Hello, Hong Kong

I left this morning.

Yeah, still kind of weird. I was in Bangkok for a whole month, and now I'm sitting in my "old" room in HK. Tomorrow I have to get up early for church. I'm going to Mom and Dad's church tomorrow, so that should be fun.

Anyway, this morning I checked out of my room at nine, and grabbed a chicken teriyaki from the 7-11 for breakfast. While I was sitting in the apartment lobby eating, this German guy comes running in and goes into the office right next to me. He starts yelling and screaming at the staff in there! Thais really value serenity and hate overt displays of anger. Anyway, he was really acting crazy. He was screaming something about how he's sick of their administration and he wants something fixed and he needs his money. And, get this, he even told them that he would give them five seconds to do something and he started counting!

Now, first of all, he sounded like a mix between an angry bull and a mad two-year-old. Second, most (if not all) of the people that office don't speak English. I've gone in there a couple of times myself and no one has understood me. Finally, he was scaring the poor people to death. As I said before, Thais aren't used to angry outbursts. Two cleaning ladies who were cleaning the lobby were just frozen when he was yelling. He finally ran out front to the security office (telling his girlfriend, "Don't try to stop me." Never a good sign). After he left, one of the cleaning ladies just put her hand over her heart and almost fell over. She was shaking, and she showed the other cleaning lady her goosebumps. Stupid angry man. I could hear him yelling out in the back at that point. I kind of wished that he would come back so I could say something to him about the futility of his actions. I doubt it would have helped, but it would have made me feel better.

After that episode, I took a taxi to Tipawan's house. Tipawan is the lady who picked me up from the airport with her friend Jang, and they were going to drive me there again. They took me to a shopping mall to look around, and we stopped at an Baskin Robbinsesque ice cream place. But it was the coolest thing ever! Instead of just bins of ice cream, they made beautiful, shapely mounds of ice-cream that were decorated with the things that made up that flavor. So kiwi ice cream had kiwi slices nestled among the scoops. The chocolate had quirly chocolate bars, and the mint had mint leaves. It was amazing. I would have liked a picture, but oh well.

The plane trip was fine. It was one of those huge, across-ocean planes with ten seats in a row. And I was the only person in my row. The plane was SO empty. There wasn't even a person for every row. I recommend that all of you fly Thai Air, because that was some of the most delicious food I've ever had. I ate chicken curry with rice and some kind of anonymous vegetable that's related to a zuccini and is good for women who are breast-feeding (I asked a flight attendent). There was also a creamy salad, a wheat roll, and capeccino pudding. Oh, and during the course of the flight, I ended up drinking water, apple juice, wine, orange juice, Chinese tea, and coffee. The wine wasn't my favorite, so I poured some of my orange juice in it, which made it pretty good. Kind of like a sangria.

The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful. Collected baggage, found parents, exchanged money, caught bus, got home, showed off new treasures, and wrote in blog. The end.