Hong Kong Culture Points, Volume 2

As our newness in Hong Kong begins to wear off (we've got our shipment, celebrated two major holidays, made some friends and settled into something of a routine), I'm still noticing the things that make this city different from others I've experienced. Here are some more Hong Kong culture points:

[Catch up with Hong Kong Culture Points, Volume 1]

1. Accents

Hong Kong is astoundingly diverse. There may be a greater variety of skin color in New York or Los Angeles, but Hong Kong has so many expats that the variety of accents (in English alone) I hear on any given day is astounding: Australian, French, Eastern European, American, British, Canadian, French-Canadian, Filipino, Indian, everything. People settle in Hong Kong from all over the world, and it's fun to hear such color every day. Even among those of Chinese origin, some have a very specific Cantonese accent (I hope this isn’t terribly offensive to anyone, but comedian Russell Peters does a pretty good imitation), and others have an accent closer to that of upper-class Londoners

2. Hot Water

Beware the scalding glass cup

I am a thirsty person, particularly when I’m pregnant, and I can drink water by the liter during a meal. Cold water, that is. Or even room temperature water. But when we visit a dim sum joint or other Asian restaurant in Hong Kong, water only comes HOT. Like, tea temperature hot. This doesn’t work well for thirsty me, let alone for my toddler son, who would burn his mouth. Asking for water that isn’t scalding strikes confusion that usually leads to the server bringing a small bottle of water I could drink in a few gulps. Saying, “No, thank you. I just want whatever water you’re serving HOT, but before you make it hot…” doesn’t work. I’ve finally wised up to realize restaurants serve ice with Cokes, so I'm starting to just ask for a plain cup of ice, as many times as I can get our server’s attention (which is typically about twice), and pour in the water from my steaming mug (or painfully hot glass cup) for Luca and me to share. I’m trying hard to remember to bring my own Nalgene bottle with me from home to obviate the awkwardness.

3. No Pee On Concrete

I’ve heard in mainland China, people peeing (and pooping) in public, on the side of any road, is commonplace. Apparently this practice trickled down (pun intended) to Hong Kong as mainlanders began moving into town at a higher rate when the city became officially part of China again, but from what I’ve heard, it was met with stiff resistance from resident Hong Kongers, and is generally unheard of today, or at least hidden (except for an incident last spring in which Hong Kongers got into a scuffle with mainlanders who let their toddler pee on a busy sidewalk). The sensitivity toward public urination extends also to pets. Our neighborhood, along with most of Hong Kong’s center, has a nice view of green trees climbing the steep mountains that divide the island, but pedestrians are generally concrete-bound. There’s no real grass patch or soft shoulder to let dogs urinate freely, so pet owners carry a water bottle around so they can dilute pee on concrete. Apparently pee on concrete is a particularly nasty offense in the hot, humid summer months. Our building’s outdoor area (“the podium,” where kids ride bikes and scooters) has a small dog-wee section of dirt and grass, but some dogs are particular and prefer not to climb onto that elevated platform to do their business. A friend, who owns one such dog, told me recently that she was tired of the looks she got out on the podium if her dog let loose near where the children play, even when she watered it down, so now she lets her doggie go in the parking garage, where she still dilutes it to prevent smells.

4. Paying by Octopus

Like many metro systems around the world, Hong Kong’s MTR (and public bus) system has its own frequent-user card, the Octopus card. An added bonus? Hong Kongers can pay by Octopus at many convenience stores, taxis, bubble tea stands or even theme-park cafes. It’s an in-between for such a cash society. The Octopus even lets users go into the negative a bit, which is handy in a pinch if I'm out of cash.

5. Small Bills, Please

Cashier making change for my $500 from her purse

Yes, Hong Kong is a cash society, but using big bills can be tricky, and many places won’t accept $1000 bills (about US$130). The next biggest is a $500 bill (US$65), and that’s even a problematic one for businesses, though sometimes as a customer, that's all I have. In fact, when I’ve paid with a $500 for food, the cashier herself has had to make change from her own wallet before processing my transaction. The first such instance caught me off guard, but I've seen this at chain restaurants and small food shops, so apparently it isn't unheard of. This happened once right at the opening of business, which tells me cafes don’t really stock change for their employees to use at all.


6. Bank-Issued Currency

Top is HSBC (with lion logo); Bottom Bank of China (with building image)

In the United States, dollars are issued by the Federal Reserve and printed by The Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Basically, money comes from the government. Hong Kong dollars, on the other hand, are printed in one location, but private banks are the ones who issue the currency. So my wallet might have bills from HSBC, Standard Chartered or Bank of China.

A Pre-Christmas Escape to Thailand

Before Christmas, our little branch of the Kim clan decided to get away together to somewhere warmer and more spacious than our new city, this Manhattan-on-steroids, Hong Kong. And, luckily for us, the beaches of Thailand are not too far away.

When you think of Thailand, you might think of tiny boats touring gorgeous and famous islands, or of riding elephants or snorkeling or scuba diving. Of eating pad thai and panang curry from tiny, authentic restaurants. I've seen such things in friends' pictures of visits to Thailand.

Joe and I love adventure travel. We've each had a taste in our single lives and in our life together, like when we backpacked through Mexico. So we never in a million years imagined we'd vacation in such an adventurous destination with the express intent of never leaving our resort. But with a food-allergic 2.5-year old, a major baby bump and some killer, unpredictable hip pain, that is precisely what we did.

Our many major life transitions this year meant that peaceful time for the three of us to enjoy each other (with a beach and pool available) was the perfect choice for us.


And what a resort it was. The JW Marriott Khao Lak was a fantastic place to plant ourselves. A lagoon pool wove all around the resort,
including right past our room's back door, so we could literally swim from our room to the beach.

The staff went above and beyond to ensure Luca had safe food to eat. The executive chef or one of his top sous chefs would bring out meals prepared in the central kitchen to whichever resort restaurant we'd chosen for the evening, or even to the pool bar or our room, if we preferred. I'll admit it was disorienting to have top chefs in charge of meals for our toddler, but we were grateful, and Luca loved that he got to eat food that wasn't leftovers I'd brought in a Thermos.

Below are some more pictures of our fantastic, resort-bound vacation filled with beach fun, pool fun, early nights out and time feeding watermelon rinds and bananas to a visiting elephant.

It's a life-phase. Perhaps next time we're in Thailand, we'll be scuba diving and touring James Bond Island. Or perhaps we'll go back to the JW and just relax and enjoy the fresh young coconuts just hacked open and accompanied by a straw and spoon, or returned to the shell ice-blended with a little sugar. Yum.

Oh! Before the pictures, here's a glimpse of Luca's joy in the hours and hours of swimming. He is fearless, and kept jumping in without telling us, so we taught him to yell an announcement of his intentions, to which he added his own little script. His love of being underwater increased after we bought him goggles in the dive shop. His reaction after the first dive with goggles was priceless: "My eyes are better!!"

We told Luca we were heading to a buffet
at the beach, so he insisted
on bringing his bucket of beach tools.

Luca's reaction to the teppanyaki chef lighting onions on fire

Hong Kong Culture Points, Volume 1

One thing I love about traveling and moving is the chance to experience the varied ways people live around the world. Each city and country has its own oddities and aspects that stand out to a foreign eye.

So, before my newbie eyes are desensitized and lose their wonder, here are some things that stand out to me here in Hong Kong, so far:

1. Sanitizing

Luca and I walked with friends through a large aviary in a public park, pointing out all the singing and playing birds we could spot. As I stood at the wooden railing and watched some breed of dove fly from tree to tree, I noticed a small, laminated rectangle of white paper near my hands that read: “Sanitized 4 times daily.”

Really? An outdoor wooden rail at an aviary? How frequently would such a thing be sanitized in the United States… Maybe never?

And this isn’t isolated—many door handles, elevator buttons and bathrooms boast similar signs.

I suppose that’s what happens when a city sees something as awful as SARS spread like wildfire.

I certainly don’t mind.

2. Couture Malls

One Saturday as an outing, Joe and I took a ferry across Victoria Harbor up to Kowloon (part of Hong Kong, but attached to mainland China). Luca was looking sweaty, so we found refuge from the heat and humidity in one of the neighborhood's shopping malls.

We thought we’d entered the Twilight Zone: Burberry Childrenswear, Gucci Kids, Armani Junior, Baby Dior, Dulce & Gabana Junior, Fendi Kids—the entire floor was storefronts of only high-end designer kidswear.

And that’s not all—the rest of the mall was basically the same stores, but for adults. There was an Audi showcase in the middle of the second floor. In fact, of every mall I’ve walked through in Hong Kong (and there are quite a few), the only "middle class" clothing shops I’ve seen are Zara and H&M. And these are few and far between. Italian suit shops and couture are staples around here, filling the malls with the highest of high-end brand names.

I’ve never seen such a thing, and I have no idea how all these stores stay in business with the high rent that goes with crowded island living.

Ok, I have two ideas, actually: First, Hong Kong has the highest concentration of billionaires per capita (banks, banks, everywhere!). Second, Hong Kong is the place for rich mainland Chinese tourists to drop some major coin.

3. Mainland Tourists

Speaking of mainland tourists, I’ve heard Hong Kongers have unfriendly names (ahem, locusts) for the hoards who visit. Hong Kong may technically be part of China, but there are major cultural differences, to my understanding, and I’ve heard a local or two sneer at the thought of the visitors who crowd these shores.

Our own encounter with mainlanders was more entertaining than annoying. A few weeks ago, Luca, Joe and I were playing at the beach. I was enjoying my weightlessness in the extra-salty surf while Joe dug a sand fort for Luca. Our little man would run between the two of us, “helping” Joe or diving in the water to me.

As we played, a busload of fully-dressed Chinese tourists poured onto the sand, cameras at the ready. They took turns posing in front of the (apparently) famous background of Repulse Bay, and then some started to notice us, or more specifically, Luca. Some started snapping pictures of him playing in the sand, and others actually posed, making Luca and Joe the background. A few men walked over to interact with my little 2-year old.

Not one to be comfortable with strangers getting too close and asking questions in a language he doesn’t recognize, Luca decided to take a dive toward me. Of course, this was a major highlight for the tourists, who pointed and giggled to see such a small kid dive fearlessly headfirst into the water toward a white lady. Cameras snapped, and more tourists gathered. Luca and I bobbed, dumbfounded, in the water.

I wished—oh, how I wished I had my phone out with me to take a picture of the mass of grinning paparazzi—at least 15 of them—crowding on the beach to snap photos of us as though we were lively penguins at the zoo.

Just as quickly as the tour group flooded the beach, they cleared it, heading back up to their bus and on to the next site, their 10-minute Repulse Bay stop checked off the list.

4. Elevator Etiquette… and Speed!

In a city of skyscrapers, elevators are a way of life. As I mentioned in a previous post, my ears pop every time I ride the elevator down from our apartment.

Since we live partway up a mountain, we start almost any journey on the 17th floor of a circular 64-floor building with a band of elevators at its core. Once we catch an elevator, the ride down 14 floors to the 3rd floor exit on the main road below is done in a flash. It’s so fast, it feels like going down two floors in an average US elevator.

Such speed is typical of Hong Kong elevators I've ridden, and also applies to the elevator doors—I hardly have time to get the stroller and my own body through the doors before they’re closing. Many times, the doors have closed uncomfortably on my stroller or my shoulders, only to bounce open again.

Once, poor Luca didn't keep up with Joe and rode back down to our building's lobby all alone. He wasn't happy about it, but he never dawdles in the elevators anymore.

Waiting for an MTR elevator

Hong Kong people—expats and Cantonese alike—are a polite and friendly people. To counteract the elevator-door phenomenon, the first thing anyone does upon entering an elevator is hold down the “door open” button until everyone has loaded up. Even more—if someone sees another person walking toward an elevator, they’ll hold it. It’s fantastic!

One exception to the awesome elevator standard is the MTR, the metro. MTR elevators appear to have been designed to discourage anyone at all from using them. We may need to go down one single floor, but the wait takes ages, and then the thing moves at a snail’s pace—slower than any elevator I’ve ever ridden, anywhere in the world. The lightning speed of most other Hong Kong elevators—and the efficiency of the MTR train system—makes the lifts’ inefficiency all the more blatant. Also, the elevators are far uglier than their state-of-the-art cousins around the city, and somehow claustrophobia-inducing hot air is always blasting. But it’s tricky to sneak our stroller onto the escalator under the employees’ watchful eye, so patience is the name of the game.

A New Home, and... Disneyland

As excited as I always get for change, the flip side is the emotional toll it brings. So, as we settle in to our new home in a new country, I face the challenges reminding myself that I expected them. That they are all part of this lifestyle. The tricky part about the challenges is that they never take the form I anticipate...

Back-alley noodle stand! Yum!

On the flight over, Luca was a champ—as champ as a 2-year old can be on such a long-haul. We stopped to catch our breath for a few days in Tokyo, taking the chance to tour a few of the city’s highlights despite jet lag and my first-trimester nausea and exhaustion.

We even got to see some old friends from our stint in Seoul (pictured right)!

This about sums up Tokyo.

Luca woke up each morning around 2am, ready for the day. I’ll never forget the three of us cuddling in our bed, watching Cars on an iPad. Or sitting around the tiny table downing our 4am potato breakfast we cooked up in the hotel room’s kitchenette when our stomachs could wait no longer.

It was in Tokyo, at about 11 weeks pregnant, that my belly popped out. Yes, friends, this picture is from TWELVE weeks pregnant (left)—similar to my size at about 20 weeks pregnant the first time around (right). At least I finally realized I was not getting fat, as I’d thought, but getting a ridiculously early baby bump.

Baby 2, 12 weeks vs. Baby 1, 20 weeks

So, one of the basic challenges of our move is that my clothes stopped fitting—most of my maternity wear is in our slow-boat shipment, and I only had a few t-shirt material skirts to make it through. Enter my mother-in-law, whose second favorite hobby is buying me clothes (second to buying Luca clothes/toys, that is). Thanks, Umonee! A few weeks into our stay in Hong Kong, and I had shorts that fit over my belly again.

View from the Peak

In short, Hong Kong is amazing. The skyline is spectacular and there are several interesting ways to tour the city and get a unique view, like the Star Ferry or the Peak lookout.

Our building has a pool, an epic indoor playroom, a small outdoor playground, and a sizable outdoor elevated patio area called the Podium, where Luca can scooter or kick a soccer ball, level with the tops of skyscrapers farther downhill from us. We live halfway up a mountain and then almost 30 stories up. It’s so high that my ears pop twice each time I ride the elevator down. It’s so high that our view is spectacular.

The Podium

The challenge? Sometimes I feel a tiny bit trapped in our building. Not trapped as in I can’t go out or there’s nowhere to go, but trapped as in: Leaving our building takes a fair amount of energy for a pregnant woman towing a toddler. There are hills, stairs, elevators, escalators, extremely narrow and crowded sidewalks with lots of uneven terrain, and extremely narrow and crowded grocery-store aisles. And some days, the sky is thick with polluted haze, and all I want to do is hide Luca’s lungs and my own inside.

When I mention the pollution, Luca’s automatic response these days is, “The indoor playground is waiting!”

Out on the streets and in grocery stores, I often feel like my stroller is a plow. Move it or lose it, people! Other times, I feel plain old stuck, behind someone’s grocery cart or a group of people stopped to talk.

Between my own pregnancy exhaustion, the crowds, a toddler’s needs and pollution avoidance, running errands at all is a day’s big event for me; a huge accomplishment.

Thankfully, there are a lot of order-online grocery options, so I am experimenting.

And thankfully, even when shopping in person, all the grocery stores deliver non-perishables, so if my load is too big to stuff into my umbrella stroller (which broke, by the way, from the beating it took hauling perishable groceries and constantly trekking up and down stairs), I can leave certain items with the cashier and see them that night or the next, left at my apartment’s back door, the entrance to the maid’s quarters.

Oh, does that sound weird? Maid’s quarters? Yes, our apartment has a maid’s quarters, past the kitchen and the laundry room. A walk-in-closet-sized room with its own bathroom and shower. More on domestic helpers in another post.

Settling in is slow-going for me, but you know what helps?

The fact that, as I said, Hong Kong is AMAZING.

There’s a beach! Several, actually, though I’m stuck on the one that’s easiest to get to: trees for shade and calm waters that are so salty my growing pregnant body floats effortlessly and my sore joints get a break. The inaptly named “Repulse Bay” is so far my favorite part of Hong Kong.

Luca’s, too. I took him one weekday morning on the public bus—we sat in the front row of the second level of the double-decker, right up against the window—and the morning was fantastic (though, not fantastic was the hour-and-a-half, bumper-to-bumper-traffic bus ride back downtown. I definitely don’t begrudge the student protestors their fight for democracy, but no matter what the reason—traffic is the worst).

We loved the beach so much, we took Joe back two days later, on the weekend.


And, there’s Disneyland! I’m not sure if it was the general Disney magic, the reminder of my college season-pass-holding days or just the glimpse of home, but I was beyond excited, and my excitement spread to Luca, whose eyes lit up at the thought of seeing Mickey Mouse.

Plus, we rode Hong Kong’s metro all the way, which is a delight in itself, for train-loving Luca.


His first real theme-park ride ever: Small World.

There was no line since Columbus Day was an average Monday in Hong Kong (the U.S. consulate is closed for U.S. holidays), so Luca ran through the switchbacks, not understanding what he was headed toward but knowing, just knowing it would be more than he could imagine.

And it was. He insisted we go on Small World again and again, though we stopped for lunch after the third go-around. He loved the other rides, but kept begging to go back “on the pink boat.”

Joe and I couldn’t get enough of the wonder lighting up Luca’s eyes. There is magic in the sight of your own child’s happiness.

Too much magic

Luca finally fell asleep in his stroller around 3pm, so we began our trek back home in time for dinner.

Of course, today, I was exhausted. Luca and I both were. And it was polluted, so we stayed inside most of the day. But it won’t be like that every day. There is simply so much available to do here.

And we’re going to soak up as much of that pure fun as we can.

Funny to see Mickey on a metro map

The Disneyland Train! Mickey handles and windows!