Hong Kong if it Rains We'll Get Wet

Yesterday

I got up early for a new walking tour. it looks like it was going to rain-I remember the immortal line "If it rains-we'll get wet". I got the line from the night before, after Ross and Emily we're about to get married in London in an old house that was demolished (where Rachel decides to fly to London to tell Ross she loves him)-that's right-Friends is always on and is inside my head. After being in Hong Kong for over a week, one might ask what type of walking tour one would like.

This one talked about the history of Hong Kong.

(A) The tour guide's father swam from China to Hong Kong back in the 1970's. His family was composed of artists and creative people, which the communist government tried to stamp out-and didn't give food rations cards. They we're starving and swam across the channel to Hong Kong. The father's cousin was eaten by a shark on the journey.
(B) The Chinese government has been slowly causing democracy to disappear since the handover in 1997. While there was an election for the leader of Hong Kong in 2014, only 1200 folks we're allowed to vote. This resulted in huge protests in the street which took place over 2 months.
(C) Feng Shui results in a lot of big decisions in Hong Kong. In the financial crises on 2007-2009, HSBC hired a Feng Shui expert to redesign every floor of it's headquarters, after it's stock price declined.
(D) In Chinese weddings-an invitation card is presented, along with a requirement that the invitee has to give the wedding couple something like $300 Hong Kong dollars, since living expenses are so high, so people tried to decline invitations.

It was a most interesting tour. it ended close to 1:00. The big deal of the day was to go back to the Chinese Visa office and see if my Visa application was approved. I wasn't feeling too hopeful. I didn't have a flight scheduled when i applied. My application was messy and a phone number was wrong. I had to go back at 4:00. If I didn't get the Visa, and still wanted to go to China, I would have to reapply and not find out until Monday. To pass the time, i rode the Metro about 45 minutes-to a light rail line. This was sort of an ugly part of Hong Kong-old industrial style housing. i rode the light rail about 20 minutes and took the train back to the metro. Before getting on t he light rail-I found a branch of that cheap sushi place, and had some sushi.

That passed the time-I took the metro back downtown to the Chinese Visa place. The lady asked if I was there to pick up my visa-I said yes. She went in the back and checked and said the passport was still at the Chinese embassy. I later found out that there was an issue with all of the American passports. I waited and waited. I just knew mine would get denied, which meant staying in Hong Kong for a longer time then I would have liked.

At close to 6:00, the passports finally arrived. It turns out that the three Americans we're all approved. Rather then a standard 10 year Visa we all received a single entry 30-day visa-which we we're fine with.

i went back to the hostel relieved, and found out that there was a dim sum dinner arranged by the hostel. I went out with about 9 others and ate dim sum, and then to a bar for a beer. We had two additional beers from 7-11 afterwards. I and another fellow went back to the hostel after that. I haven't drank more then a beer or two at once since travelling, and that wasn't a good idea.