Walking in circles can pay off

After doing some writing this morning I was ripped off by a tea store vendor. I went to the shop to by a gift for my parents - a beautiful porcelain cup which cost about 25$ or 2,5€. When they started wrapping it up for me the woman at the store started selling me tea. Which I don't need. I told her no, but then she said if I buy a bag of tea the cup is for free. So I said okay, not realizing that the basic jasmine tea I had agreed to buy cost 180$ or 18€. For TEA! That's got to be some friggin' kick-ass tea, I tell you. I'm sending it to my tea-enthusiast friend Noora, who better a) drink the damn stuff and b) lie to me if it's crap.

The way I spent the rest of my day sounds like the beginning of a joke: a Finn, a Canuck and a Hongkonger went out to dinner... But that's pretty much what happened. My local friend here, Margot, has a Couch Surfer staying at her place for two nights, a lovely Canadian woman named Feleisha. After my tea shopping catastrophe I went to the Kowloon Park Swimming Pool with her to do some laps. Gotta love having an Olympic-size swimming pool right next to your hotel. Afterwards we went for a walk and ended up drinking, oh yes, tea at a café a couple of blocks from the swimming pool. And later we met Margot in Yau Ma Tei for dinner.

Temple Street Night Market

The area is known for it's famous Temple Street night market, which is spread around numerous streets in the Yau Ma Tei area. Souvenirs, fake designer stuff - pretty much anything is available here. Even sex toys that seemed to interest mostly elderly women who were picking out dildos at the stands. And of course everything is ridiculously cheap - and always possible to bargain down to an even cheaper price. If you know how.

When we first walked around just me and Feleisha, I thought I'd buy a mahjong as my Hong Kong souvenir. When we asked around for prices for a small mahjong set we got 180$ or even 450$. I declined and decided to wait for Margot. We met with her and went for dinner and after that did another round on the same street. And doing that same walk around the market with a local was a smart choice. That girl can bargain! When Margot asked how much for a mahjong, the same dude who asked me 450$ for it eventually sold it to me for 120$. A small victory, I didn't get screwed twice in one day thanks to my lovely HK friend.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention earlier, on the first couple of days here it was kind of a challenge to locate my hotel entrance between all the souvenir and electronics shops on my block, so one day I took a mental note that it's right after the blinking Sony sign. Well, that turned out to be a shit landmark.

One Sony, two Sony, and spot the third one?

Yes, there is not one, not two, but THREE blinking Sony signs in my block alone! So that kind of went down the toilet there. But now I know my way. Having accidentally taken a turn into a couple of those electronics stores when looking for the hotel entrance and then tried to explain myself out of there without having to buy anything has been incentive enough to make me learn the right way to my Hong Kong home.