i have officially survived china..

...and made it to hong kong!

hong kong is reminiscent of tokyo but brighter at night. in fact, like shanghai, hong kong is prettier at night when all the buildings are fluorescently decked out and the hazy pollution and everyday grime disappear under the cover of darkness. there is a little more to see than shanghai and i have happily explored kowloon (the lotus pond garden is a sweet getaway from the urban jungle and temple street night market is great for more tschotkes and blackmarket dvds) and hong kong island. i have also discovered that hong kong is a tourist's dream with signposts everywhere and very pedestrian friendly. i've gotten so used to speaking chinese that it's slow for me to realize that i can communicate in english too...so much so that is sad to say that chinglish has become the norm!

as an aside, i'm sure everyone has heard or witnessed the excessive spitting in china (except hong kong). now that i have been in china for almost 3 weeks, i seem to have built up some phlegm/mucus in the back of my throat that i want to spit out but can't since i've never purposely hacked and spit before. i did have a cold, but that has long gone away, leaving me to wonder if this "problem" is more due to pollution and that's why it's so normal to spit anywhere one pleases in china...

oh and yes, that is a koi hopping out of the water in order to eat the turkey that was thrown down to them (right by the sign that said "don't feed the fish")!

since i don't have money to burn shopping at the high end stores or shopping for high end fakes, i hopped the ferry to macau today. macau is quite different, mainly because of how pedestrian unfriendly it is! right when you leave the ferry terminal, there are absolutely no signs as to where to go. i tried their buses too and managed to keep getting off too early because i was afraid of missing my stop since there was no scrolling bus stop signs that even beijing had. yet, macau is quite beautiful and very portuguese (kind of odd to see the portuguese-cantonese intermingling of signs, people, architecture, and food, which is completely embodied by a sign for a dentist named Dr. Jorge Chou).

sad to report that there are no more funny lost in translation signs, but i've got one more shot since i have a forced layover for one night in bangkok...everyone sing the song now!