The previous post is Enroute to Guangzhou (May 26).
The next post is Hong Kong (May 29).

Hong Kong (May 27) · May 29, 03:48 AM

I wake up at 00:50 coughing, in a heavy sweat. The father in the bunk below mine gives me some candy and I fall asleep eventually. I’m up again at 05:15 and decide to stay up. We’re passing through rough green hills through short noisy tunnels. The sky is overcast but bright. A tunnel opens up to a valley view. A curving concrete railroad bridge spans the valley, flying on tall, thin concrete pillars rising thirty or forty feet out of terrace rice patties. Where the hill-side is too steep to farm, low green brush grows.

The A/C has been off all night. This explains my sweat. I hope last night’s throat-burning dinner explains my cough. Hopefully the spicy sichuan peppers killed off some of the infection, too. Either way, it’s probably not the bird flu, and if it is, I’m not dying, so I’ll be immune.

...

We arrive in Guangzhou around 10:00, and I’m on T953 leaving at 10:32 for Shenzhen. In Shenzhen I proceed directly through immigration and in thirty minutes I’m out of China and in Hong Kong. After a little indecision I pull 1400 HKD to cover living expenses and a 574 HKD hard sleeper ticket to Beijing on T97, departing May 30 at 15:00 from Hung Hom Station. From the Hong Kong side of the border Iride the KCR East line to Kowloon Tong where I purchase said ticket. There I transfer to the metro, and transfer twice more, before exiting to the aboveground in Causeway Bay, Victoria Park exit. On Patterson Street around the corner I walk past the familiar Starbucks and Fortress and high-end shopping to the hostel.

At the third-floor check-in desk the manager (owner?) and I get into a long conversation that begins with “where can I find the internet?” and ends with “is mankind prepared to understand his own inventions”, making stops at “we are redefining humanity” and “the Singularity is coming”. He remembers me from my last visit, and inquires about where I’ve been.

In my 2^nd floor room I get the rickety metal-frame upper bunk above a fellow at the end of an 11 months of traveling; he returns to Sweden tomorrow. He has been to Indonesia, to the base of Mount Merapi where he bought local art. He has been to East Timor and other places. While I snack on large dull breakfast cookies we chat, and then I leave looking for internet — which I don’t find — and shopping — which I do.

I bought a set of Chinese flashcards at a bookstore in Wan Chai and then dinner from the 24 Wellcome superstore across from the Wang Fat Hostel here in Causeway Bay. My quest for flashcards took be West all the way to Central as I tried various bookstores in various large malls directly connected to the metro network (e.g. with 9 floors of shopping pleasure). My final purchase was made from a stand-alone store, Cosmic Books, in Wan Chai.

At the hostel I meet the other bunk mate — a chemical engineering student heading (on arranged tours) through China to Russia. We talk, watch television, and go to bed.

Later, around 01:00, I will wake up in another coughing fit. Sensibly, I’ll march right over to the Wellcome store and purchase cough-drops. The rest of the night will pass by while I sleep.

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