Hong Kong II and Thailand I
Once again I am at an impasse for where to begin, so I'll quote my moleskin entry from Thursday: "Woke up and got into a nice fight with mom. She was complaining that all 3 of us [Lars, Lucy and I] had woken her up this morning, which was true." In our lovely family, something as tedious as this (though a strong argument can be made that waking my Mom up in the morning is a downright sinful action sure to wreak havoc on the day, especially if you do it without a cup of coffee in your hand) can often end in disaster. Again I quote: "The whole thing disintegrated into a calm fit and my final under-my-breath comment caused Mom to hurl her coffee at me." Which had no effect on anything but the sofa I was sitting on, the walls of our room, the carpet where she dropped it, and the newspaper I had been reading, which shielded my face. Then I went for a walk around Kowloon, the peninsula that faces Hong Kong island, taking in the scenery and culture. They have 7-11s and McDonalds, both of which changed in their journey across the ocena rather interestingly. McDonald's big seller in HK is, I kid you not, the Fish McNugget. It's advertised for exactly like that, as though its cousin the Chicken McNugget doesn't exist. In fact, chicken is barely on the menu. Same with beef. They do have congee (Cantonese rice soup) and what I thought to be some kind of vermin. 7-11 here sells the usual type of stuff, but none of the same brands.
Because we didn't want to be around Mom, Lucy and I went shopping. Malls in Hong Kong are ubiqitous, multilevel affairs. They are often inside tall commercial or residential buildings or underground, with low ceilings (ah, to be Asian) and no name-brand stores. It's basically 500 Melrose-esque boutiques with a variety of qualities. Sure, there were tons of knockoffs, but there were also some really captivating and risque things I'd never seen before and that Lucy refused to so much as try on. I kept telling her that all my girl friends would have loved to have been there buying stuff, to no avail. That night we went to dinner at some famous Cantonese (south China - a different language and culture from the north) restaurant. In Lars' words, "[Laura] wants to order all this exorbitant stuff and they have no idea how to bring it." Amongst said items were the shark fin soup, the bird's nest soup, a pickled duck congee... the list goes on. Once again I quote the moleskin: "Mom insisted on ordering for everyone and somehow things got horribly confused, because in the 45 minutes it took our food to arrive, Laura and Larry got into it over an article in the LA times, Mom complained that Lars was a downer and Lars countercomplained that she and Lucy were making fun of his chop stick technique." This is all fact; apparently when you get right down to it, Lars is a pretty sensitive guy. At one point he gave up on extracting some lobster meat from the lobster bone: "Laura... Laura why don't you take this? I can't eat it." Then Mom got into another argument with him and stormed out of the restaurant. So ended my Thursday night. How was yours?
On Friday we went to Macau, another island near Hong Kong that was colonised by the Portuguese. My mom was dissatisfied with the coach-class accomodations on the hour-long ferry there, so she booked us the VIP room, meant for 10, on the way back. It included a butler and noodles. No interesting anecdotes to share... Lucy got fake checkerboard converse and these Chinese assholes wouldn't let me gamble (Macau is the Las Vegas of east Asia). I discovered during lunch that Mom and Lars think I'm a drunk. It probably has something to do with my attempt at sneaking out the night before we left with a bottle of Triple Sec. Lars had greeted me at the bottom of the stairs with a disapproving stare and a lecture on how I'm too young to be drinking and dumfoundedly asked why I smelled of smoke: "That's stronger than cigarette. Ugh. Is that cigar?"
Here in Thailand I've found a climate more to my liking. The drinking age is 16, all the girls want to fuck you and take your money, my room is 20 feet from the sea. It took forever to get to this fucking island but it was worth the wait. Oh I'm pleased to report that all the German people here keep talking to me in German. So I look German, which pleases me. Lots, really. Since Mexico failed I've been in dire need to a country to claim faux association with. But back to the story. I watched Reservoir Dogs with Lucy... she loves it. A little too much. If I have to hear, "Toby... Toby Wong. Toby Wong, Toby Chun. Toby Chun, fuckin' Charlie Chan," one more time I'll kill myself. We went Jet Skiing... blah I've just been ordered to the spa. For a facial. I'm not really sure how I feel about this, I'll tell you all about it from Bangkok.
Because we didn't want to be around Mom, Lucy and I went shopping. Malls in Hong Kong are ubiqitous, multilevel affairs. They are often inside tall commercial or residential buildings or underground, with low ceilings (ah, to be Asian) and no name-brand stores. It's basically 500 Melrose-esque boutiques with a variety of qualities. Sure, there were tons of knockoffs, but there were also some really captivating and risque things I'd never seen before and that Lucy refused to so much as try on. I kept telling her that all my girl friends would have loved to have been there buying stuff, to no avail. That night we went to dinner at some famous Cantonese (south China - a different language and culture from the north) restaurant. In Lars' words, "[Laura] wants to order all this exorbitant stuff and they have no idea how to bring it." Amongst said items were the shark fin soup, the bird's nest soup, a pickled duck congee... the list goes on. Once again I quote the moleskin: "Mom insisted on ordering for everyone and somehow things got horribly confused, because in the 45 minutes it took our food to arrive, Laura and Larry got into it over an article in the LA times, Mom complained that Lars was a downer and Lars countercomplained that she and Lucy were making fun of his chop stick technique." This is all fact; apparently when you get right down to it, Lars is a pretty sensitive guy. At one point he gave up on extracting some lobster meat from the lobster bone: "Laura... Laura why don't you take this? I can't eat it." Then Mom got into another argument with him and stormed out of the restaurant. So ended my Thursday night. How was yours?
On Friday we went to Macau, another island near Hong Kong that was colonised by the Portuguese. My mom was dissatisfied with the coach-class accomodations on the hour-long ferry there, so she booked us the VIP room, meant for 10, on the way back. It included a butler and noodles. No interesting anecdotes to share... Lucy got fake checkerboard converse and these Chinese assholes wouldn't let me gamble (Macau is the Las Vegas of east Asia). I discovered during lunch that Mom and Lars think I'm a drunk. It probably has something to do with my attempt at sneaking out the night before we left with a bottle of Triple Sec. Lars had greeted me at the bottom of the stairs with a disapproving stare and a lecture on how I'm too young to be drinking and dumfoundedly asked why I smelled of smoke: "That's stronger than cigarette. Ugh. Is that cigar?"
Here in Thailand I've found a climate more to my liking. The drinking age is 16, all the girls want to fuck you and take your money, my room is 20 feet from the sea. It took forever to get to this fucking island but it was worth the wait. Oh I'm pleased to report that all the German people here keep talking to me in German. So I look German, which pleases me. Lots, really. Since Mexico failed I've been in dire need to a country to claim faux association with. But back to the story. I watched Reservoir Dogs with Lucy... she loves it. A little too much. If I have to hear, "Toby... Toby Wong. Toby Wong, Toby Chun. Toby Chun, fuckin' Charlie Chan," one more time I'll kill myself. We went Jet Skiing... blah I've just been ordered to the spa. For a facial. I'm not really sure how I feel about this, I'll tell you all about it from Bangkok.