Being alone in this place has made me feel like a huge tourist, and I haven’t had the courage to go whole hog and snap pics of everything. Plus, I didn’t know how long my phone would last, and I didn’t have wifi anyway, so I kept my first trip fairly low tech. Future notes will definitely have pretty pictures. After a 15 hour plane ride, I had to negotiate the Hong Kong metro system to the University with luggage in tow. This required: Exchanging money at the airport. My rule of thumb is that US$1 = HK$8, roughly, but the airport was exchanging at a rate of 1 to 7, which sucks. But I knew I had some trains to catch and maybe a cab ride or two, plus I was starving, so I changed out 60 bucks, figuring that would get me around and fed for the night. Three train changes. There’s a special train from the airport into the city, and then a metro across the city, and another across the bay into Kowloon. A cab ride from the train station into the university. I had to do all this without a working phone, which is basically the only thing that keeps me alive on a daily basis. Luckily I saved a map of the university, and directions to my building; otherwise, I was depending on the public transportation system and the kindness of strangers. So first of all, the Hong Kong subway system is amazing. The trains are huge, maybe 50% wider than New York trains, they all have clear wifi signal (but have to pay for it, and I didn’t), and clear cell reception (half the people on the train were on their phones). The loudspeaker system was clear as a bell, the trains were […]