Author: rodney

This is the famous Kosmo Coffee on Wellington Street in Lan Kwai Fong.

They make coffee and tea and they have snacks. They’re also down the street from California Fitness.
Now what makes them worth an entry? They are the only other place (aside from Zambra Coffee in Wan Chai) I’ve found in Hong Kong that has FREE Wi-Fi. Buy a drink or a snack and park your butt. Their internet is pretty fast too.

When the British took possession of the New Territories, there was an Qing outpost there called the Kowloon Walled City. Although it was abandoned in 1899, there was still no real arrangement on who had jurisidiction over it. Over the years, tenements and slums grew up around it. Read here for more.
Anyhoo, it became a health hazard so the HK Government (with approval from the mainland), razed it and made it into an award winning park with history inside.

Looks so serene inside, right? There’s a neat garden too.

This is how it looks outside.

eeeeeeee

Let me see…passport, got it. Money? Dollars, baht, RMB, yen? Hong Kong, yah, dollars. SIM Card…Hong Kong, New World.

Now THAT’s a life!

You know when people that live in humid, icky areas (not California) keep saying that “you’ll get used to it”, etc etc etc?
It’s usually crap, because as they stand there in a full suit and tie, totally dry, I’m in sandals, shorts and a t-shirt, dripping sweat by the litre.
On the way in to HKG this AM (EARLY this AM), the pilot made his usual happy talk once we got to cruising altitude.
“Hong Kong is rainy with a high of 28 degrees”. I then said to myself, “a cool day, eh?”
AGGGGGGGHHH!
Of course, let me preface this with the fact that I’ve been in BKK for the past 3 days, where it’s usually 32-4 degrees with buckets of humidity…
But that’s a bit freaky, dun you agree? I think I’m going to freeze my ass off when I get back to SFO.

Yup, that’s me. Because I had to roll out of bed at 0445 to get to a check in counter for a 0645 flight back to HKG. I got in from BKK around 2330 and was updating the blog and talking on the phone until 0100. Then shower and shave and pack. Bedtime: 0200. Bleagh!
The A/C in the wing of the transit hotel where my room was was working backwards (blowing humidity instead of dry air). Because of that, my A/C in the room was also blowing cool humidity too.
If I could take that room and turn it into a walk-in humidor, that would have been perfect.
Then to add to my crankiness, my flight to HKG was on UAL. I ran into a “flight attendant” at the McDonald’s near the gate. Apparently she’s not too fond of the inflight food either?
It was a typical UAL flight. Screaming babies, indifferent service and crowded. I was sooo tired.

I ate what passed for “breakfast”, had some coffee, slipped into superhero mode (sleep mask) and passed out for 2 hours.
Of course the movie on the big screen was “National Treasure”; that may have had something to do with it…

So the flight went off without a hitch.

Nice new Airbasi jet. Seats made outta cow. Nice service (better than Southworst) and decent prices.
So I’ve landed at Changi and am stuck at the airport. Boo hoo. There’s actually a lot to do here.

There’s free internet terminals everywhere, rest areas with reclining chairs, a spa that has massage, a gym, showers and snacks and napping areas, the transit hotel that rents rooms for six hour blocks and TV everywhere!
Oh yah, for a certain reader, the shopping is pretty cool too, I think. Gotta pump money into the Singapore economy, right?
Maybe, but not tonight! =P All the shops of interest close at 0000 and reopen at 0600. Feh.

This feels soooo weird. Waiting at the gate and not at a lounge. Of course, that really wouldn’t help me on this leg of the trip because I’m not on an Star Alliance airline.
Still, just weird. There are three farangs who pulled the trash bin between them and are chowing down on KFC. Funny, the further away from the states, the more it seems like home.
Disturbing. And many of the farangs are fat slobs too.

Sooo after taking an inventory of my wallet, I’ve got 80 baht left. Not bad. I took out 3000 baht for the three days I was here mucking and eating about.
If you’re not doing “farang friendly” things, you can save a lotta money cuz generally things here are cheap.
Examples: A bottle of water, 9 baht. Lunch with a Coke at a local place: 55 baht. One day pass on the BTS Skytrain: 100 baht.
80 baht sounds like a lot. Nope. US$2.00. Not even worth exchanging. Looks cool though.