Phil and Red's Excellent Adventure

I arrived at 6pm today. I have great stories, i need time to formulate them. I will post them either today or tomorrow. Cheers everyone!....

This is a long one. Basically, after I got back to the hotel, I called John Zhang, the principal of the school I was gonna be working at, to tell him that I missed the 2pm ferry because the VISA office was late with my documents. He told me to call him when I got my ferry ticket. By this time, after walking all around Hong Kong and doing junk, I was pretty sweaty. It was around 90 degrees with equal humidity. The front desk allowed me to go hop in the shower in the exercise room so I could freshen up. Got done with that and felt great. It was about 300pm by now, so I grabbed my bags and a taxi and headed out to the Ferry Depot. My taxi driver was…interesting. He had lots of bodily noises: many burps and clearing of the throats n such. Kinda like me, but not classy. He then proceeded to ask me political questions:
-“Who are you giving a ticket for?”
-Excuse me?
-“Ticket…who are you going to give a ticket to in November?”
-Oh. Who am I gonna vote for?
-“Yes”
-Trogdor. (see www.homestarrunner.com and click on Strombad emails)
By that time we had arrived at the ferry depot. He told me to watch my money pocket.
Trying to get the ticket to Zhongshan was pretty humorous since there were like 10 ticket counters and I couldn’t find the one for Zhongshan. I found it after a couple rounds of checking the flashing signs. I bet I looked like a jackass. I also prolly looked paranoid trying to be conscious of the people around me as to not make an easy target for pick pocketers.
I got my ticket and went the departure area. My ferry was leaving at 4pm so I didn’t get a much of a chance to call John, and I couldn’t find a fone. So, I figured, they will have a fone in Zhongshan port won’t they? They didn’t.
So the ferry ride was pretty fine. Nothing spectacular happened, we hit one wave that sent dishes flying in the kitchen, that’s it. They were playing this bizarre movie on the TV (most Chinese films are bizarre). Simon Lam (Jet Li’s police friend in The Black Mask) was one of the leads and his character was quite goofy. The plot entailed a weird love rectangle and dealt with android babies…like I said…bizarre. It would prollly make more sense if I had the subtitles. It was a pretty fast ferry as well. The Boblo Boat on steroids. Only nicer.
Now, in HK, the ferry port had tons of stuff everywhere, pictures, electronic boards on the wall that tell you when a boat is leaving, pop machines, advertisements, etc etc. Zhongshan had none of this. It was a long, lonely white concrete hallway with dirt on the walls that seems to have accumulated over the years or thru construction. It was so nice to get off the ferry and see the Immigration officers look so darn happy.
After I made it thru the welcoming customs officers, I made my way down the rest of the hallway until there was a man at a desk. From his desk, I saw the exit where about 30 chinese taxi drivers had accumulated, all with the “eye of the tiger”. So, I went to the man at the desk and asked, “deen-wha?” (which I think means fone in cantonese) in addition I made the universal fone symbol, the thumb and pinky finger extended and held up to your ear. He said yes and pointed near the exit. So I was like, ok, the foone must be outside. It wasn’t. What was outside was about 10 chinese taxi drivers trying to take my bags and trying to say "taxi". It wasn’t about their 5th time I understood and said "no thanks". So, I scanned the area around for a fone, but there was none. All the while I had people speaking long sentences of Cantonese/Mandarain at me. Try to keep your composure when you're:
1. trying to think of a plan of action for contacting John
2. entering a complete foreign country
3. dealing hardcore taxi drivers intent on you using their services and trying to talk to you
4. doing your best to be aware that no one is trying to pick pocket you
5. and trying to respond in the only Cantonese you do know and trying to understand them.
I thought I was doing well until a British/Aussie woman came over to me and asked if
I was lost, cause “you look like you are lost”. I told her my issue and she gave me her card. All the while this was going on, a man, who I thought was a taxi driver or an escort offered me the use of his cellfone, after the 3rd offer, I took him up on it. I was afraid he would then want me to go in his taxi. My mind was all over the place. He was really nice.
I prolly wouldn’t have look so lost if I hadn’t put the fone# in my bag and forgotten where I put it. I found it after a couple minutes and got a hold of John. He said he was sending out a man in a gawdy van to pick me up. I will have fotos of this hilarious van soon. I gave the fone back to the very kind man and profusely thanked him. I tried to speak some Cantonese with him for a few minutes, but to no avail. I didn’t understand his long replies. He gave me his card though. I made a note on it that I would contact him in the future when my Mandarin/Cantonese was better, take him out for a beer.
I proceeded to hang out at the waiting area by myself for about 30 minutes while I waited for the van. But during this time, I wrote down all this on a piece of paper to type up later. Every once in awhile, a port authority person would walk by and look at me. No one gave me any trouble. The van pulled up and I laughed...