annie and i went to HK for the weekend. i’ve been going to hong kong since i was a kid, and have been all the way til last november, but always with my parents and doing family stuff.  that’s all great and fun, but i think it’s a totally different experience when it’s not a family trip.  i did go one time while on EAP, but i felt like that was more of a tourist vacation, rather than a spontaneous trip. also, we went with a giant group of people…which meant we could spend a little more on the hotel because we were stuffing a bunch of people in the room.  which leads me to the next part of our adventure: the hostel.

hotel’s in hong kong are expensive, well, most are.  by expensive, i mean $100+ per night, whereas a hostel will only cost around $20/night.  it’s very similar here in taipei.  anyway, we used hostels.com to find a hostel in hong kong for 2 nights.  it’s a very legitimate site, which lets you reserve, review, and look at pictures of the place you want to stay at.  we thought we had found a very nice hostel, good price, clean-looking and we even had our own bathroom.  almost all the reviews were positive, with the only negatives being room size and a few street peddlers on the bottom floor.  room size was no big deal for us, we were only going to be there for 2 nights and only had one suit case between the both of us.  we didn’t think the street peddlers would be a very big deal, but man, we were so wrong.

after reserving the room online, i got a confirmation email from the hostel that had a paragraph dedicated solely about the people on the 1st floor of the complex.  we were instructed to not make eye contact, conversation or listen to any one down there. it also clearly stated that these people would try to trick us into thinking that they worked at our hostel, only to have us blindly follow them into their own hostel, or elsewhere. what we were supposed to do was ignore everyone on the bottom floor take the first elevator to the 11th floor and we’d be in the good.  i read another review on hostels.com saying that although the people on the first floor were annoying, it was very easy to just ignore them at proceed to our room on the 11th floor.

we arrived on friday night, around midnight. the hostel was in a place called the Chung King Mansions.  click through to see the wikipedia entry.  calton had asked me if we were staying there and i said no, because i was under the impression that Chung King Mansions was the name of some other hostel in tsim tsa shui.  the reason why he had asked us was because he wanted to make sure we WERE NOT staying there.  i highly recommend you read the wikipedia entry.  in a nutshell, the mansions are a giant building, with several blocks (almost like a tiny enclosed city), that is infamous for illegal immigrants, drug trafficking, prostitution and really shady foreigners, oh ya, and of course, cheap hostels.

on with the story, so we arrive around midnight and we see the mansions. outside the steps there were around 10 nigerian, chinese, indian and middle eastern people outside.  i don’t mean to sound rascist, i’m just trying to tell the story as vividly as i can.  it honestly doesn’t matter WHAT they were, all that mattered was that it just FELT shady.  they were, of course, trying to get people to go into their hostels, just like the email said.  except they were really in our faces about it. we hadn’t even entered the building yet. we ignored them as instructed and entered the building, and as a side note, there was urine on the ground, INSIDE the building.  we walked straight to the elevator, which had a very long line.  the elevators themselves were small as hell and could only hold like 6 people at a time.  while in line, some guy was trying to speak to us about something i had no idea about, and he was getting mad that we weren’t responding to him.  luckily for us, it was our turn for the elevator so we could get away. the elevator ride was also a nightmare. we shared with a few, let’s just say, shady looking dudes.  i literally stood with my back to the door in fear that they would try and jack our stuff.

we finally arrived at our hostel which didn’t look that bad.  the owner was really nice and helpful, she also spoke mandarin which was nice.  the room? totally NOT what we saw on hostels.com. it looked like a room in an insane asylum.  whenever we flushed the toilet, water would just gush out on to the floor. it was disgusting. we only had 2 sheets to sleep on and no blanket. no windows either. there were also these little holes throughout the room, so we had this weird feeling that someone was looking at us. after our experience on the first floor and the disappointment that was our room, we went online on our iphone/ipods (luckily this place had wifi), and read up on the beauty that is the Chung King Mansions. after reading all of it, we decided that we needed to get out of there, pronto. that night, we couldn’t sleep at all. every little sound that was made, i was super aware and in full defense mode.  morning came, we gathered our stuff and told the manager we had to leave and she thankfully gave us half of our nightly rent back. we went back to the first floor and realized that the entrance wasn’t as scary as it was a night, but it still wasn’t cool.  while very glad we were out of there, we also found ourselves homeless in hong kong.

annie took a little video on her iphone of our place and put it on her blog. i really wish we could have filmed everything else, like the entrance and all the shady people, but in all honesty, i really feared for the safety of our equipment and more importantly, us. click through to view the video.

now on to the rest of the blog entry….

after leaving that hell hole, we met up with michelle for some dim sum.

we ordered 12 dishes between just the 3 of us, and we managed to finish all of it!

michelle was telling us about how ever since she was little, her mom would tell her to, by all means necessary, avoid the chung king mansions.  stories about drugs, murders, gang activity…all that good stuff. if the locals are afraid of that place, there is absolutely no reason why you should EVER find yourself there, unless you really want to see it first-hand.

now on to story number 2.  after lunch, michelle had to attend classes which left annie and i to look for a new place to stay for the night. she had recommended some good places to stay at for decent prices, but they were all booked for the weekend.  at that point, we were desperate. we were meeting up with some friends later that night in wan chai, so we decided to go to the area and just start walking into any place we could find. we stumbled upon this nice little hotel on the 2nd floor of a building that looked decent. just to be sure though, we asked the hotel guy to show us the room we’d be staying in, and it looked alright. the price wasn’t bad so we were going to book it. annie asked him if they took credit cards because we didn’t have enough cash, but they only accepted cash. the plan was to go the atm, get some cash and book the room, but as we were leaving to the elevator, a man and woman, who was CLEARLY a prostitute walked in and bluntly asked if they had hourly rates, in which the hotel guy happily said YES. needless to say, we didn’t go back to the sex hotel, as our friends like to call it.

it seemed we were doomed to spend the night at the airport, which was honestly the only place we knew we’d be somewhat safe. we even went to the hong kong marriot, which we found out was $400US+ / night, not exactly in our budget. annie had this tourist map that listed about a dozen hotels, so we pretended to be guests of the marriot to use their free phones. we luckily found this nice little hotel in wan chai that was only about $150/night, which was basically the cheapest we could find. we figured, let’s pay the extra $100 just so we can feel secure. the room was VERY nice.  almost too nice.  it was seriously a godsend. a huge weight off our shoulders and now it was time to actually start enjoying hong kong.

annie’s favorite thing about hong kong : 許留山

it’s basically a fresh fruit drink (our favorite was mango), mixed with some coconut milk and TONS of assorted jellies.

after settling in to our new place, we decided to take a little 20 minute boat ride to lamma island and grab some fresh seafood. it was a little expensive, but totally worth it. we can get decent seafood here in taiwan, but it’s just not as good as cantonese style seafood.  this was one of the only things we really looked forward to eating while in hk.

so glad to be out of the chung king mansions.

i put all the pictures of the food in one picture, haha.

clockwise from top left: steamed crab w/ garlic, fried prawns (these things were huge, like mini lobsters), shrimp fried rice and steamed fish with green onion.

after our ginormous meal, we went out with meiwa and thomas for a night of drinks, dice and new friends.  we went to this little bar in wan chai which was a really cool place.  almost reminded me of the f- place here in taiwan or even crazy hook in LA.  i prefer this place rather than LKF, where it’s all foreigners and expensive drinks.  besides, hanging out with the locals is always more fun.

dice dice and more dice

always a good time with these 2

next few pictures are of us making random crazy faces

a really fun bunch

a good night

i’d also like to add that every single one of these people we met were all very surprised we survived our night at the chung king mansions. like i said, even the locals are deathly afraid of that place.

next morning, obligatory post-drinking dim sum.

thanks to thomas for purposely taking the picture when i wasn’t ready.

after eating we walked around causeway bay, of course stopping by 許留山 for a drink. before we knew it, we had to head back to the airport to catch our flight back to taipei.  but before flying, we showed up super early just so we could have this!

we’re now back in taipei, still recovering from our night of no sleep at the mansions. at the time it was scary as hell, but now it has turned into an interesting story we can tell all our friends!  it’s always nice to see all our HK friends.  soon, calton will be one of them, which is another reason why we’ll be going back even more often! hope you guys had fun reading about our adventures.  i’m in no way a “writer” so hopefully it all made sense.  i’m sure i’m missing a few details but whatever. in the meantime though, michelle, thomas and meiwa~you should start planning your trip up here so we can take you guys out!!!!

actually, i should really start thinking about what i need to pack for our vacation to the states

so i bought jonhom.com sometime back in 2003. since then, it has gone through only 3 makeovers. the first one was simple, yet effective. i had no idea what i was going to do with the domain except host a few pictures for my…wait for it…XANGA, so this was all the domain was: a crappy banner.

it was just a simple jpeg that i made in, oh, let’s say 5 minutes.  it was like this for something like 2 years, until mike fujii had pointed out that i had spelled “welcome” wrong.  to this day, i still have people telling me that it’s mispelled on my blog(s), but i figured i’d keep it as a running gag on all my blogs.

as time progressed, i started using the site for more than just hosting pictures.  my ska band, 1337, had started playing again so we needed a place to host pictures, demos and videos. after 1337 disbanded, i had started a “solo project” that i had decided to dedicate the domain too.  just when you thought the main page couldn’t get any uglier, this what it was for quite a while.

yep, a picture, some text and some links.  saying it was ugly would be the biggest understatement.  it took me a few months to realize that it needed some kind of face lift. i didn’t like all the text on it, so i decided to “clean” it up a bit.  so for the past year or so, it has looked like this.

not much better, but it got the point across.  but now that i’ve got some semi-legit things going on for me, i decided today that i would give the front page a well deserved redesign.  now, it’s not much, but i’m going to have to say this is the best that the site has ever looked, since it’s birth.

yep.

it’s almost been a year since we moved here and it has probably been one of the quickest and most exciting year of my life. since moving here, we’ve met, what feels like, a bazillion really awesome people.  these are not people just from the States or locals, they’re people from all over the world.  just to name a few, we’ve made friends from germany, belgium, australia, new zealand, and korea. it’s pretty awesome. taipei is really a great place to meet people from around the world…something that isn’t really that easy to come by in the US, where everyone is well, american…or mexican or canadian.  while it’s great to meet a lot of really cool people from around the world, the only problem is that many only come here temporarily to study or to work.  we’ve already had a handful of friends leave and it kind of sucks.  either way though, no one ever says goodbye here, it’s always “see you later.”  that’s always nice.

these 2 left taiwan not too long ago.  andrew and leslie, both from texas.  we never really got a chance to hang out too much or get to really know each other, but whenever we went out it was always a blast.  if any of you 2 are reading this, know that if i ever find myself in texas at some point, i expect a crawfish boil and vice versa, if you’re ever back in taiwan (which i’m sure you will be), see you at spark.  haha

oh yes, and this girl needs to come back more.

more pics from that night

not so proud about this one

a completely non-related picture…watching glee and binge eating/drinking with calton and juliana (a common occurrence)

took some of juliana’s friend out to darts

juliana with two very handsome cantonese men

then off to opus

earlier this week, annie and i experimented making salsa, tortilla’s and carne asada.  remember that ingredients, especially for mexican food, are not very easy to come by over here.  our experiment worked out pretty well, so we decided  to have juliana and calton try it out last night.

the complete product

then calton brought this really fancy chocolate cake from this place called awfully chocolate

only having this 50mm to shoot with is getting pretty annoying

after stuffing our selves silly with carne asada and chocolate cake, we decided to watch paranormal activity which may or may not have contributed to my lack of sleep last night, haha ><  if you haven’t seen it, it’s pretty creepy, so go watch it if you’re into that kind of thing.

so why is this entry called “counting down”? well, next week annie and i will be in hong kong, taking care of some passport issues before going back home for august!  for the sake of nothing at all, let’s just say that we’ll be home in the next few weeks! exact dates aren’t important, right?  either way, we are counting down the days until we can see all you cuties back home!

taipei is a great place to live. in fact, i couldn’t really imagine living anywhere else in the world right now. the only thing i would change about this place is the weather.  it’s really not that bad though.  the fall is nice, almost like weather in CA. winter can get a bit cold but it’s nothing we can’t handle (i mean, we survived korea).  spring is awesome, but summer? it sucks.  it’s hot, humid and rainy, especially in june. for some reason, june days start off nice and sunny, but we’ll get heavy rain all in the afternoon.  it was, how can i say, very predictable unpredictable rain. it especially sucked when i had to scooter to work in the afternoons.  i wear a poncho, but that thin piece of nylon can only do so much.  ANYWAY, the point of this whole intro is to say that annie, juliana, calton and i got sick of all the rain and decided to take a weekend trip to kenting (墾丁), which was also where we played for spring scream. on with the pictures…

unlike our spring scream trip, we took the high speed rail. it was amazing. we got to our destination in about 3 hours, compared to a 9 hour bus ride from hell.

beanie time

we arrived at around 1am, so all we did was check in to our hostel and sleep.  we were so used to waking up and seeing cloudy skies and rain, but not here.

oh, and my nice wide lens broke on me.  so i used a 50mm the whole trip.

first thing we did? get scooters

annie can drive now!

on our way to find annie’s dream beach

first beach was called white sand beach…but the sand wasn’t very white AND it wasn’t annie’s dream beach

cute dog

bashing coconuts

so annie’s dream beach. when we were here for spring scream, annie kept talking about this one beach with nice sand and clear water.  we tried looking for it back in april but had no luck.  this time she was determined to find it but clearly, this one wasn’t it. look at all the crap in the water that hit us!

scooters sitting pretty

off to see the richard nixon rock

i lost my sandal

a very mosquito infested area

the most southern tip of taiwan

glorious

oh, and yes, calton and i are wearing trendy taiwan trucker hats. they were like $3! we’re so cool.

like that one painting

not being creepy

all of us not being creepy

lighthouse!!

one thing i wish we had in taipei

i think this may be my favorite night market in taiwan

woke up the next morning and decided to continue our mission to find annie’s beach…and WE FOUND IT.

pretty happy

i look naked ><

tide pools too!

she also found the yo gabba gabba towel she wanted!!

it was a short but very sweet little vacation.  it was super nice to just go down there and hang out. don’t get me wrong, spring scream was a blast, but it was also very stressful.  let’s see, what else is new……oh, our record is done mixing!! it is waiting to get mastered and we’re currently working on album artwork etc etc.  i think we’re aiming for a Fall release.  we’ll also be home for august so i’m super excited for that!!