Chapter 1 - Getting There Is Half the Battle
We weren't lost; we just weren't where we'd planned to be. That was the most we could say for more than 24 hours of uninterrupted travel.
Somewhere around hour 4 our plans were blown off course (pun intended) by Typhoon Matsa, which parked itself directly between us and Shanghai, where we had hotel reservations and extended family waiting. Instead, Air Canada offered Hong Kong, and we boarded a different plane along with an extra flight crew; flying around the storm would add several agonizing hours to the already long trip.
If we couldn't be in Shanghai, we liked the idea of Hong Kong. We'd been there with the kids a couple years earlier, and they enjoyed it. If felt familiar. We could see ourselves eating pizza and making ongoing travel arrangements to our final destination: Chengdu (capital of Sichuan Province, deep inside China). If we couldn't land in Shanghai where family was waiting, at least we could land in a place we knew. As wrong destinations went it was a good choice.
Plus, we didn't want to wait three days for the next flight to Shanghai, presuming Typhoon Matsa had cleared by then. We were launching a year-long family adventure living in China. My wife Heidi and I would teach English at a university, and the whole family would travel throughout Asia in our free time. Our daughter Nikki was all-in, but our son Tommy was not. He was traveling under orders, and a year away was an eternity to a ten year old. Goodbyes to friends and family had been painful for him, but he pulled together and boarded the plane willingly, if not eagerly. We didn't want to lose our forward momentum with Tommy, and waiting three more days to leave North America seemed pregnant with that peril. We had been encouraging the kids to show a sense of adventure and Nikki showed promise here, but at this point we just hoped Tommy would come around.
It was an appallingly long flight to the former British colony. Any flight across the Pacific was an endurance test, but that typhoon was huge. For me the flight felt even longer because I got sandwiched between a skinny Chinese guy and an overly-ample Caucasian woman. The skinny guy sat between me and the aisle and slept the entire flight. As he slumbered I was trapped without easy access to the bathrooms or opportunities to stretch my legs. The large woman on my other side spilled into my few precious inches of personal real estate as she also slept for hours. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't see the movie because the screen hung too many rows ahead. I couldn't read much on the bouncing plane without needing the barf bag in front of me. All I could do was sit there, begging the hours to pass.
Nikki sat a row ahead of me, also trapped between two strangers, but she tolerated it better. She was a slender thirteen year-old and neither neighbor invaded her space. She loved to read and didn't have any problems doing so on in flight. Originally Heidi and Tommy were scattered about the plane, but we convinced a surly gate agent that our ten year old would make a delightful travel companion for a couple strangers. In the end Heidi and Tommy enjoyed a cozy pair of seats in the very last row of the plane. They could get up and stand behind their chairs as long as they wanted. I was painfully jealous the one time I got out to see them.
Despite more than half a day trapped above the Pacific Ocean in a metal tube with nothing to do, we landed in Hong Kong without any ideas about where to stay. While other travelers zoomed past us to their pre-arranged destinations, we stood there with our Lonely Planet guidebook to pick a couple places to call. Some people were met by drivers who whisked them away in luxurious Mercedes sedans. I hated them. Thank goodness we hadn't spent the flight time making a plan. Hong Kong had lots of places to stay, most of them expensive. Our adventure had a budget and our family in Shanghai had arranged a cheap but comfortable room there. As I scanned the mid-priced choices I struggled with sticker shock; I began considering budget guest houses.
Tears leaked over Tommy's lower eyelids. He had thought staying awake for the entire 17 hour flight sounded cool, and had done just that despite our repeated suggestions of nap. Now we were all going to pay the price. There would be no audacious tantrum, just a quiet melt-down outside of immigration. Clearly we didn't have time to go from one cheap guest house to another to find the best low-cost, low-cockroach option. Tommy had reached the end of his rope and the rest of us were approaching ours. We needed to end this day.
The airport hosted a hotel-booking window. A kind young woman there offered us two rooms at the Kowloon Sheraton for $200 a night each. That was eight times what we'd planned to spend in Shanghai and a real budget disaster.
Tommy complained that his stomach hurt. I left Heidi to get the best deal the window offered while I took the kids in search of some food. Tommy was very sensitive to his blood sugar, so we hoped calories would buy us a little more time. The kids and I bought fries and Sprite at McDonald's and found a few seats, quietly munching and sipping until Heidi finished. The kids slumped while I stewed over our inauspicious start. It was going to be a tough year at this rate.
With Tommy we always knew where he stood; his emotions were permanently on display. Nikki was the opposite, generally inscrutable. She wasn't a pouty or moody teen, but she kept to herself, and always had. I wondered what was passing between her ears at that moment. She was born 30 years old, so knowing her it was something like, "How did my parents get to be in charge? They can't even find a place to stay."
Heidi returned with reservations at the YMCA on Hong Kong Island. The good news was they'd squeeze us into one room with a double bed and two cots. The bad news was the room would cost $100 a night. One hundred dollars at the YMCA! This was definitely not shelter for those down on their luck. I swallowed any protest I wanted to make because it wasn't Heidi's fault Hong Kong was so expensive; besides, I'd left her to make the decision so it wasn't fair to question the result. Even more, I was just too damn tired to care.
Tommy perked up a bit after our snack of the four basic food groups: starch, fat, salt and sugar. Heidi studied the Lonely Planet about how to get to the Y. This was a chronic disease: Heidi's compulsion to solve every travel problem with public transport. She thrilled from stringing together seven different vehicles to reach the same place a single taxi would go. I respected that concept, but today I wanted to grab a cab and end our ordeal.
To my dismay and her delight, Heidi declared we'd need only three legs to cross Hong Kong to our hotel: a train from the airport to a bus that would take us to the subway. There was a subway stop just a few blocks from our hotel. Heidi beamed while I wilted, thoughts of dragging mountains of luggage on and off buses and trains, up and down escalators, and through crowded waiting rooms. We were awfully tired for such folly. The good news was that we'd lost one of our checked bags somewhere over the Pacific, so we had less to carry. I was not modeling a good sense of adventure for the kids.
This story has a hero - Jackie Wan - who strode up and offered his taxi. I asked the fare to the Y. It was barely more than buying all the different train, bus and subway tickets we'd need. I looked at Heidi pleadingly and she relented. Public transport would have to wait for another day. This was just the kind of break we needed. Suddenly I was back in love with Hong Kong and my wife, despite the fact that the Y cost a hundred bucks.
Nikki and Tommy sniggered together about the similarity of our driver's name to the famous kung fu actor as we followed him outside, into Hong Kong's swampy summer evening. Jackie tied as much luggage in the trunk as his little Toyota would hold, and we piled the rest on our laps. He talked ceaselessly in semi-intelligible English, offering his service as guide or future transport, whipping out his card in a blur. The kids were laughing and we were enjoying one of the random joys of travel, an appealing person thrust into our lives. Jackie entered at just the right time, when we needed some energy and a break from the grind of the journey. The ride to the YMCA passed quickly.
With two cots wedged into our room we barely had passage to the bathroom, but we didn't care. We were terribly relieved to be done. We wound down watching Chinese TV and reading books, and Nikki and I waded into the sultry night on a mission for food. We found numerous night clubs beckoning to us in neon, but no noodle stalls. We settled on a hot dog of sorts, some unidentified take-out Chinese, and rice. Tommy immediately claimed the hot dog when we got back to the hotel. Fed but not satisfied, we collapsed for sleep at 10:00pm. Unfortunately, none of us were still asleep at 2:00am; our body clocks overruled our exhaustion. The TV came back on and the books back out for a couple more hours.
We stayed near the Y for the next two days, until we moved on to Chengdu. We bought air tickets at a local travel agent and ate from nearby restaurants, but mostly we stayed in the cramped room, watched TV, read our books, and played games. We showed no appetite for adventure of any kind, to my great concern. Just outside stood Hong Kong's famous convention center, right on the harbor. We could walk there in three minutes. A Star Ferry terminal stood just beyond that, granting us access to Kowloon and...
