You Only Get the One Chance

Dearest Rachel –

It’s Thursday morning in Hong Kong, and it doesn’t look much better than it did yesterday, to be honest.

Now, in fairness, this isn’t Hong Kong‘s fault; there’s nothing that can be done about the weather, and in any case, at least it’s not raining. So going out into this shouldn’t be all that terrible, even if you can’t see everything. Let’s face it, there’s more to this place than can be seen in any one sweep of it, no matter how you slice it.

Which brings me to the next question; why am I still on this boat? Sure, the weather isn’t ideal – although given how things cleared up eventually yesterday, it’s reasonable to assume they will do likewise today – but I’ve still got today to check out the city, even after having been out and about yesterday morning. We don’t get a lot of cities in which we have two basically full days to check the place out. By comparison, we have days and days in which to spend on the ship, more less confined (if you want to look at it that way); it seems silly not to make at least a try of going out today. By comparison, even if I’m not doing any sightseeing per se, at least, I’m getting off the ship and doing something different. I’m only going to get this one chance to do this; I need to take advantage of it.

To be honest, I feel like I’m dawdling in my room by hanging around there until almost ten, but I assume that’s when the shops open; there’s no sense in leaving any sooner, and getting there before anything opens up.  What I don’t count on, when I get down to the bus stop, is that the buses don’t even start running until 10:30; at least, not the free one going to the nearby(?  It’s a fifteen minute drive, anyway) mall.  I rather expected they’d be carting prospective customers over early enough that they’d be ready to storm the doors as soon as they opened.

And yes, I’m taking the free shuttle into town.  It would be one thing if I had a specific destination in mind that I wanted to go to; from there, I could plan my route, hop the specific buses/trains, and get there.  But without any real clue as to where I want to be and what I want to do, I’ve already been been debating with myself as to even whether I want to do this in the first place.  The last thing I need is another barrier to my decision to get off the ship like a cost to go… where?  At least now, all I’m going to waste is time.

The nice thing about being one of the last people on the bus is that, once I’m seated, the bus takes off; there is no sitting around, waiting for everybody else to board. And there’s a lot of seats to fill up in here. Really, there’s so much to the Hong Kong skyline that it almost lacks anything distinctive about it. There are so many skyscrapers that none of them stick out.  Back home you have the Sears Tower, the John Hancock, the Doral Plaza with its diamond-shaped roof.  Here, there’s so much to take in that it almost loses coherence; it’s like attempting to look at a single page of paper with the entirety of the Bible written on it in a small enough font for the page to contain it.  Downtown cities are often described as canyons; from the ship, this is almost like a forest, with every skyscraper a tree. After a certain point, they all blur together into a single steel-and-concrete ecosystem. There’s no way anyone can see it all, especially in the limited time allotted to us; even less so, when I’ve no idea what I’m looking to see or do.

So, with that being said, I find myself deciding to hop on the free shuttle to the nearby mall, and check it out. I know, it’s not like we don’t have malls back at home. But I’m expecting this place to be laid out differently, with shops and wares that aren’t necessarily familiar to me – or at least, different enough to get my attention. And even if that’s not the case, at least it gets me off the ship and doing something different for a change.

I sometimes feel like I should apologize for not writing down the thoughts that came to me while I was wandering about the mall, but since I basically spoke them into the camera, I’m thinking that has to count for something. Sure, it takes more time than reading this, but at least you get to see things around and behind me. I would say ‘everything,’ but since I don’t have the camera on the whole time, that isn’t even close to being accurate. Even if I did, I wouldn’t always be able to point it in the direction of the real action necessarily, so some of what went down will have to wait – such as the odd purchase here and there – and a lot of it just ends up on the cutting room floor, so to speak.

In any event, once I decide I’ve had enough (and the one restaurant is too pricey, another is too complicated to order from, and a third basically only takes cash, so I’m not going to eat there) and return to the dock, I still find myself wandering about the terminal, as there’s more to the building than just checking in…

And that’s where a few grains of you will stay. I do hope you’ll like the view.

As a coda to all this – and I suppose this spoils things a bit – but I continue to have internet issues as I try to recap all this for you, especially in terms of uploading these videos. It’s a slow process, which I suspect is exacerbated by our passing between Taiwan and mainland China. So I hope you’ll for give me for getting this out a day later than I’d really hoped to; I’ll back-date it, if that helps any.

For now, though, honey, all I can ask is that you continue to keep an eye on me, and wish me luck, as I’m still going to need it.