Hong Kong - Day 3

Thursday was a lot of hurry up and wait.

We would be able to pick up our Chinese visas (if we got them) at 2 pm but we needed to check out at 10 am and we still had some stuff we wanted to see. We also needed to work out how exactly we were going to get to Guilin, China. We were hesitant to book any travel methods because the travel agent warned us that starting July 1st the Chinese embassy had really cracked down on Hong Kong granting visas to Americans.

We set about our business of packing and doing all the logistical work that physically moving one's self from one place to the next requires.
The desk agent at The Homy Inn where we stayed was fantastic from beginning to end. He was chalked full of ideas of things for us to do in Hong Kong and was incredibly eager to help. He even helped me figure out the logistical nightmare that is getting from Kowloon to Shenzhen airport as a foreigner. We stashed our bags with him for a few hours after checkout and headed to the Woman's Market at Nathan and Nelson streets.

The market doesn't really get started until noon but we perused the shops as they were getting set up, much to the disliking of the employees.

Eventually we needed a snack and so we sat down at a place that served fresh smoothies and fruit desserts. We ordered by pointing to something on someone else's table. (Traveler Pro Tip #67: ordering food by pointing or gesturing to someone else's is always a good way to go if you want to know what you will get.) What we got was a bowl of coconut milk that had been frozen solid then shaved. It had the creamy smooth texture of ice cream but still a little of the shaved ice texture. It also had pieces of shaved coconut in it. On top was an assortment of fresh fruit (watermelon, cantaloupe, kiwi, dragon fruit, and pineapple). It was lip smackin' good. So good that even though I had all intention of snapping a photo for you guys it happened to be gone before I could execute. Ah well. I'm going to try to figure out a way to make this back home, or at least something similar. A much healthy and still tasty treat.

Much invigorated by our treat we went back to the now slightly more open stalls and bought a few things. My experience with markets in Asia so far had been pretty uniform. Whether it is a night market, a woman's market, or just a street market, it is all the same. By that I mean, the little four dollar Buddha trinket I saw at the night market in Taichung was four dollars in Hong Kong too and in Guilin. Markets, except for the odd one, tend to carry a lot of the same, knock off, cheaply made, "made in china" type stuff we all know. It serves a purpose. If you need a cheap cotton dress, or a bejeweled purse hanger, or a case for your iPhone, iPad, passport, etc and you don't care about quality or uniqueness then the market is the place for you. In this case, I was looking for a cotton dress that would work for this trip but I wouldn't mind tossing if I didn't fit in my bag at some point. It fit the bill. Bought two. :)

Getting a Chinese Visa in Hong Kong as a foreigner.

This was a process but it worked. We headed back to pick up our maybe visas at 2 pm from China Travel Services. Normally I am a "direct from the source" kind of girl and have always dealt with embassies directly for this kind of thing but given the slightly complicated nature and the recent change in application approvals we decided to use a travel agent. With our applications all filled out and photos in hand we went to CTS Monday evening. Hence forth ensued a flurry of white-out, black pen corrections, blue pen corrections, formatting issues and so on and on and on. Two hours later we had applications that were mostly white out and some tape. At about the 45 minute point I started to wonder if we should have just started over again. Truthfully, it would have been a lot easier. Normal visas take 4 working days to process. We wanted to bug out of Hong Kong slightly before that so we paid a little extra to get them back in three working days. The cost for a single entry up to 14 days and for a double entry up to 30 days both times was the same and the agent suggested we apply for the double entry and then the embassy would decide  if they would give us the single entry or double entry.  Then the waiting started. Our trip was pretty heavily relying on getting Chinese visas. It wouldn't have been terrible if we had not but we were really looking forward to China. All in all the application process was pretty simple at the end of the day. We handed over our applications, passports, and fees.

I'm always on edge when someone else has my passport in a foreign country. Whether it is an embassy or the hostel we are staying in. I've been trained that my passport is my ticket to everywhere I want to go. As a US citizen I have the easiest pass to almost any country I want to visit, and without my passport it isn't impossible to leave but it certainly wouldn't be easy. I have digital copies of all of my documentation (which I suggest you do as well, even if you don't travel internationally), but my passport is valuable insofar as my safety as well as my pride. In that little book is every country (theoretically) I've been to. It shows that I haven't been a cornflower in Wisconsin fields for the last four years. Sure, eventually I will fill it or it will expire and I will get a new one. They will punch a hole through my precious little book but it will always be the symbol of weeks and months on the road, of all the memories and moments spent on mountain tops in Slovenia, getting lost in the Paris subway, and being chased by a gaggle of Chinese woman trying to sell me hats. So when I fret about giving up my passport to someone it isn't just because of the hassle I would have to go through to get out of China but because I put a lot of time, sweat, money, blood, and tears into making that passport have the scuffs, marks, and stamps that it does. Yes I have other physical trinkets and little things that have been to many countries with me, but the only thing to go everywhere with me, to have seen it all, and to be so instrumental in getting me places is that little blue book with a picture of red haired me and a signature where I didn't even spell my own name right. It's weird, quirky, a little messy, well traveled and dressed in blue. It's me.

At 2 pm I got my little book back with a full page visa telling me that I got the double entry permit. Woohoo. Of we go! We hustled back to the hotel, grabbed our bags and booked flights leaving out of Shenzhen, China later that night. We navigated a labyrinth of subway lines and reached the border between Hong Kong and China. Despite a little bit of confusion and waiting, we crossed with no problem and hopped on another subway which we took from one end of the line to the other and got to the airport with plenty of time. An upgrade to First Class put smiles back on our weary faces. We had been on subways for 3 hours. The upgrade got us lounge access which was much more appreciated as our flight was delayed. Then delayed again. And again. We finally left Shenzhen at just a few minutes shy of midnight and landed in Guilin, China shortly after 1 am. We took a very exhausting 40 minute taxi ride to our hostel, woke up the sleeping attendant, found our room, fumbled with the A/C for 15 minutes, and crashed.