• The Octopus Card is just a plastic prepaid card, but it’s contactless, so you just have to place it next to a card reader, and it’s used almost everywhere. It started as a transit payment system, but many stores and most vending machines accept it too. I didn’t use my credit card the whole time I was here.
• Hong Kong bakeries are insidious and addictive—obesity at bargain prices. Beware!
• I’ve never seen so many watches. Rolex, Cartier, Omega, Tag Hauer, you name it—there must be hundreds of stores, and there are billboard-sized displays everywhere. You can easily spend more than US$100,000 for a watch if you are so inclined. Of course, there’s no tax.
• If you have a smaller budget, there are plenty of opportunities to buy fakes in Kowloon. As you walk down Nathan Road, touts approach you and say “copy watch?” If you look Western, that is. There are also touts for tailoring services, and they’re much pushier. They’ll follow you.
• There seems to be a market for replica guns. There’s a street in Kowloon with about two blocks of stores that sell them. I don’t know the legal status of guns in Hong Kong, but they’re not listed among the prohibited weapons when you go through immigration. Bullets, however, are.
• For as many people as there are in Hong Kong, it’s remarkable how much empty space there is. Of course, most of that space is very steep.
• Union flags are a common design on clothing and bags. I didn’t see anyone wearing a PRC flag. There was one guy in a Mao hat, but he was a Westerner.
• Hong Kong is a nice place to visit, and I’m glad I went, but the crowds were starting to drive me nuts by the end of the week. I think next time I’ll go to the Seychelles or someplace like that.

I took the bus to Aberdeen, on the south side of Hong Kong island, to take a sampan tour through the fishing village in the typhoon shelters. The fishing village is what remains of the Tanka boat dwellers. Historically, they lived on their boats, but I don’t think many of them do anymore. They certainly work there, though. There are fishing boats, sampans, rowboats, and floating platforms, all anchored in the middle of the bay.

The sampan tour was just supposed to be a standard tour operation. One was just pulling out as I got to the dock.

So I waited for the next one. While I was waiting, another sampan pulled up to the dock and a couple of people got on. The boat driver* said something to me, but I couldn’t understand him, and this obviously wasn’t the tour boat, so I just waved him off. He left, then immediately came back again as an old woman walked up to the dock. She asked me if I wanted a tour, so I said sure. it was HK$100, which was a little more than the price in the guide book, but the guide book has been fairly consistently wrong, so I just went with it.

This guy basically just ferries people to and from their boats, and picks up the odd tourist here and there when they happen to be standing at the dock. And I was his odd tourist for the day. All of the other passengers were going to their boats. For more than half of the trip, I was the only passenger. He would occasionally point something out, but he spoke no English, so I wasn’t always sure what he was referring to. Overall, I think it was better than the tourist boat would have been.

* Captain? Skipper? What do you call a guy who runs a sampan with his foot?

A low-key day. I wandered around Kowloon Park and watched an old woman do tai chi in a hedge maze, then took the ferry to Central, where there were more Filipinas camping out on cardboard. They were also in front of the HSBC headquarters.

I rode the double-decker tram for a while too, with no particular destination. It’s like when you’re at Disneyland and you’ve been walking all day, sometimes it’s just nice to ride the People Mover.

I got off a couple of times and bought things, then got back on again. A ride of any distance costs about 30 cents, so I wasn’t concerned about optimizing the cost.

That’s pretty much it.