You know, in so many ways life is the same wherever you go… and that, I think, makes the little differences stand out even more than they might ordinarily.

The traffic mix on the streets here is amazing. Cars, taxis, minibuses, full sized buses, trucks, pedestrians, bikes, scooters, motorcycles, and even occasionally a donkey pulling a cart are all on the streets at the same time.

There’s not always much of a sidewalk, and sometimes when there is it’s full of cars parked. Since private ownership of cars is a relatively new development here, builders and city planners didn’t always bother putting in space for cars… so they just jam them in wherever they can.

Being a pedestrian is about as hazardous as I figured it would be. We walked a few places yesterday, from my friend’s office to the bank and then later down to a famous restaurant for dinner. The “rules” about crossing the street are more guidelines; you can have the little green man indicating you have the right of way, but there’s no way you can cross because the cars are flowing through as though you’re not there.

In fact, it’s often easier to just cross against the light if the traffic is stopped. It’s not unusual to see people standing in the middle of the road, because that’s as far as they were able to go, while traffic flows in both directions around them.

Something interesting… the government here apparently has a lot of trouble getting people to pay taxes. Under the old system, since the entire economy was planned and run by the government, that wasn’t a worry, but now that they’re moving more or less to capitalism it’s become a problem.

When you go to buy something, a meal or a cab ride or something from a store, you have to ask for a receipt if you want one to write off as a business expense.

If you don’t, the seller is almost certainly not going to report the income; in fact, at one little hole in the wall (roughly equivalent to a mini-convenience store) they refused to give my friend a receipt for a prepaid phone card, telling her that since they don’t get them from their wholesaler they lose money if they give her one.

To encourage people to ask for receipts, the government has instituted a program where they put a little scratch-off area on the receipt, kind of like a scratch lottery ticket or game piece from a restaurant promotion. You rub off the stuff with a coin and some receipts have a prize, a few bucks here or there.

The idea is that in hopes of getting the prize, people will ask for the receipts, so then the government will know how much they should be getting in taxes.

You have to figure it’ll take a few generations for the idea of paying taxes to take hold. It’s kind of similar to the way in the States, if it’s a tax you don’t exactly “see” (like a payroll tax) you might not realize just how much it’s there or think about it much. Something more visible, like paying for your car tabs each year, you see and therefore get more bent out of shape about.

Of course, there’s also the very idea that in a society the government has to get money to perform the functions it’s tasked with. When you’ve moved from communism to capitalism, it’s harder to get that notion into people’s heads.

For dinner we ate at a relatively famous joint, Da Dong Roast Peking Duck Restaurant. It’s pretty over the top- there’s a foodie fan guy who wrote about it here. You go in and there’s letters on the wall from people who’ve eaten there, like the King of Cambodia. (Which strikes me as a bit of a mixed blessing, as royal jobs go- sure, you’re a king, but of Cambodia?)

Peking Duck is, of course, a world-famous dish. It’s also pretty good, actually. Da Dong does it (you’ll notice my admirable lack of “dong” or “duck dong” jokes here) in old-school fashion, roasting the duck over a wood fire. There was a bit of a line when we got there about 5:45pm; by the time we left there was a line out the door of people waiting for a table.

I also had shark-fin soup, which is actually a bit of a no-no for the environmentally conscious (I’d call myself more like environmentally groggy). Famous basketball star Yao Ming (who, as luck has it, is Chinese) recently came out against eating it, and there’s a campaign against it, because its recent popularity as a status symbol has the sharks’ numbers decreasing.

But I let my friend order, so she went whole-hog and got some. It was pretty good, too. (They say the sharks fin itself is actually relatively tasteless.) The bits of fin are just like the article linked to above describes, almost like clear noodles.

To be perfectly honest, I wouldn’t have ordered it. The practice of “finning” the sharks and leaving the bodies, sometimes still alive, to drift aimlessly in the ocean, is a bit too over the top for me, and the idea of hunting a species into extinction simply for some soup is pretty dumb.

But again, in one of those differences of cultures, that kind of thinking never crossed my friend’s mind. She’s smart (educated in England), fairly rich by Chinese standards, owns her own company… but she pooh-poohs some ideas.

It makes me think about the things that we simply accept on blind faith without truly examining any of the evidence behind something. For example, I’ve always bought into the idea that the massive amount of human activity cranking carbon dioxide into the air is likely to lead to global warming.

But on the plane ride I’ve been reading Michael Crichton’s book “State of Fear” where he pretty violently debunks the idea by pointing out real, peer-reviewed studies that show the globe… isn’t really warming.

Now, in my own defense, I’ve been skeptical that we really *know* whether the Earth is warming or not. We’ve only been keeping good records for maybe a couple hundred years, and only in a very very few places around the world. Our data set is limited to an extremely small sample size when you figure the earth is what, 4+ billion years old?

But like most Americans, I’ve gotten used to the idea that global warming is real and exists. Now, I’m not so sure.

Seeing my friend blow off some ideas that I take for granted makes me wonder- is it me that’s wrong, or her? Well, on one, I know I’m right- I pointed out that smoking a pack a day is just not good for a person. She says hey, no problem, she’s in good shape. She goes on hikes and such. I say “but you’d have a lot more lung power if you didn’t smoke.” She says “well, I don’t smoke WHEN I’m hiking!”

Oh. Well, of course. Silly me.

On the cab ride home (and the cabs are a truly amazing deal here- a ride that would cost ten bucks at home is maybe 2 or 3 bucks here) we went through a good example of rapidly-changing Beijing. There’s old crappy apartments, small, no private bathrooms right alongside new, modern condo developments that would be perfectly at home in any American or Western European city.

We went through a fairly run-down neighborhood. At one point for a few blocks there were a lot of little storefronts that were basically one room, with a chair in front of a mirror and a bed in the room. Lonely-looking women meeting the international prostitute dress code lounged in the doorways.

My friend explained that here, the “official” explanation is that they’re kind of hairdressers, you can go for a “head massage”. (I’ll take the high road again here and leave you to fill in your own punch line on THAT one.) Then, of course, they offer special services.

Like I said, some things are fairly universal. I was reminded of Seattle’s early history, where officially the working girls back during the Yukon Gold Rush days were “seamstresses”. At one point Seattle had something ridiculous like a thousand seamstresses… busy pumping their sewing machines, if you know what I mean. (Guess I couldn’t stay on the high road the whole time.)

Today I’m headed to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square, maybe more if I have time. Kind of depends on how much wandering about I choose to do.

Okay, these people are insane.

Yesterday I flew at a pretty insane time… I left Hong Kong at 3:25am and flew into Beijing. I chatted with the pilots briefly before we left; the flight is actually a cargo flight, where the hold is first filled with packages for an overnight shipping company, and then Cathay sells some seats with whatever space they have left.

The plane was an Airbus 330 and they put all of us in the rear-most cabin, officially for weight and balance (airplanes have to have their weight balanced fore/aft; typically in big jetliners it’s not much of an issue) but also, I suspect, just to make life easier for the flight attendants. Not that it’s a tough flight with everyone snoozing.

Unfortunately, I’m still adjusting to local time, so I only slept about an hour of the flight.

The drive from the airport to my friend’s apartment… wow. Our cabbie was a woman, and she did NOT screw around; we passed at least twice along the shoulder on the expressway, and then on the city surface streets I thought we were going to clobber someone on a bike at least three or four times.

The street traffic isn’t quite what I imagined it to be. Old images of China in my head always had the streets almost completely full of bikes or horses/donkeys pulling carts, but things are changing- at least in Beijing, the capital and a place with lots of money compared to much of the nation.

We did see two carts loaded to the max with bricks being pulled by donkeys, but there’s plenty of cars as well. The bikes and pedestrians don’t have the same rules of right of way as we think of in the States; the cars (or at least my cabbie) don’t even seem to bother with the idea that they can’t turn left in front of traffic until it’s clear, preferring instead to just kind of jam their way through.

I’m going to have to be seriously careful when walking around or biking. At least here they’re driving on the right-hand side of the road, as opposed to former British colony Hong Kong, where they’re on the left and you have to consciously remind yourself which direction to look for the double-decker busses that would turn you into a bugsplat pretty quick.

50+ channels of TV on cable, and only one in English. I guess I’ll be forced out into experiencing life through sheer boredom if I try to stay inside!

My hostess is threatening to take me hiking on Saturday or Sunday. There’s a tour company that puts together hikes for a flat rate; they get a bus, drag you out there, etc. I brought my heavy-duty boots so I’m looking forward to it. Plus it’s about 10 or 15 degrees cooler here than HK was, so that’s a bonus.

A travel tip I read somewhere; I’m having her write her apartment address and business office address down in Chinese, so I can find my way back here without speaking any Chinese. Which is good, because I don’t. She has a great place, two bedrooms plus an office, and she offered me use of her computer to post this stuff and write emails, which beats pecking things out on my PDA.

Time to go out and see some sights.

So as I type this out (on a weird keyboard- as a touch typist I’m a tad picky and easily thrown off, so please forgive any typos… this one is an English/Chinese version, you can hit the keys in some combos and make simplified Chinese characters) I’m surrounded by perhaps 25 people.

Most are teen boys, playing online games with all the gusto that teen boys have. (Actually, not just teen boys have that spirit- guys I work with regularly have LAN parties where they blast the hell out of each other on their XBox machines. Some kind of testosterone poisoning we guys suffer from. I’ve avoided buying a game machine for that very reason.) Sounds of swords clashing, big deep subwoofer-thumping explosions, and growling voices fill the air (which is blessedly air conditioned- pretty much a requirement in Hong Kong’s summer heat, or else the computers would be dead meat for overheating.)

There’s also a subcontingent of Fillipina (sp?) gals busily IM’ing… dunno who they’re chattering to, of course, as it’d be rude to peek over their shoulders. Like the girl sitting behind me keeps doing.

The internet cafe I’m in is on the first floor- second floor to us Americans (meiguo ren) of course- of a building on one of Hong Kong’s 8 bajillion packed streets. I found it by sheer chance. The lady is hitting me up for a 10 HKD minimum charge, something that I notice she didn’t write on the slips for the other (ie, non-pasty-blonde) people in here, but since that ten HK bucks buys me an hour and is about $1.25 US, I think I can handle the “skin the white devil” this time.

Yesterday I did a little retail therapy in Kowloon. I might be a good bargainer, or I might be horrible. I bought a little leather passport holder, something I’ve had on the list of “stuff that isn’t really that important to buy that I keep forgetting”. The kid started the bidding by telling me that the normal price of the holder was 400 HKD, but for me, a special deal, just 250. A little math (7.7 HKD to 1 USD) reveals that’s more than I think it’s worth, but even more crucial is that it’s more than I want to pay.

I say “thanks” and start to walk out of the shop/stall. He grabs my arm and says “wait! You pay cash? Big discount!” Someone told me that if you’re haggling and go to leave, and they grab ya, it means they’ll take whatever your last offer was. I’m a bit confused, because I hadn’t offered anything yet!

His older brother gets into it and we start really talking turkey. He says “tell you what, half price, 100 dollars”. I say to myself “actually, that’s one-quarter price to the first quote” and say “gosh, that’s just too much, I’ll keep looking.” He freaks out and says “well how much do you think it’s worth?” I say “20 HKD” and we start getting to it in earnest.

End result? 40 HKD, and I leave with the holder and a promise that if I am going to buy any luggage, I’ll get it from his shop. He actually did have a good selection.

I also wind up buying a set of chopsticks for 45HKD, probably too much but what the heck, I think they’re cool. They come in a set of 5, which strikes me as being slightly strange; American flatware (which is, after all, what chopsticks are) typically comes in sets of four, eight, or twelve. But as it turns out, four is considered unlucky in China and other Asian cultures, so when you get a set of chopsticks you get five pairs.

Hong Kong strikes me as big, hot, and sticky. Of course, yesterday the temp was 91 and so was the humidity. Warning: Overly personal detail follows… I’m sorry that I only brought cotton underwear. There’s some major chafing going on with all the walking that I’m doing. I have some really great REI undies that are designed for hiking, made out of polyesther or some such hydrophobic material, and dammit, I really should have brought those.

The numbers of people here is just amazing. The buildings stretch farther than I could imagine, stacking people upon people, 25, 35, 45 stories high. I can’t even begin to describe how many there are and how everything is jammed down between the sharp mountain peaks and the water- in fact, Hong Kong is growing, as in some places the original waterfront is now four blocks inland with the land reclamation projects that have occured as they fill stuff in and build on it.

It strikes me that hitting HK first and then proceeding to China might be a good tactic; while HK “feels foreign” to me, the British colonial influence (and the fact that it’s still a Western-style, capitalistic, nominally democratic society) moderates how fish-out-of-water I feel.

The energy of the place is something else. The people on the streets seem to be younger than the mix you’d find in a typical American city, even one like Seattle where we’re relatively young. The language barrier hasn’t been that bad, but then a lot of people here have at least some English skills.

I’ve already had the experience of being the only Caucasian sitting in a restaurant (and certainly the only blondie) at home, when I lived in Seattle’s International District and would venture out to eat, so having it at every meal here is just fine. This morning for breakfast I figured I’d be pointing at pictures on the menu, as the place I went into didn’t have any English on the signs outside (typically a sign that they’ll have English on the menus, etc inside) but they brought me an English menu anyway.

I am trying to “go native” and eat local foods, but I was weak and went into McDonald’s for lunch today. Mmmmm, soul food for the small-town American white boy. Double cheeseburger, fries, Coke, chocolate shake (hey, I was hungry, lots of walking). I can feel my arteries hardening back up already.

A bizzare, almost jarring out-of-body feeling that I had yesterday. I took the famous Peak Tram up Victoria Peak. It’s a funicular, meaning it runs on a railroad type track but has a cable that pulls the car up (and lets it back down). The pitch is up to 45 degrees, very very steep. The top is of course extremely touristy, but what the hell, I’m a tourist.

(I’m even doing my imitation of a Japanese tourist, going everywhere and snapping pictures of everything. Hey, let’s face it, if I piss someone off it’s not like I’m ever going to come across them again.)

Anyway, I wander off a bit (I tend to do a lot of wandering down alleys and such- it’s a wonder that I haven’t been mugged yet) and within about 5 minutes I’m walking through tropical jungle on a little road that’s barely more than a trail. I wind up looping around Victoria Peak, takes about two hours.

What was so jarring was how I went from being in downtown HK, surrounded by thousands of people packed in so close, to being in the middle of a jungle. The “back” (south) side of HK island has tons of relatively untouched jungle, trees, you name it. You can go from being in the middle of tens of millions of people to not hearing any human activity at all. I’ve got pictures, will post later.

I’m about to head out and do a little more shopping. A friend of mine advised that I buy a string of pearls while I’m here, as this is a major pearl center and they come cheap. I point out that I don’t really wear pearls and he says “dude, someday you might just wind up with some gal that you want to give them too.” He has a point. Now I can’t give any future dates my blog’s URL, or they might know that a birthday or Christmas present wasn’t really bought for them specifically. I did see some good ones yesterday in Kowloon, so I’m doing a little web research to be sure I don’t get taken for a ride.

Yesterday I almost bought myself a suit. Apparently I have the look of a guy who really needs a suit, because as soon as I stepped off of the famous Star Ferry (price- about 30 cents for a nine-minute ride to Kowloon) I was set upon by dozens of guys wanting to sell me one. Most appeared Indian but there were some Chinese guys in there as well.

The prices I saw were pretty amazing- one place had a three-piece suit, a sport coat, two pairs of slacks with that, and two custom-made shirts for around 2500 HKD. That’s only like 350 bucks USD. The custom shirts strike me as particularly good, as when I buy dress shirts in America (once in a blue moon it happens- I’m a jeans and t-shirt kind of guy, even at work) I can’t find any that have a good cut. Seems most guys with my size neck and arm length are considerably fatter than I am, so the shirts are too big around the middle.

But Dad gave me the name/address of a joint in Beijing that has even more screaming deals. I saw a coat he had made there, very nice, so I’ll give them my business. Have to work the “guanxi”, a Chinese term loosely meaning “connection” or “network”.

I fly out tonight at a ridiculous hour. My flight to Beijing leaves at 0325, that’s 3:25 AM. The things we do for a free, airline mileage plan ticket. There’s tons of stuff to blog about in terms of transportation but I gotta get moving, so I’ll hit it later.

Time to go.

Time for vacation. Unlike my blogging hero, Luis, I’m not going to blog daily when I’m on my trip (which I leave for in a few hours). In fact, unlike past trips where I carried along nearly all the electronic gadgets I own, I’m actually leaving some stuff at HOME. Gasp.

I fly SEA-LAX, then LAX-HKG. That’s Hong Kong, 13+ hour flight. Yuck. Why did they have to put Asia so far away? A couple of days in Hong Kong, then on to Beijing for two and a half weeks, then back through HKG-LAX-SEA.

No laptop. No video camera. I’m only taking my digital camera with a couple of extra memory cards… it shoots movies, too. I’m taking a DVD player for the looonnnngggg plane ride. I’m still on the fence about taking an iPod; I don’t know for sure if I’ll be able to charge it, and don’t know if I’ll wind up using it much outside of when I’m on the airplane.

And I’m on the fence about taking my handheld device. I have a Dell Axim that I use for contact numbers and scheduling; it’s handy, but like the iPod needs to be charged every once in a while. I have a little jobber that’s supposed to charge devices through a USB port, but it doesn’t seem to want to work. It’s got a fuse, and I can’t tell if that’s burnt out or not- and if it is I’ve got no idea where to get a replacement. Sigh.

I’m a techno-geek. Just a junior league one; if I were truly serious about it, I’d be schlepping all this crap with me.

Anyway, I’m going on hiatus. TV shows take a break in the summer, and so will I. I’ve got a series of posts that I’ve been trying to draft lately, but my vacation has been on my mind so it’s eating up my time.

It kind of sucks because I’ve started to build some readers- not a lot, but several dozen a day. Sorry that you all won’t be able to get your fix of random rants and whatnot. But I think we should all take a little vacation, so go do something fun.