Darren Fung

Nearly Over

Wow.  The past four months just whizzed by.  It feels like just yesterday I was living the life I am now.  At my family’s.  Alone.  Bored.  Everything went by so fast.  I had so much fun travelling, partying, and chilling with everyone I met at HKUST.  I took Tina to the airport today, and there I saw a couple other HKUSTers that I had to say bye (or see ya later) to.  It was actually really tough.  It finally hit me when I was spending time with family in Hong Kong; the city is a only small part of the experience.  Without the people, exchange would have been shit.

I realize now that everyone (or most of you) are gone that being in Hong Kong right now is nothing without everyone here.  Maybe being back home is a good thing, since then I am actually closer to everyone I’ve met here than if I stayed in Hong Kong (other than you Australians and Malaysians!)  I am so grateful that I met so many awesome people on my 4 months in Hong Kong.  I am so grateful that HKU was full and I was forced to go to HKUST.  I’ll be honest, at first I was not that fond of going to such a small university.  Now, I realize that because HKUST was so small, it allowed me to see more exchange students more often.  This resulted in me getting to know everyone much better than if I were on a campus as big as HKU.  Not only that, when we went out, we went out as exchange.  We completely DOMINATED clubs and bars.  Bar George?  Pi?  Hyde?  Azure?  Every time I went to those clubs, I think at least half the people there were from HKUST.  This made the clubbing experience so much more fun.

Another thing that brought a lot of us together was a mutual hate of the locals’ antics.  Stealing laundry?  Stealing food?  Seriously man, how bad do you have it in Hong Kong?

Do I regret (maybe) falling behind in my studies at home because of this exchange?  No.  Not “maybe not”.  Just a full fledged no.  I would not trade anything in the world for what I got out of the exchange here.  A world full of friends to party with!  It also changed my perspective on life.  I now feel like I should travel around more while I still can.  In doing so, I can experience the world, and I can see all your pretty faces again!  We will meet again, someday!

With that said, Hong Kong has been a relatively boring experience now that I am living at my family’s place.  My second last day in Hong Kong, I accompanied my cousin to his workplace at some country club/horse jockey training camp where he teaches English.  The country club was actually pretty interesting, and it was neat to see what goes into training jockeys.  He told me that golf in Hong Kong is only for rich people, and that membership at this club costs upwards of $1,000,000HKD.  Dude, I have a golf course in my backyard.  That’s “ridic”.  I got to play with horses though!

My last night in Hong Kong was spent at my family’s place eating a home cooked meal and just drinking with my family.  Funny to see so many old people get drunk off so little.  One of my relative’s names is “Musso” and for the entire night I thought my family was just mispronouncing the food “Muscle”.  Tomorrow I will be having lunch with one of the persons that is actually staying in Hong Kong to work.  It will be my last day in Hong Kong.  What have I learned in Hong Kong you ask?

1. For being a cantonese speaker, I still feel foreign living in Hong Kong. The culture is just so different!
2. The living conditions can get really bad here.  Many people are under the poverty line in Hong Kong, especially with a $12HKD minimum wage.  Heck, the minimum wage in Toronto is about $10CAD.  That’s 10 times the HK minimum wage.
3. Locals.  Don’t get me started.
4. Other than the locals referred up there, the locals are generally very outspoken.  A lot of them aren’t afraid to argue and make a fuss.  Also, they also respect elders here more than at home, I would say.

I’m glad I got to spend the last 4 months with an awesome group of people from all over the world.  Thanks for an awesome experience, and I’ll see you later!

All in all, no regrets.

Can’t Believe

Wow… I can’t believe that my first friend just left to go home today… Devang just left this morning and now that I’ve said my first goodbye, I can’t stop thinking about everyone else leaving :(… I myself have 10 days until I leave.  My time at HKUST was definitely the best time I’ve had in my life, and if not the best, the best 4 months.

These 4 months just zoomed past and it feels like just yesterday I was just meeting everyone for the first time.  Everyone was so friendly and it definitely was so much easier to meet people.  I can’t even believe that I was so scared before coming to HK that I would just be studying and wouldn’t have that much fun.  Now I’m scared that when I leave here, nothing else will compare.  Nothing will be as fun.  Everything else seems like it’ll be dull compared to what I’ve experienced here.

I half wish that I left early too so that instead of seeing everyone say goodbye, I’d be able to see everyone on my last day at HKUST.

It’s impossible to put into words the amount of fun I’ve had with everyone at HKUST.  It’s been an awesome 4 months, now let’s make it an awesome couple years as we keep in touch for life!

All in all, I DON’T WANT TO LEAVE!

Banaue & Batad

On Sunday, we woke up around 430am to leave around 5. On our way out, we noticed there were a lot of people awake. We then remembered it was Easter sunday and people were probably going to church.
We took the jeepney up the mountain to Batad Summit or something like that. I tried to sleep on the jeepney too. It’s hard enough to sleep on pavement but the road up the mountain was unpaved. I ended up falling on my ass like three times trying to sleep: once sitting up holding a bar, once with my head on my knees, and once lying down. So painful! The drivers here are so pro. As we were going up the mountain, we encountered a car trying to go down. It’s a one lane path up and down and hardly any space to stop on the side. The car went to the right as much as he could and the jeepney driver drove past him with no problem. There must have been only a 1 inch clearance between the two. It was sick.
When we got to the top, we started our hike to the waterfalls and rice terraces. Half way through, I needed to throw out my gum. I found a garbage can on the path, and you could not have planned what happened next. I threw my gum and it literally hit the back rim of the garbage can and went down the mountain.  It’s the thought that counts right?  We got to the main viewpoint of the rice terraces and it was breathtaking!


We also got to walk on the edges of the terraces to get to the waterfall.
The waterfall was more awesome than I expected. I was expecting this dainty little waterfall but it was a GIANT waterfall. Imagine being an ant in a shower. We went for a quick swim in the water filled with jagged rocks. There was this one rock that merged two currents and you could hold onto the back of it and just let the currents hold you up. It was sick!


On the way back, we had lunch at the top of the rice terraces. There, I had the best rice I’ve ever had in my life. I usually don’t eat plain rice but this rice was so good I had to get more. After lunch, we started our hike back to the summit. Let me tell you, it was a LOT easier going down than up. I also didn’t realize how far down we went. This one lady was walking behind us and said “wow you guys walk so fast!” We then proceeded to eat her dust as she walked ahead of us with no problems. On the way back, it started raining. When we got to the top, I was probably the only person dry. This is because I was wearing “gay rave tank top with holes”. Well who’s laughing now?!
We took the jeepney back down the mountain and to Banaue. There, we went back to the Greenview Inn, had dinner, and parted ways with our guides/jeepney drivers. We then took an overbooked bus back to Manila. It was so overbooked that people were sitting in lawn chairs in the aisle. One person was sitting on this weird “hand” chair that was so small. I feel so bad for him. We spent the night in Manila and explored a bit on Monday morning before taking a taxi back to Clark and the airport.
People in the Philippines not only try to sell you useless toys on the streets, but also cigarettes and Viagra.  So odd. After lunch, a lot of us couldn’t finish so we were taking our leftovers with us. We were approached by some boys who we thought wanted money. All they wanted was food so we just gave them our leftovers. It’d help them more than us anyways. The whole trip cost me less than 300CAD including flight tickets. Pretty successful trip I’d have to say. 


All in all, would never eat another Balut egg. 

Sagada

We got to Banaue around 6am or so. We bought our tickets for the bus ride back to Manila and we rented a Jeepney (imagine a ghetto school bus or a elongated Venga Bus/party bus) for the weekend. We went to have breakfast at the Greenview Inn.


This hotel had a breathtaking view of the rice terraces. Not the best view I got this weekend though. After breakfast, our jeepney drivers took us to one of the viewpoints of the Banaue rice terraces.


We took a bunch of pictures and then went to the main viewpoint higher up. What we didn’t realize until we got there was we left our friend at the bottom at the other viewpoint!  Oops. He ended up taking a tricycle to the main viewpoint and meeting us. The icing on the cake?  He also burned himself on the tricycle. What bad luck. It was a misunderstanding though. You’re allowed to ride on the top of the jeepney. The people inside thought he was on top; the people on top thought he was inside. Throughout the rest of the trip though we made sure to “not leave mike behind”.


We then took the jeepney through the mountains and into the clouds to Sagada. The view from the top of the jeepney was breathtaking! The worst part of the ride was the exhaust coming from the jeepney. I swear one jeepney alone is enough to cause global warming. When we got to Sagada, we rented out a 3 floor cottage for the night and had lunch. We then went on a hike to see the Hanging Coffins. Basically, when you die you can choose whether to be buried underground or on the side of a mountain.   The newest one buried on this mountain was December 2010 and the oldest one was apparently 500 years old via carbon dating. Pretty surreal to see coffins just nailed onto the side of a mountain.


Then, we went to the caves!  The cave was definitely deeper than I anticipated. When we were climbing down, all you could hear was bats.


There was also bat poop everywhere that sometimes you would step on or put your fingers in by accident. There was also water (or bat urine) dripping from the ceiling. When we got to the bottom, our guide showed us a bunch of rock formations. First there was the pregnant queen. I’ll let you guess why they call it that.


There was also the king (also guess why). Apparently the story is it’s small because the water is cold in the cave. I’m not making this up!


The rocks are made of “flow rock”. It’s called this because it’s formed by flowing water. We then went through a tiny crevice into a deeper darker and smaller part of the cave.


This part required watching your head as you crawl through. At one point we used a rope to swing into the water to crawl back out to the big cave.


The awesome part of it is our guides helped us to take pictures and carry our stuff so they don’t get wet. The guides here are different from the ones in china. They’re actually nice and don’t take you to their friends places so they can get more money or anything.
We went back to our cottage and found out just how gross it was. Pretty much the washrooms, kitchen, and rooms all had some sort of bug. We just went into the rooms and went “cockroach here” or “beetle here” or even “spider here!” This was definitely the grossest room I’ve slept in. The shower upstairs didn’t even have hot water. Also, roosters don’t crow when the sun rises. We were planning to leave around 5am to go to Batad. I woke up around 130am because this damned rooster would not shut up. I wanted to punt him across the philippines. Also, when he started, it started a chain reaction of about 20+ roosters cocking a doodle doo. Needless to say, I didn’t get much sleep. 
All in all, an exploratory day. 

To the Philippines!

Last overseas trip for the exchange… Wish I could go to more places but I ran out of money. So many problems at first. A friend and her friend were supposed to leave a day before us but they missed their flight. They were on standby for our flight but didn’t make it. There were so many empty seats on the plane too!  After we checked in, we went on the longest trip to the plane. From security we had to take a train to our loading gate. From there we took a bus to the infield gates holding our gate (basically a smaller terminal). Then we boarded our plane. When we got to the gate, it was the final boarding call… Which makes no sense because the plane was empty and there were so many people still checking in. They ended up delaying the flight so people could get on.


Outside of the Clark airport (which is small and sketch by the way) we had to look for a taxi. It was about 12am and the taxis here don’t even look like taxis. They’re just cars or vans with stickers. We fit 8 people into a 6 person van.  


The driver was cool about it too. He said the cops wouldn’t know because the windows were tinted. It worked too!  We crossed a security checkpoint and they said nothing. There were actually a lot of Korean places in Angeles City. At one point some person tried selling me stuff in Korean. Guess I look Korean. When we got into our hotel rooms, it was the nastiest place I’ve stayed (so far, not on the trip). My friends went into their room and first thing they saw was a giant cockroach. The diving board consisted of a giant spring and no board. Angeles City is known as the red light district of the Philippines.
We went to this street called Fields Avenue via tricycle motorbike. I guess that’s their form of taxi. I swear pretty much every establishment was a strip club. I guess you really can’t call it a strip club because once you go in (don’t judge me!) there’s just a bunch of girls in bikinis standing and not really dancing. Apparently according to this 50 year old swedish guy, you rent them out for the day and have the GFE (girlfriend experience). We went home after sunrise and passed out until around 11am.


We took a van to Subic (which is a town of resorts) for 2500 pesos (about 55 CAD). The resorts are only resorts by name. The beaches are nasty, the water is nasty. The only thing cool about the resort we went to was there was a floating bar in the ocean. To get to it, basically you stand on this platform on the water and two guys drag you by rope to the bar.


When we were getting onto the platform, there were these two naked kids with shaved heads. Basically they looked like naked Pinoy Caillous. One friend took a picture of them (child porn?) but I admit they were funny to look at. We took the platform to the bar and just chilled there for a bit. I would not want to swim to it because the water is filled with some weird oil. So nasty. On our way back, we fit 8 people on this platform and one of the guys was pretending to pull.  If I were the other guy, I’d be slapping him silly.
We took another van to Manila and took a night bus from there to Banaue. We got there a bit early so we went to have dinner first. I had this thing called a Balut egg which is a fertilized egg with the chick barely born… Looks nasty and tastes a bit weird. I would not have another. Apparently it’s an aphrodisiac though ;).

Also, they’re crazy Christian in the Philippines. There were huge groups of people carrying giant statues of Jesus Christ and in Angeles City there was someone walking with a giant cross through the city. After dinner, we had an 8 hour bus ride from Manila to Banaue. There’s also not really such a thing as highways here. The bus only took local roads to get there. So much stopping and distractions. So hard to get good sleep on the bus. 
All in all, the Philippines are sketch so far. 

Rude Locals

Some locals you meet in Hong Kong are really nice.  Some others, however, are giant dicks.

Things that have happened to me or friends by locals:

1. A friend had her things in the washing machine.  A local put her own clothes into the machine whilst my friend’s things were still washing in an attempt to freeload on a paid cycle
2. A friend had her jeans stolen from a washing machine
3. Stolen steamed buns from fridge
4. Stolen dumplings (full box of dumplings wrapped in a plastic bag).  They left the lid and the bag.
5. They see me walking towards an elevator or are staring at me while I run for the elevator and they still slam the “Door Close” button as if they didn’t see me.  If I actually make the elevator and catch them doing this, I glare at them with angry eyes or shake my head
6. Cursed at in bad english because locked the common room door for an interview
7. Cheating at ISA war games (grrr)

Generally, manners in HK are pretty much non-existant.

ISA Weekend

Wow, what a weekend.  The weekend was filled with International Students Association (ISA) events.  On saturday, we had the ISA boat trip.  We rented out two boats and went about 20 minutes off of the university and anchored near a beach.  What’s really cool is that since the university is by the ocean, we have our own pier, and the boats just picked us up from there!  We paid about 260HKD for food, boat, and booze.  If no one brought their own booze, we would have been out in like 30 minutes!  A lot of people brought like vodka or whisky or 12 packs of beer, and we still ran out of booze early.  The day was filled with beer bonging, jumping off the second level of the boats, wake boarding, and banana boating (which is pretty much a giant banana attached to the back of a speedboat).

A lot of people would make the swim between the boats (which is still a decent swim since you swim against the current going one way).  At one point, I was pretty drunk and I heard from someone who swam to our boat that the other boat was out of booze.  So, I got a plastic bag, filled it with like 6-7 beers, and swam to the other boat, delivery man style!  I think I was pretty lucky because at this point, there was a jellyfish in between the two boats that I was unaware of until I got half way.  The trip was also sponsored by Red Bull so there was two giant cases of Red Bull.  This was good since I hardly got any sleep the night before!  A lot of people ended up going to LKF after the boat trip, which I could not do because I was dead tired and the Red Bull was already wearing off.  I also felt sick from gagging on so much salt water.  Ocean water is so nasty.

The next day was the ISA war games.  Not many people made it to this event because of the events the day before.  Basically, it’s paintball with airsoft guns.  Some of the locals are so intense!  Luckily we didn’t play with them, but they had their own equipment, and some came with two primaries and a secondary.  Some teams had a sniper with a headset that just sat in the back while the others rushed in.  I rented out an AK47, whilst some others got M4s.  The uniforms they give you are pretty sick too.  I had a uniform from China which was apparently real (since they’re cheap to buy).  Some people had real German ones (also cheap), whilst the rest had USMC Digital woodland or something like that.  The camo is really effective too.  One time I got shot from someone who was hiding in a bush and we couldn’t tell.  The next game, I did the same thing and got like 4 people who couldn’t see me.  It was awesome.

In one of the games, I got super pissed because the locals that came with us were cheating!  When you get shot, you’re supposed to hold up your gun and walk out of the arena.  He held up his gun so that he wouldn’t get shot, but then just stood there and told his friend where everyone was.  What a cheater.  On our last game, it started to rain, which added to the experience.  When we got under shelter after our last game, it started piss raining.  Lightning, thunder, and crazy rain.  Thank god we got out of that one!

Pretty fun weekend in Hong Kong I must say.

All in all, $600 well spent.

China Recap

So… last we left off at “Hiking in -2C weather” … well, the weatherman lied.  We came out of the hotel preparing ourselves to brace the -2C weather.  I was wearing 2 tshirts, 1 polo, 3 sweaters, 2 pairs of boxers, a pair of jeans, sweatpants, 3 pairs of socks, gloves, scarf.  We went out and I swear it was about 17C weather.  Ball sack.

First we went to the train station to book tickets from Yellow Mountain to Shenzhen.  It was either we leave that night at 9:30pm or we go back to Hang Zhou and catch a train from there.  We figured we’d just leave that night and not worry about the hassle.

We found another random car to take us to the actual mountains (which is about 45-1h away) and we did so after eating a quick lunch.

Our driver was CRAZY!  Video to follow (though the video doesn’t do his craziness justice).  He was driving on the other side of the road for most of the trip to the mountains.  The drivers here are generally crazy, and honk at everything just to let their presence be known.

When we got to the Yellow Mountains, we paid some guy about 180RMB for a random car for the day and a random driver for the day (notice a pattern here?) and also for the park tickets.  When we got to the actual entrance (after another crazy driver, who passed a truck whilst driving up a hill), we were told our student cards weren’t accepted and we needed to pay full fare.  At this point, we were actually broke.  In RMB, we had a total of 3.50RMB between the four of us.  We got the crazy driver guy to spot us and we’d get the money to him when we reached an ATM back at the base of the mountain.  He took our HKD as collateral.  Now, all four of our wallets were 100% void of money.  Another pattern that I noticed in China: people in HK generally don’t say anything about seatbelts and if they do, it’s “put them on”.  In China, we were told on multiple occasions to not put on our seatbelts as we were putting them on.  I think it’s a huge kick in the balls for the driver if you put your seatbelt on.

The problem with these tours is that, half way through, we have to go to some teashop.  We went to the teashop to “taste tea” and everyone was laughing at us because

1. We didn’t speak mandarin
2. The tea lady was speaking to us like babies
3. Everything we did was apparently funny

We were supposed to stay there for 20 minutes.  After 20 minutes, the lights turned off randomly before the lady was done, so we just left since we were on a tight schedule.

The rest of the day was just more exploring and stuff.  We went back to the 1hr away town and chilled for a bit after the mountain.  We bought some snacks for the train, and we were on our way back to Shenzhen!  On the train, we all pretty much all slept for 14 hours, and did random crap for the other 4 hours.  When we got back to HKUST, I swear, best feeling ever.  Even though I know hardly any cantonese, I felt USEFUL again.

A short summary of my experiences in China:

1. People in Shanghai generally have angrier eyebrows… to the point where they just look angry
2. All uniforms in China are intimidating.  Even janitors look like they’re enlisted in the army
3. People can talk on their phones and sound like they’re pissed, but really they’re just loud
4. Sketch cars can often be more reliable than buses (We went into like 10 different sketch cars)
5. Saying “don’t go there, you’ll come back with no organs” is a regular saying, and it’s said half seriously
6. A China guidebook (such as Lonely Planet) WILL save your life if you’re ever left going to a random town not knowing where you’ll stay
7. Don’t go to China during a holiday last minute because it’ll look like the following

All in all, worth it.

Somehow Made It

Wow.  What a day.

So in Shanghai we went to book a bus ticket to Yellow Mountain, but all the buses were full for the day.  Instead, we took a bus to Hangzhou (half way to Yellow Mountain) and figured we’d take a bus from there to go to Yellow Mountain.  On the bus, there was this super loud guy talking on his phone and I wanted to punch him in the face because I was trying to sleep.

In any case, we got to Hangzhou, and when we got off the bus, we tried to buy a ticket to Yellow Mountain, but were told that buses to Yellow Mountain leave from the other bus station … on the OTHER side of town.  So, we found some random guy that was soliciting transportation and got him to drive us to the other bus station (about a 30 minute drive).  When we got to the station, go figure, the bus station was closed.  My friend, on his way back to the random guy’s car, found another random guy that was willing to drive us to Yellow Mountain (in another sketch car) for 700RMB.  Our driver wasn’t fond of that, so he offered the same thing.  We figured we’d just do it so we wouldn’t have to book a ticket in the morning and could just start hiking early in the morning.  Yellow Mountain was about 2 hours away, and the ride was mostly uneventful.  On the way to Yellow Mountain, the guy’s wife called him and was basically like “where the hell are you” … people in china are really desperate for money…  We called like 4 hostels from the ride and they were all full… shit.

We got to the town by Yellow Mountain (hurrah!) and checked this street full of hostels and hotels.  Not a single one had vacancies.  We must have gone into like 5 hotels/hostels and they were all full.  We finally went into this one hostel and they had a person that was running around town finding vacancies at other hotels.  He finally found a spot at a hotel called C2C and there were only two spots left.  We totally forgot that it was Ching Ming festival and everyone gets the day off tomorrow/tuesday.  This town is going to be packed.  We’re going hiking tomorrow in the -2C weather.  Just like home!

All in all, happy just to have a warm place to stay.

WTF China…

Oh my god.  This China trip has been a rollercoaster…  We started off with a trip to Shenzhen.  We left campus around 7pm and got to Queen Spa around 8.  When we got to the train station at Shenzhen, we were greeted by a giant wildfire off in the distance…  Everyone was just walking around like nothing was happening.  It was so surreal.  We ate at this place beside the spa where we got a decent meal for about 16RMB… it was a cheap and good place to eat.

We got into the spa and just chilled and relaxed for a bit.  We brought our own vodka and just pregamed in the spa for a bit.  We went at about 1am to KBox to karaoke.. and it was a crazy night.  The only white guy, Eric, went into a random room and spent most of the time there with random china people.  My other friend Branden got some guy to give us a free pack of smokes.  At some point, Eric came back with a bowl of chicken and shrimp crackers that he got for free somewhere… pretty awesome night.  We also went to get noodles after and it was 6RMB ($1 CAD) for a bowl of (pretty good) noodles.  I love how cheap china is.

We got up around 9-10 and got a massage around 11.  We left the spa and had to run to the platform to catch the train.  The train actually left like 5 minutes after we got onto the train.  The train was mostly uneventful.. we slept for most of the 17 hours, and when we weren’t sleeping, we were either eating or playing Monoply Deal (awesome game by the way).

We got to Shanghai about an hour late (8:30am) and we went to check in at the hostel.  This hostel was NICE.  It had a bar and pretty much looked like a coffee house.  We went to eat at this random noodle place.  It was not an enjoyable meal.  I had a spoonful of what I thought was soup but it was chili oil so I was coughing for like a full 5 minutes.  Then I bit into what I thought was chicken but it was some random herb that made my tongue numb for 5 minutes.

We went to the Bund to see the skyline… and damn Shanghai was so smoggy.  The funniest thing is that when we walk down the street, the hagglers don’t really bother anyone until they see Eric.

At night, we went to the World Finance Centre and went to the 91st floor to the bar.  There we just chilled and had a couple drinks together.  The view was awesome as the rain cleared a bit of the smog, and it beats paying to go like 8 floors higher to the observation deck.

The next day, we went to the Shanghai museum, and learned about random stuff of chinese history.  The security guard saw that we had water and just told us to drink it to show it wasn’t anything dangerous.  They should do that at all airports…

All in all, a sweet and short trip.