wow

i made it to hong kong easily enough. i was on gulf air, as in the persian gulf. it was me, a hundred or so chinese people, a hundred or so arabic people, many of whom looked like saddam hussein, and amazingly, an israeli tour group of about 10 people. they must have been ready to kill their tour guide. i just assumed the plane would explode. next to me was a diminuitive chinese guy (ok, that's redundant) in his 50's who kept stealing bottles of wine off the dining cart when the flight attendant wasn't looking. to do this, he had to pass me, so he kept shoving his hand in my face...never said a word. i finally yelled at him to keep his hand out of my face, and he was polite the rest of the time. my whole trip, the longest i've waited in immigration was in the cook islands, about 10 minutes or so. here in hong kong, there are so many planes landing all the time, the lines are huge, so i waited an hour. then it took me awhile to find an atm. the airport is huge and very nice. they have trains running right from the terminal to downtown, but they are about 10 times as expensive as taking a shuttle bus to another train station, so i did the latter. it was a beautiful and fast train ride. i found my way to the chungking mansions in tsim sha tsoi, kowloon. it's surrounded by luxury hotels, but it's a very weird place. it's a massive building, 17 stories and a whole city block, with all sorts of shops and restaurants on the ground floor, then blocks of elevators going to the different sections above. they call them a block, b block, etc., like a prison, and the room i got is smaller than a cell, so it's a good naming system. there are a bunch of guesthouses run by indians and pakistanis, and lots of restaurants around them serving that kind of food. i'm on the 13th floor and my whole 'room' is maybe 60 square feet, including the bathroom that i can't even turn around in. and for that i'm paying a little over $15/night...the most expensive accomodation of my whole trip. but that's hong kong...it's not a cheap place.