family roadtrip that happened to involve a 14-hour plane ride. In these instances, one ends up relinquishing control. Very little independent thought is required when someone else is responsible for one’s itinerary.

Also, with almost my entire extended family living in Hong Kong, the city always felt more like a second home than anything else. No big deal.

This time, though, I was travelling there with my wife Nazma, and without the parental safety net; while we would still be visiting my relatives, it felt like we were flying without a parachute.

As the supposed “expert”, I also felt responsible for ensuring we had a good time in Hong Kong. The last time I was this on-the-hook was during our honeymoon, which we spent traipsing around Tunisia looking for old Star Wars filming locations. Instead of relaxing on sandy beaches, we ended up in the middle of the Sahara, Nazma silently fuming in her sandy breeches.

So as we taxied into the terminal, my pulse quickened. I hadn’t a clue what we were going to do.

***

We stayed in Tsim Sha Tsui, right in the thick of things, and where you really get a sense that things are very different than back home in Richmond.

We walked the streets filled day and night with cars and people, street vendors and shoppers, neon lights and noise from the traffic and music blaring from the pirated-CD stores.

We bought food from unlicensed street-side meat-on-a-stick vendors, so networked that if one spots police a few blocks away, they all scatter (mid-transaction if need be). The one we’d been dealing with was kind enough to give me my change, before tearing off like a thief in the night.

And as the days passed, I fell more comfortably into the role of Nazma’s tour guide, and we went to all the favourite must-sees.

We took a walk along Hong Kong’s Avenue of Stars, their version of the Hollywood Walk of Fame but replete with people from countless chopsocky B-movies from my childhood and some bona fide international stars. A statue of Bruce Lee stands at the end of the walk, silently dispatching foes against the skyscrapers of Hong Kong Island.

We strolled down to the Star Ferry terminal and hopped a ride on Twinkling Star, one of the little diesel boats criss-crossing the harbour. Until not too long in the past, this was the only way to get to Hong Kong Island, and during the morning rush people would apparently queue up around the block.

We went up to the Peak on Hong Kong Island to take in the city skyline by night. Hong Kong is a big city that isn’t afraid to be a big city. Since my last visit, a new 88-storey building was erected, and it isn’t out of place. And they celebrate their architectural largesse with a laser-light show every night (in which most of the buildings participate) that fills the sky.

***

But after a while, it began to feel more like Nazma was showing me around Hong Kong, because I was noticing things, and experiencing a side of the city I would never have otherwise.

We sought out and made liberal use of the public hand-sanitizer stations everywhere, thanks to Nazma’s personal war on germs. The city was much cleaner and hygiene-conscious than I recall, having undergone a makeover in the wake of the SARS scare.

As Nazma was raised on a steady diet of Westernized “fortune-cookie Chinese food”, we went marauding all across town for sweet-and-sour-anything on rice. Our search came up empty–something I couldn’t quite believe, but had never really tested before.

Even meeting my relatives this time was a new experience. Seeing their interplay with Nazma over dinner (with me as a translator) showed me another more vulnerable, but resourceful and ambassadorial side of them wholly different from our previous visits, where we “kids” would have sat at the “kids’ table” while the adults gossiped away.

4% of the population is non-Chinese, composed of South Asians, Nepalis, Filipinos, Indonesians, among others. Since we seem to do nothing but eat, our foraging took us to all corners of Tsim Sha Tsui. As we got to interact with many diverse people, I started seeing a diversity I had never encountered before on previous trips with my family.

We battled against an army of touts to gain entry to Chungking Mansions, a notorious, monstrous, Blade-Runner-esque apartment/retail/everything complex. Capitalistic, overcrowded, decaying, and full of character, this huge block is apparently the focal point for the South Asian community in Hong Kong.

I would otherwise have no cause to go in there, but we were looking for something other than the ubiquitous Chinese food. We found Indian and Nepali restaurants galore and ended up having masala dosas in the middle of Kowloon, something I would never have fathomed.

***

On one of our last days, we took a little field trip up to the Hong Kong History Museum. It was the first time for both of us: seeing another side of Hong Kong had made me want to learn more about its past.

As we wandered through the plaster recreations of fishing villages and multimedia stations documenting Opium-War aggressions, I mused: it took seeing Hong Kong through the eyes of a tourist, for me to gain a broader insight into the city I’d visited so many times, the city where my own history lay.

Hit Macau for about an hour before we had to get to the airport for the flight to Bangkok. It was interesting seeing what Hong Kong might have been like if the Portuguese had taken over more real estate in the South China Sea 400-odd years ago. Very reminiscent of a European city with its cobblestone plazas and Portuguese street and business names. There’s also a flourishing scooter culture here–something we didn’t see much of in Hong Kong at all. When things are this congested, it makes sense.

The big draw in the centre of town is the Ruins of St. Paul’s, an old church facade that pulls all the tourists from HK and the requisite egg-tart and pork-jerky (!) vendors. Yum. Getting up the steps proved too ambitious: with backpacks girded on and stomachs full of orange juice and tarts, we only gained the first landing before being publicly daunted.

Apparently some people got shot up back in the 90s when all the gangs were scrapping over the casino rackets. Seems to have cleaned up now and they’re want to remake it into China’s own version of Las Vegas. Already you’re seeing huge “Asian”-style casino/hotels along the water, and more under construction. The scale of these job-sites is staggering.

This will also be the last temperate weather we’ll likely encounter: from here on, we’re expecting balmy 30°C temperatures non-stop. Those of you who know me know that anything over room temperature has me sweating buckets and drooling with delirium. Well, I knew what I was getting into before I signed up. Hurray for air-con!

Nazma met the extended family on both my mother and father’s sides for the first time. The meetings weren’t the nerve-wracking trials-by-fire that we might have expected: they were incredibly gracious and even openly fawning at points. A little Cantonese goes a long way, it seems. We also got to meet my cousin’s 5-month-old son for the first time. Apparently he looks like me. How this happened, no one can say, and I’ll thank you wags out there to keep your jokes to yourself.

They do this killer martial-arts demonstration every Sunday in Kowloon Park. Locals outnumbered tourists by about 30 to 1, so we figured it was pretty authentic. They get pretty freaky with the balancing during the lion dances, and even the kids get into it: check out this little guy with his sword in mid hi-yah.

Dimwits that we are, we decided it’d be a good idea to wander over to the bird market and check out all the songbirds and exotics. What we had forgotten was that everyone there right now is on high alert over the avian flu, so of course we get there and find the place deserted. Where is everyone? So we’re feeling pretty good about having the place to ourselves, wandering around the place checking out the toucans and the parrots and the apartment-style cage dwellings. I think we realised two days later, in the middle of the night. All our frenzied hand-washing won’t save us now.

And now, off to Bangkok.

In the end, though, the topper was this “Mongolian”-style hotpot we had with my mother’s side of the family: insanely spicy broth on one side, and this garlic/ginger/ginseng concoction on the other. Basically you cook squid, fish, chicken, various meats in ball form, and paper-thin cuts of lamb and beef (no pork in deference to Nazma) in either broth and chow down until you pass out. To top this off, the family ordered spicy lamb ribs, the likes of which we’ve never seen in Vancouver. Each a foot long and heavenly. They even gave us disposable gloves to eat them with—Hong Kong being super hygiene-conscious post-SARS—and yet they still don’t give out napkins at restaurants: you have to bring your own.

Had a nice stroll along Hong Kong’s “Avenue of Stars”, with people from countless chopsocky b-movies from my childhood and some bona-fide international stars. The Avenue ends at a much-touristed statue of Bruce Lee, silently kicking ass against the Hong Kong skyline.

Got into HK okay and caught the last bus into town, just in the nick of time. The guesthouse is good by backpacker standards but the manual-reset toilet seals and phone-booth-sized shower-cum-bathroom has Nazma worried and consulting the guidebook for more luxurious digs (we’ve actually found a “business hotel”–and not that kind of business, we hope–to stay in for the remainder of our time).

We’re staying at a guesthouse, which is a room in a flat in a “mansion”. In any other context, going from a “mansion” to a lowly hotel would be a step down, but here, “mansion” denotes any number of monstrous, Blade Runner-esque apartment/retail/everything concrete complexes, replete with silk ties for CAD$3, screaming babies glimpsed through kitchen windows, telescope stores, South-Indian sari shops, and touts, touts, touts. It’s like a third-world microcosm. Capitalistic, overcrowded, decaying, and full of character. One mansion takes up an entire city block, with a central courtyard and open-air corridors. Clothes hang drying everywhere.

Weather is far cooler than I’d expected but still t-shirt weather (15-19°C maybe, though my thermometer keychain seems stuck on 24°C). Still, everyone’s in scarves and wooley coats.

Nazma is in danger of being all shopped out already, even though we haven’t actually bought anything yet, and the night markets haven’t even opened yet. It’s unbridled capitalism and it buzzes.