Today was very pleasurable. I again woke up at noon and proceeded with my plan to go to the HK Wetland Park. It wasn't sunny when I got out but I spent the next 40 minutes sitting on the MTR (equivalent to Helsinki's metro or more accurately Stockholm's Tunnelbana) and on the Light Rail (a cross of the tram and the cityjuna in Helsinki) so it didn't matter. On the way I read my new Klosterman as the views were horrendous. Every suburbia we passed was as awful as the one before. I guess this is what you have to do when you fit a billion people in to one country. Although the high risers are plenty and ugly the people inhabiting them seem normal. No smelly bums or poor immigrants were hanging out at the subway stations. The locals just must be more okay with living in crowded places than yours truly.
When I arrived at the Wetland park it started raining. Fortunately there was stuff to see inside the compound. After eating I headed out to the park as it had stopped raining. There wasn't much to see and I was mostly appalled by the ugly high-risers next to the park entrance. The one thing I would've like to capture on my camera was the crocodile mascot of the park. As I was going back inside to the main building I heard a bunch of kids screaming and yelping "Poi Poi!" They were enthusiastically screaming at the crocodile Pui Pui who was swimming in his little habitat. He swam towards a drain and then he turned. Straight. At. Me.
I felt the little eyes of the 1.5 m crocodile go right through me and had there not been a glass separating us I would've been a leg shorter. I knew this and he knew this too. I froze and left only after Pui Pui returned to the shore and lay still. Why the kids liked him so much I'll never understand.
On the way back I continued reading and in an essay about watching people, like neighbors, through windows Klosterman made a point that doing that is interesting because the watcher can't know what'll happen next as opposed to what's happening next in our own lives. Not knowing makes people feel good. That's how I felt today.
For my endeavors today I bought a 1-day MTR Pass and after a brief stop at the Hostel I headed to a shopping district in Eastern HK Island. I didn't even find what I was looking for but I think that's even better. I walked the length of two MTR stations, ate on the way and had no idea where I really were cause I couldn't see the sea or any familiar buildings and I hadn't bothered taking a map either. But I felt alive!
I returned to the Hostel and as I finish writing this paragraph I'm meeting my friend Baabäk at the Avenue of Stars before returning here to pack my stuff and shower. Tomorrow I fly to Brisbane where I'll spend the night and the next morning I fly to Cairns where it's almost as warm as here bit not quite. After that I don't know what happens. But that's okay cause I. Feel. Alive.
Write to you soon, bye!
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