two by sea (Nancy and Warner travel @ the world): Massive consumption

Yesterday, our last day in Hong Kong, there was massive consumption going on--mostly bandwidth. The shopping mall right off the gangway of the ship had FREE WIRELESS. The students consumed so much free wireless internet that the system slowed to a crawl. I did get to stick my head down in front of a few computer screens and
say "Hi Mom!". Unfortunately, a few students were a few minutes late getting back on the ship and drew "dock time" at the next port. The lowest infraction is having to wait three hours to get off the ship in the next port--Vietnam, in this case.

All of us were frantically trying to use the last of our Hong Kong dollars so we wouldn't have to deal with currency conversion in Vietnam. So far, we've had Japanese Yen, Chinese Yuan, and Hong Kong dollar, and currency converters don't deal in coins. So, students were lined up in the nearby convenience stores to buy small things like postcards and candy. To give you an idea of how strange the currencies work, a cup of coffee at Starbucks might cost $35Hong Kong which seems exorbitant. That works out to about $4.50 U.S.--still high but enough for some Chinese to make a meal on at a place other than a mainstream store.

Nancy and I had gotten up early to walk about Kowloon, and we walked through their public park. It was interesting to see people practicing Tai Chi or doing other exercises.

We were pretty amazed at the birds in the aviary (like this Rhinoceros Hornbill, and Nancy got into a conversation with one of the parrots that went something like: Nancy "hello", parrot "hello", Nancy "hello", parrot "hello", Nancy "goodbye" Parrot " ". Obviously a limited English vocabulary. The constant cleaning was also impressive, a result of previous avian flu, I suppose.

Our main quest was the "jade market" which we finally found in a covered concourse. Many of the sellers were still setting up, but you could not walk by a booth without someone latching onto you. It was impossible to be left alone to just browse. Your were either "first customer, very lucky" or "early customer, best price" or some permutation of that theme. As you walked away, the price went down. My strategy from previous attempts at bargaining was to separate my money in my pockets. Then I could pull out a few bills to show that was all I had available. I'm sure I overspent, but I got some nice bracelets as gifts. Nancy got herself a carved horse which weighed about 15 lbs and got carried the rest of the day.

We then headed for the bird market, passing through the goldfish market and the flower market. You had to be there to see all those things in one place. The bird market was compelling in the guidebooks because it not only had birds for sell in beautiful cages, but it was a place that bird owners took their birds for walks and to be admired by other bird owners. We only saw a few bird walkers but we heard hundreds of birds--most that seemed like they would prefer to be somewhere else.

We were now at least a couple of miles from the ship, so we headed back for Nancy to go on a trip to the Art Museum. As I mentioned in a previous blog, students will often buy a birthday cake for a friend. Last night's cake near us came with singing and bagpiping.