Shanghai Bob

We went out Friday night in Hong Kong and were up late into the 4th of July Saturday.  We had a couple of friends showing us around the bars of Lan Kwai Fong, then a club called Privée, and another called Beijing.  The last two were extremely crowded even though it was almost four in the morning.

Anyway, the highlight of the evening was that I got into a fight with a group of guys in the club called Beijing.  Basically they started pointing fingers and yelling, then one guy tried to kick me, then the rest jumped in.  They didn’t make a coordinated effort, instead they sort of presented themselves one at a time and tried to hit or kick me.  This was lucky for me because with the strobe light on and the music going, it was very hard for me to tell which of the people in the crowd were part of the group trying to get me.  Chris was there but didn’t see what was happening, so I had no backup.

I ended up with a bruised forearm (from blocking a kick to the head!), and a bruised shin (one guy kicked me in the shin when the strobe light went out), but I didn’t get hurt otherwise.  I also didn’t hurt anyone badly.  My kung fu was stronger than their kung fu, and I was a lot bigger.

The management came finally, threw those guys out after some discussion, and bought us champagne.  I asked if this sort of thing happens regularly, and they said, “Some locals just don’t like gweilo.”

Update:  Andrew went to Hong Kong in August and was harassed by a non-local for being American.  I think Hong Kong is just a little more aggressive than Shanghai.

On July 3, we walked across the border to Hong Kong.  You have to fill out two or three forms on each side, and there is this no-man’s land in the middle where you’ve filled out all your forms to leave China and haven’t filled out any to be admitted to Hong Kong yet.

On the Hong Kong side, you can just get on the metro and ride in to Central.

We stayed for the first few nights on Ice House Street, which is right in Central, close to where I met Tibor and Eric for drinks on the roof of Prince’s Building.  For the rest of the trip, we stayed at the YMCA in Kowloon, which has a spectacular view.

Looking at a trilingual map, I saw that the simplified Chinese for Kowloon is 九龙, which means “Nine Dragons”.  Dragon wouldn’t be a very useful word to learn in English, but it’s very handy in Chinese.

We went to see a New York comedian named Ted Alexandro for a very funny show, and made it to Lan Kwai Fong or Wan Chai most of the nights we were there.

Hong Kong, like Singapore, is small enough that you can run into people you know randomly.  We were there for just ten days, but it happened a couple of times.