Sunday is Dim Sum Day

I want to start off by saying that, in my unprofessional opinion, the best dim sum in San Francisco, Oakland, and Vancouver is on the level with Hong Kong. However, the little shops selling buns on the street in HK are a world away from little shops in SF. In fact, the most memorable piece of dim sum I had was a sublimely rich custard tart from a little shop next to our hotel (deep, deep in the Western District) right after we first got in.

Now, being in Hong Kong on a weekend, it was obvious that dim sum needed to be a priority. However, after getting in Thursday night, we wanted to skip town on Sunday because
a) HK just isn't much of a town for touring...what seems to be special about it is the people and the culture, which as tourons (tourist + moron) we weren't privy to
b) We were anxious to get on with our trip into Big China (expect a future post titled "Little Trouble in Big China. I think that will need to happen).
c) The weather sucked. Marine fog, yadda yadda, we couldn't take in any sights that required any literal seeing.

So Saturday was there, our intended plans were blown due to weather, so we figured it was big dim sum time; at home Saturday is a busy day for it second to Sunday. After wandering hungrily around some gardens, we descended into faceless connect mall land to go to supposedly the best dim sum in HK...we got there at 11am and found...nobody there at all in a creepily dead building. Totally confused by this, we decided that the can't-fail approach was to go to the fancy-shmancy place in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel (you know, the one that has obnoxious ads every week in the Economist). Man Wah takes dim sum to the high cuisine level. The dumplings were true delicacies; the tofu-skin wrapped goose liver was sublime. But, in the end, the delicate treatment killed the soul of the dim sum. The chaos, the carts, and the pointing at mystery items isn't just half the fun.

So there was hope then that we might make it to Guangzhou in time to have some there for the real experience, but that would have required a normal and swift approach to traveling. Actually, we might have been able to make it if we'd taken the 9am Sunday ferry to a distant suburb of Guangzhou, but that company didn't convince us that they were sufficiently close to the city to make it worth our while. We decided instead to go with the 10:40 ferry to a slightly-less-far suburb that has a brand new metro line. So we went and had some more dim-sum while waiting for that one; but nothing worth more than one sentence (although running clauses might be justified).

Of course, once we got out onto the water, most of what we could see was fog. Two and a half hours of fog with the occasional mind-bogglingly large container shipping port. I really wanted to get some idea of the industrialization of the Pearl River Delta. In many ways it didn't look that different from the San Francisco Bay up by Richmond (maybe it was the fog), but there was so much of it. The ships were fascinating as well; there were a lot of tiny rust buckets and minature container ships which presumably were used for transshipment up the river. The industrialization was also brought home by the two Australian guys sitting behind us discussing at length what color widgets should be on the doodads they were having manufactured; it made me proud to be unemployed.

Once we got to the end of our Conrad-free trip up the river (and I was so hopeful after my earlier Heart of Darkness cracks), we breezed through low key immigration and were shuffled onto a bus to get to the metro station we thought would be at the terminal. It's standard traveller kidnap; you can't communicate with the driver and hope that you can trust the people who put you there. But it was all good, and we got on the shiny new metro (with English announcements no less), went right under the city, and eventually emerged at the train station.

Pure chaos.

We'd wandered randomly in Kowloon markets and shopping malls, lost in mobs of hundreds on single sidewalks (I swear, all of Hong Kong is shopping malls), but this was another level. Hong Kong's chaos felt very organized; it was stressful to stop or think, but there was a sense of order and purpose. I think everyone in Hong Kong knew the rules and obeyed them. But Guangzhou's train station on a Sunday afternoon was an affront to my delicate senses.

It think the best example was the crosswalk on a six lane road across from the station. When the crossing light turned green, the flood of cars increased and we were all almost killed by a city bus. By the time we could walk, the light was red again so the pedestrians just had to block traffic.

So, we took the obvious solution and walked next door and bought plane tickets. We then went across the street to the city's Orchid Garden which were a serene oasis. The gardens we've seen over here are really lovely in general, and they had a formal tea service available at this one as well as orchids galore. It all was a good reminder after the chaos of just why we wanted to come here.

So after all that, we took the ridiculously long shuttle to the airport, sat around for a while, hopped in our first-class seats (all that was available; for $30 more) and flew to Guilin. Once we'd left first class, we humped our bags and checked into a backpaker's hostel. That's how we roll.