Stanley Part II

Wow Wow Wow… I can’t believe that I am on my way home now. I know its been a long time since I have posted on this blog. I have been trying to get into the swing of finals..studying and seeing Hong Kong before I leave for who knows how long. I guess I’ll hit the main points over the last couple weeks, and then talk about my finals experience, my family visiting and my last days in HK.

So about a week after I got back from Thailand, Sumana, Ben, Evan and I went over to Stanley Market again so that we could take a look at trinkets to buy for our friends. We took the MTR to Chai Wan and then took a minibus over to Stanley Market from the MTR stop. It was a pretty crazy ride that wound in and out of the mountains, across the Tai Tam reservoir and over to Stanley New Street where we proceeded to get off the bus and walk on over to the market. We went in and out of each shop and discovered that everything was much more expensive at Stanley than anywhere else. All of us had previously thought that we had seen lower prices at Stanley but we were completely wrong.

It was a really weird experience going from the city out to Stanley because as soon as you get off the minibus you are surrounded by expats from all over the world (mostly the US and Europe). I am sure that has something to do with why the prices are so astronomical in Stanley. We found many shops that would accept US dollars instead of Hong Kong dollars. I would never pay in USD..that just seems like a scam waiting to happen. After looking around for quite a while, we decided that we were getting hungry so we went over to the waterfront and found a multitude of restaurants offering only western food (odd, I think) and so we sat down at a restaurant and ordered (veggie burgers are delicious!) and shared a couple laughs about just how odd Stanley market really is. The people that live there seem to be shielded from the “real hong kong.” They are perfectly content in their belief that Hong Kong is simply the beach going, high priced markets, European version of HK…I have read a number of discussion boards online where they talk about Mong Kok and other ridiculously busy areas as “too crowded” and “to be avoided at all times.” Stanley market, we noticed, had more quality control than any other place that we had seen. There was a little more customer service (at the restaurants) and almost non-existent bargaining. After eating, we wandered around the market some more and ended up with little things like postcards, silk ties (10 HKD!!) and shot glasses (as this was the only place that we had seen fairly decent ones).

We found our way back to the bus depot, hopped on a double decker bus headed back into town and sat in the very front row at the top of the bus. Can I just tell you that double decker buses are the most exciting things since sliced bread? I absolutely loved sitting at the front in the top of the bus just because it looks like you are going to hit people and trees and the bus in front of you! That sounds kind of odd, I think, but its definitely something that I highly recommend if you ever get a chance. We got back to campus by the evening and as far as I can remember, we called it a day.