Coronavirus and changing behaviours

The number of cases of coronavirus in Hong Kong really haven't dramatically increased.  There are a couple new reports here and there, but it really doesn't seem to have ballooned or jumped at all.  Fingers crossed that this continues to be the case, but based purely on the numbers currently available, there definitely seems to be a disproportionate response to the coronavirus by the general population.  Surgical mask prices continue to remain sky high (though there don't seem to be shortages anymore as there are now plenty of stores stocking them), hoarding of random goods is still happening, and there continues to be large groups of people terrified of even going outside.

The food and beverage sector as well as the retail sector have been hit hard.  Another sector which has been particularly hard hit are taxis.  Some people have stopped taking taxis entirely because of a concern that they can't be sure who the taxi drivers have come into contact with.  It's created the odd scene that I've never witnessed before of long ranks of taxis at the taxi stands with no lines of people.  This happens even during the evening rush hours in the CBD. 

Unsurprisingly, a lot of the initial panicked behaviours have now backfired.

Rumours and terror drove people to clean out the shelves completely of toilet paper and rice (though not the brown rice....), but the stores of course responded with the restocking orders.  It seems like there never actually was any real shortages, just shortages in locations due to the sudden surge.  Now there is too much rice and too much toilet paper in the stores.  Since most people went out and bought about two years worth of both, some of these stores may be stuck with an oversupply of these products for a while....

Through all of these problems and issues, there have been some occasional bright spots.  One of the big responses to the coronavirus in China has been a near complete shutdown of the businesses and industry on the mainland.  Shops have been shuttered and factories have now remained closed since Chinese new year.  In Hong Kong, this industrial shutdown has meant the most prolonged clear skies I've seen in my time living in the city.

The air has been fresh and from my apartment in the Mid Levels, the lack of any haze means that I can see all the way across to the hills in the New Territories.

Placebo or not

I've never been a good sleeper.  I often struggle to get to sleep and then I'll toss and turn through the night.  I'm not sure what the cause of it all is, but it's definitely annoying.  I remember when I was in the dorm rooms at boarding school, after lights out, I would lay there slowly trying to sleep.  Meanwhile, some of my fellow boarders would be dead to the world and snoring within five minutes.  I was always incredibly jealous of their ability to fall asleep so quickly.  It seemed like a gift to be able to sleep without effort.

Lately, I've been reading a bit about the benefits to sleeping of the "weighted blanket".  I've even got a few friends who have started trying it.  The concept seems to be simple enough, that sleeping with a greater weight helps to push down on your body like a kind of "hug" which in turn helps a person sleep.  There don't seem to be that many actual studies on whether it works, but there are plenty of anecdotal reports about its effectiveness.

Now, I realise that anecdotal evidence is the weakest of all the different types of evidence, but I didn't see the harm in trying it.  For the risk of a small amount of money, I could improve my sleep and that seemed like a very fair gamble to take.  So I jumped on Amazon and made my purchase.  Within a few days it arrived at work and I had the fun task of lugging it home (at 20lb, it's definitely not light).

After a few nights, I felt like I was sleeping better.  I had no actual way of telling other than I did notice I was able to get to sleep more quickly and I didn't seem to be waking up so much during the night.  The most interesting observation of all was that I found that I was generally waking up in the same position as when I went to sleep.  It seems to be a success so far.

Coronavirus and the retail apocalypse

Hong Kong feels extremely strange at the moment.

The last year or so has been pretty rough for many businesses with the impact of the protests, but this is another level entirely.  Malls and other shopping areas have been emptied of people and businesses are starting to struggle.

During the worst of the protests, you could still generally avoid the most heavily affected areas.  If you weren't around the areas where there were protests, you life would still continue on for the most part without any disruption.  In fact, if you weren't actively following it on the news and your public transport wasn't impacted, you wouldn't even really know that the protests were happening at all.

This time, the impact has spread across most of the city.  Tourist numbers, particular from China, have completely collapsed.  I have read that the daily inflow of visitors from China has dropped from approximately 100,000 people a day, down to less than 1,000 a day.  These visitors from China represent the vast majority of all tourism into the city.  Everywhere you go, you'll see restaurants and shops closing, sometimes temporarily, sometimes permanently.  The shopping malls are incredibly quiet, with some of the more famous brands actively slashing their prices, something which you don't normally see in Hong Kong.

It doesn't seem to be hitting any particular area or class of shops either.

The fanciest malls, such as Pacific Place in the Admiralty area is extremely quiet and the crowds of high end shoppers are gone.  On the other end of the spectrum, even the McDonalds near my office has emptied of people.  It was incredible to see it so quiet at lunchtime on a weekday.  It's normally full of people at lunchtime jostling to get to the front of the queue.  Restaurants all through Hong Kong have been trying to deal with this problem through scaledowns or through outright closure.  It would be an incredibly tough time to be working in F&B at the moment.

After watching a movie on Saturday night, I decided to walk home with my friend.  We were both shocked at the lack of cars as we approached Central.  The intersection is normally crowded with taxis and other cars, and even the streets themselves normally have people wandering around.

Instead, there was nothing.

As we walked further along, we saw a cab rank with at least a dozen taxis patiently waiting.  It's a far cry from the days when it's the people who were patiently waiting for a cab.

More running

The lights of Hong Kong from up on Bowen Road are incredible.

The weather in Hong Kong is perfect for running right now.  It's nice and cool and even the humidity is down.

Running along Bowen Road at night is one of the strangest, but also underrated experiences I've had in Hong Kong.  The road itself winds its way through the forests halfway up the mountain.  It should be dark and tucked away.  To an extent it is, you feel the nature around you and you get the benefit of the peacefulness of being in the mountain.  Yet at the same time, you can't escape the city.  The glow of the city lights are so intense and they illuminate the path. 

Running through the forest, you hear the nature, the animals, the water and the rustling of the trees as the wind blows through.  Meanwhile you still see clearly.  Nothing is shrouded and you almost feel as though all of the natural surroundings sit within an even larger artificial construct.  To an extent, that's probably the best way of thinking about it.

Coronavirus and toilet paper madness

This is getting ridiculous.  People have completely lost their collective minds in Hong Kong.

After some rumours came out that there were manufacturing issues in China that could impact the production of toilet paper, people in Hong Kong decided to go completely CRAZY.  People descended on the supermarkets and vacuumed up all of the toilet paper they could get their hands on.  Stores were left completely barren of toilet paper....

The rumours are that either the factories making the toilet paper have all been shut down because of China's precautions with regards to the coronavirus, or that these factories have had all their raw materials stripped from them to go to the manufacture of surgical masks.  Whatever the "reason", I don't buy into it.  This seems far more like a fake rumour that has spiralled out of control and led to another case of panic in Hong Kong.  Even if there "was" a shortage, I don't see the need to go and buy several hundred rolls of toilet paper at once.  Some may say that there are people who are taking advantage of the situation and hoarding for the purpose of resale (which is entirely possible), but it's also clear that a significant number of people are just panicking and losing their grip on their good sense.  Why else would you need to buy several hundred rolls of toilet paper in one go?  Looking at some of the volumes purchased, I could only think that such an amount would probably last me more than two years.

A few days before, the shelves had been stripped bare of rice.  That seems to be a slightly more reasonable thing to be worried about... until you consider that most of the rice in Hong Kong seems to come from Thailand these days.

On top of that, it seems like people are all a little bit picky in their desperation.  Even with all the white rice completely gone, it seems as though people would still prefer to starve over eating brown rice....

I've never experienced anything like this before.  This collective hysteria cannot be healthy and I can understand why experts warn that this type of panic can often be more damaging to a society than the actual diseases themselves.

Coronavirus and mask madness

It's been about a week of coronavirus craziness.

Masks have become the main discussion topic in Hong Kong (and possibly the entire region) as supplies have run out.  The prices for masks have risen dramatically and there's even a market for used masks.... truly horrifying.

Luckily for me, I was in Thailand when everything started to go crazy and I was able to buy up enough masks for myself and for some of my friends who requested that I bring them back.

Unluckily for me, I didn't fully appreciate just how bad the shortages were in Hong Kong and I lost a golden opportunity to bring back as many boxes of surgical masks as I could possibly lay my hands on.  Little did I know, but the supply of masks in Hong Kong would completely disappear.

Either way, I managed to bring back a decent haul of masks (and some antiseptic gels) from Thailand that I was able to provide to some friends who were in need.  I bought myself a Hong Kong shopper and packed all my stuff into it, then checked the bag through on my flight.

It's a very strange mood in Hong Kong.  Normally when people are sick, you would see the sick person wearing the surgical masks if they were Chinese in background.  You would very rarely if ever see anyone from any other racial background wearing masks when they were sick.  It just wasn't part of the wider culture.  That's changed completely now.  Everyone, no matter what their background, has jumped onto this craze and is now wearing face masks wherever they go.  It's created a strange scene in Hong Kong, something akin to the beginning of a Hollywood movie about a pandemic spreading.

The result of the fear has been clear to see for everyone.  Businesses in Hong Kong have slowed down.  The streets feel more empty.  The speed of my normal commute to and from work has dramatically increased as the bus has only a fraction of its normal passengers.  Restaurants are emptier.  More and more people are working from home and avoiding going outside entirely.

One very surprising outcome from this entire saga has been the rise in increasingly black humour.

Memes and photos have circulated ad nauseam, often reappearing in your phone having been sent to you by various friends or acquaintances.

 Some are simple jokes and a play on the names or the shortages.

 Whereas others have definitely taken a more sarcastic turn.

Either way, we might as well try and find some humour in this annoying situation.

Ayutthaya

It's so hot.  It's a strange dry heat as well.  I wasn't expecting that to be the case in the middle of Thailand.

I got out of the car and I was hit by the heat of the sun.  It was so intense.  I didn't have any sunglasses, but I had thankfully lathered myself up in sunscreen.

Ayutthaya really isn't a single place.  It's more of a large compound of various ruins and temples, some still operating and some not.  It reminded me a lot of Angkor Wat.  Everything was spread out over quite a large area, so it wasn't possible to be merely dropped off at one location and to walk around.  Instead, there was a need to be ferried around to the different spots.  Some people elected to hire tuk tuks at each stop to take them onto the next, some people (like myself) had drivers or tour buses, some people took elephants!  The craziest people to me were those who decided that the best way to get around would be by bicycle.  On a nice and temperate day, this would indeed be quite a nice way to get around the area.  On a day like this, with the sun blazing down and the dry and hot wind blowing... it seemed like a strange form of torture to inflict on yourself.  I saw various groups of couples and groups of girls all struggling on their bicycles as they dragged themselves from spot to spot.  I'm sure they had read about this in a travel guide and thought it the best way to go.

Each location I ended going to was surprisingly quite different from the other.  I had expected many different locations, but all of relatively similar styles.

Instead, each place I went to seemed to be in varying degrees of ruin.  Some places, were still very much in use.  They had modern sections which housed air conditioned places of worship and they were exceptionally well maintained.  These were clearly still working places of religious worship.  Monks were wandering around and people were buying various pieces of cloth and paper to make their offerings.

Other places felt more like museums.

They weren't too rundown, but they were clearly not being used in any meaningful way anymore

Each building, even if it had fallen into disrepair, was well cared for.  I was surprised by just how well maintained everything was.  There was a small army of caretakers and gardeners, all cleaning and moving and watering the grounds.

The lawns at all of the locations were well cared for and the gardeners clearly took a great deal of pride in their work.  The locals themselves seemed to love this area and at quite a few of the locations, I saw girls who had dressed in traditional Thai attire taking photos and doing little photo shoots.  They all looked beautiful and it reminded me a lot of the girls in Korea and in Japan who dress in traditional clothing before they go to the palaces.

Other places definitely had the "ancient ruin" feel to them.

The famous buddha's head encased by the roots of a tree at Wat Maha That was particularly beautiful.  It demonstrated clearly the power of the forrest as well as the age of these places.  These ruins were the places that reminded me the most of my time at Angkor Wat.  There were far more people than when I went to Angkor Wat back when I was young, but there was a real similarity in the both the way things looked and the way they had slowly crumbled.

Even with all the time it had been since I had been to Angkor Wat, I still couldn't help but feel that this was the lesser of the two.  Give me the choice, and Angkor Wat is definitely the better place to visit.  But I'm not sure if this is a fair comparison.

I am always thankful for the amount of traveling I get to do.  I have fought hard for this ability to see different parts of the world and I've tried to arrange my life in a way that would let me do this.  It does concern me when I go to new places and I don't feel the excitement I once did.  It's a part of growing up.  It's a part of becoming more "worldly".  It's a strange paradox that the more I seek out different parts of the world, the less enthralled I become with what I find.  I can't help but compare what I see with what I have already seen, and this takes away from some of the awe and surprise I would otherwise experience.  I see the people around me, their faces filled with delight with what they are able to see.  I don't always have that anymore.  It's not something you can manufacture.  You go somewhere new and you're either captivated by it, or you're not.  However, I wasn't going to let this stop me.  I wasn't go to stop searching for something amazing to see and I wasn't going to become jaded.  Everything in front of me remained incredible.  Everything I got to see was still a privilege to behold.  I just had to be more appreciative of it all, even if that meant being appreciative in different ways.

Bang Pa-In Palace

So I had hired a car to take me out to the ancient ruins at Ayutthaya.  On the way out to the ruins was Thailand's old royal palace.  Since it was on the way, I thought I might as well stop in for a look.

It was a confusing experience.

Modern Thailand has become an incredible mix of old and new, hyper-modern and crumbling-poverty, Eastern and Western.

It seems as though this phenomenon wasn't such a recent thing.

The palace grounds were a mismatched collection of buildings from different eras and styles.  There were traditional Thai style pagodas, Chinese style palaces, continental European style buildings and bridges, some very English looking houses...

It did feel a little bit amusement park like.

The buildings on an individual level were all beautiful and quite unique.  When you were up close to them or looking at them in isolation, you could see the care and effort that had been placed into their construction.

All together in one single spot, it was far more confusing.

I tried to look at it all from a different perspective.  Rather than considering all of these buildings as a strange mash up of different styles, it was probably better to look at it from the wider context of Thai history.

Thailand was one of the few countries in the world that was able to escape the reach of European colonisation.  Throughout the late 1700s through to the 20th century, Thailand was able to remain proudly free of foreign takeover and was even able to secure its borders as an independent country.

This collection of buildings was probably best seen as a monument to that success.  Foreign powers came and went, but rather than take over, they effectively gifted these buildings to Thailand, either directly or through some form of cultural exchange.  It may still look strange without the context, but for Thai people it should probably be viewed with an enormous sense of pride in their country.

Developing like crazy

My friend Todd and I had gone searching for street food. We had walked to the street food markets at Lumphini Park only to discover that they were gone.  It seems like many of the famous street food eateries in Bangkok were slowly disappearing.  Bangkok was changing and losing some of what it used to be.  Given our search for street food, it was odd then that we ended up at a roof bar in an upscale hotel in the very expensive Lumphini district.

Looking out at the view of Bangkok's skyline, we were both amazed.  The pace of Bangkok's development is a thing to behold.  All around the city, there were skyscrapers and developments that wouldn't have been around when I first visited Bangkok in 2003.  In only 17 years, a new city had grown in Bangkok and largely engulfed what I once knew.  I think about my friends who used to live here.  I don't think they would recognise this place at all.  They hold fond memories of this city and I wonder whether they would still love Bangkok now that it seems to be becoming another version of Singapore.

Even being in this roof bar itself seemed to be incredible.  It was a speakeasy style bar which had another separate speakeasy hidden inside of it.  The second bar was far cooler than the first and made an otherwise standard bar something worth coming back to.  The drinks on offer were an assortment of the standard cocktail bar drinks along with some more unique creations.  I ordered a Manhattan and a Sazerac, and both were what I would class as being "OK" at best.  The bartenders needed a touch more experience with the drink mixing and a better understanding of how the elements came together.  One annoying thing was that they overmixed the drinks with ice which led to them being slightly too watered down.  Now, I don't normally critique such things so much, but for me it was just another element in the development of this city.  It now had the incredibly cool and sophisticated cocktail bars, it had the views, it had the clientele.  It was probably just a few short years away from further developing the culture that would completely provide for it all.

More likely than not, all of this will be changed again the next time I arrive.

Floating markets

I had seen pictures and shows about Bangkok's floating markets for years.  It is a mainstay of travel shows to Thailand and is often portrayed as one of the "must see" places to visit.

I had wanted to go and visit for quite a while, but I'd never had enough time to go.  The markets really aren't in Bangkok, they're actually a couple of hours drive outside of the city, so the trip there takes a bit of planning.  Since I was hanging out with my friend Todd for the weekend, we decided to hire a driver to take us out there.  The driver arrived nice and early and we hit the road.  It wasn't long before we hit traffic.  It was what I would consider to be a mild annoyance at worst and seemed to largely be caused by the vast highway construction works which were underway.  It probably wouldn't be long before this trip time would be cut in half.

There were two floating markets I wanted to go and see, Damnoen and Amphawa.

We were taken to Damnoen first.  Once we got there, we hired a boat and we were taken into the canals and the market itself.

This market was absolutely a tourist trap.  No doubt about it in my mind!  I had read that there were locals that shopped here, but I didn't notice any at all.  Instead, all I saw were other tourists like myself floating past and taking photos.  We were immediately put on notice as well when our driver urged us "not to buy anything".  His advice was wise, as we were immediately confronted with overpriced food and the type of tourist trinkets that no one ever seems to buy. 

Yet even with the tourist trap nature of the place, it was really quite beautiful.  It was lovely to be floating down the canals past the little shops and the houses of the locals.  Even if the places we were being taken were very touristy, the area as a whole was definitely still being lived in by locals and it was a unique experience to experience (in a brief way) the lives they lived and the calm surroundings of their homes.

After about an hour of floating around the markets, we made it back to where we started and our driver took us to Amphawa markets.

Our driver told us to get food here.  He said that this was an actual market, not a tourist market.  Now, there were PLENTY of tourists, but we quickly understood what he meant as it was clear that this was a working market where people did their daily shopping.  It was nice to see the combination of the locals and tourists all walking around together.

Amphawan was quite a bit bigger than Damnoen, but it wasn't as unique or pretty to look at.  We decided against the boat tour in Amphawan and that was probably for the best.  It was easy to walk around and much of the experience was from being closer to the shops and restaurants which you could walk past.  We sat in one of the restaurants eating seafood and watched as the boats floated by.  It was a nice place to sit and to decompress.  Not long before we left, we also saw an enormous monitor lizard calmly swimming around in one of the canals... sadly neither of us was fast enough with our cameras.  We had both noted that the area in Amphawan felt pretty clean and tidy.  With monitor lizards that size in the area, I doubt there would be too many vermin around to cause much trouble.

I was very glad that I had been able to visit these floating markets.  I was reminded of the canals of Zhujiajiao outside of Shanghai.  It's not always fair to compare different places, but it's hard to avoid at times.  Whereas the Thai floating markets receive global attention, Zhujiajiao is relatively unknown outside of China.  It's a shame because when I compare the two, I definitely feel that Zhujiajiao has a lot more to offer in terms of both the visual beauty and the specific shops and sights to see.  It's not to say that these markets weren't great to visit though.  They offer something very different to the intense bustle of Bangkok.

This Canadian life

There's a bleakness to Canada that I haven't seen before.

Previous visits, I've been greeted by the perfect snow.  The beautiful and clean whiteness has covered everything and given it an inherently lovely glow.

This time though, the weather has been strangely warm.  Besides one lovely day of snow, most of my trip has been accompanied by temperatures of around 5 or 6 degrees.  So instead of the white coverings I had become used to, I instead see a more standard grey suburban landscape.

It's a stark and brutal scene.  A suburban landscape filled with highways, carparks, warehouses and light industry.

I find it all a bit depressing.  It's the type of cityscape that I have no particular interest living in.

Still, the coldness of it all makes the feeling of comfort you experience when you escape it all the better.  That morning, I decided that the best escape was to go to a diner to get breakfast.

Eggs and corned beef hash never tasted so satisfying.

Traditional entertainment in a modern setting

I've often found that having friends who are visiting from overseas or who are only living in your city for a short period is a fantastic way to force you to do more in your own city.  Too often we find ourselves putting off doing things or exploring places because we think we can do it later.  That later never seems to come unless we decide otherwise.

At the moment, Ayuna and I both had a friend who was living in Hong Kong for a few months and she was keen to see lots of different parts of the city.

One thing we all wanted to see was some Cantonese opera.  In particular, we wanted to go to the Xiqu centre in the West Kowloon cultural district.  This area had been under construction for years and it had now finally opened up for the public to enjoy.  It was the perfect time for all of us to visit.  To top it all off, another one of Ayuna's friends wanted to come and our friend Zuzanna's parents were visiting her.  It would be a nice excursion.

The Xiqu centre itself is a beautiful building.  There's been a lot of criticisms of its design, particularly that it looks a bit "toaster" like from the outside.  Some of those criticisms may be well founded, but up close and particularly inside the main atrium, it is a fantastic big and open space.

We had decided to go and watch our show at the "Tea House theatre".  This would give us an introduction to Cantonese opera rather than requiring us to watch a full opera in its entirety.  The layout of the seating was something different as well, with the theatre designed to look more like the traditional Cantonese opera settings where people sit next to tables and are served food and tea throughout the show.  The seats could have been a bit more comfortable, but I liked how they incorporated in the side tables for our food and tea.  It made everything feel a bit closer to the authentic.

I had arrived early (unlike everyone else), so I was able to enjoy the location for a bit before the show started.

As the lights dimmed, none of my friends had arrived.  Slowly, they shuffled into the theatre in the darkness and made their way to their seats.  Our choice of the "introduction" to Cantonese opera was a wise one.  We got to see a variety of different styles and the directors had clearly chosen some "funnier" scenes from various operas to keep us entertained.  None of us had any experience with this form of performance, so any more detailed nuances would have been lost of us.

Watching the performers dance and sing, it was unquestionably beautiful.  The considerations for the form, the movement and various actor interactions were careful thought out and deliberate.  I think I want to come back and watch some more, but next time I might bring my parents.