Now where things get good. Friday was my companies celebration of Chinese New Year, CNY as it is abbreviated has been described to me as Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years all rolled into one. You get 2+ weeks off of work to go home and they openly sell fireworks/crackers the size of industrial dynamite to anyone with money regardless of age. This includes the fat six year that decided to use this freedom to throw firecrackers at Danielle while playing pool on Wednesday, we kicked as many as we could back at the little bastard.
It began around 11am when I was pulled away from my desk to join in the ritual of burning fake money, so your ancestors can receive it on the other side I believe, and paid tribute to the one of thousands of gods. On the right here you can see a picture of the people burning "money" and the shrine to the god in the background, yes that is an open fire inside a factory building.
We then joined the majority of the factory employees on the front yard area to once again pay tribute to a god by offering it incense and food. Ironically we ate the food after, but for all I know that could be part of the tradition. Before eating though they set off some of the longest strands of fire crackers I have ever seen in my life. I took a video of it and have uploaded it here so everyone can watch it.
Following the firecrackers I went back to work until about 12:30 when Danielle, Sam, Austin, and I went out to lunch to a "western" style restaurant. Unfortunately our Chinese is shit and so was the waiters English. We attempted to get three chicken clubs and one noodles with vegetables and chicken. We ended up with three white bread sandwiches with nothing but a few chicken scraps on them, three chicken soups, two plates of noodles with beef, one plate of vegetables, and half a boiled chicken. Luckily before leaving the waiter came back to show us they had found the sole English version of their menu.
We headed to the Gladden Hotel for the CNY party at about 6:30 after finishing work. We had been warned the drinking would most likely get out of hand and knew we should load up at food at dinner to combat this. We ate after some awards were handed out to workers for their service to the company. The dinner wasn't anything special given the factory cook for managers and ex-pats is quite good. But they did have ribs so that was the focus of most of the American's in attendances meals. Following the meal something unexpected happened, the place cleared out, all the talk of boozing and Gambay'ing (Chinese for bottoms up) left me and the other co-ops confused. We came to find out that the previous year had gotten so out of hand many of the workers had been warned to lay off the beer as they would have to work the following day.
The managers, ex-pats, and visiting Americans didn't lose a step though and headed straight to the KTV in the hotel. KTV is essentially karaoke in a private room with a team of girls pouring your beer and cleaning up after you. Also another team of girls can be picked from a lineup to "hang out" and "entertain." In this case that meant talking and playing drinking games, but it was made clear more than once that at many KTV places these girls would be dressed in lingerie and a couple hundred yuan lets you take them home for the night. One of the girls working taught me to play liars dice so I could join in with a group already playing, I really can't complain about the weirdness of hiring girls to hang out after that I guess. People, including myself, proceeded to get plastered and sing along to what were at times shitty Chinese renditions of popular US songs from the 70's, 80's, and 90's. We left around 1am or so I believe and I have to say it was a great time overall.
I managed to sleep until noon the next day and woke up and packed for Saturday night in Hong Kong. I grabbed some food at the "little hat noddle place" because Sam had woken up earlier and eaten already. The guy there took pictures of us as I ate, I think he wanted to prove to someone that Americans come to his shop, I have decided this action gives me free range to record them making the noddles, so expect a video soon. We missed the van heading into Hong Kong earlier in the day so Sam and I went back to the Gladden Hotel where the bus to the border stops. A long uneventful trip later we made it to our hostel for the night. Upon the suggestion of two of our coworkers we hit a restaurant called Inn Side Out, I had a awesome burger, a nice break after two weeks of essentially nothing but Chinese food. We headed out to Lan Kwai Fung (bar district) after dinner to meet up with coworkers and some customers they were showing a good time. We jumped around town from 10pm-4am hitting 2 bars and a club. It was a good time, but all the taxiing got a bit annoying. I realized early in the night you can buy Cuban cigars in Hong Kong so that definitely was a plus on the night. We finished up the night at Flying Pan around 5am, Flying Pan is a late night breakfast place with a 50's diner theme, I was told that all too often nights in Hong Kong end with an omelet here.
The next day we got a call at 8:30am from our friends from the peak tram (see day fifteen post) asking if we wanted to go hiking still, an activity we had discussed earlier in the week via Facebook. We were in rough shape though and decided we would forgo the 9am hike in favor of sleep. Around 11:30am we got another call from our coworker Mike seeing if we wanted to go hiking on the Monkey trail with them, an activity we had discussed the night before. After some consideration we got ourselves up and decided to go.
The monkey trail is really part of a series of trails around the Kowloon
reservoirs, Kowloon is across from Hong Kong Island on a map if you are looking. The trail's real name I am not sure of, but we called it the monkey trail for the obvious reason, it's covered in monkeys. I know what your thinking, "O' that's cool," and in some ways it was, but in some ways it wasn't. You can't help but get a vibe when you are walking through the larger groups that if they wanted to they could all attack at once and tear you to shreds, and these feelings are not exactly unfounded. The wrong move will have them snarling at you in attack position, and reports of monkey attacks in Hong Kong aren't uncommon. What was definitely cool was the WWII bunkers throughout the trail though. Put in place to help defend Hong Kong from the Japanese the tunnels leading to vantage points go all through the hillside. The tunnels aren't blocked off but most have restricted signs in front of them. My take was it is a go at your own risk type situation, and judging by the pitch blackness you see peering into them, 
most people wouldn't take that risk. We finished our hike at a little park area where people were barbecuing, there weren't many monkeys around because of the number of people scares them away. But this didn't stop one of the few there from trying to snatch the ice-cream Mike bought out of his hand when we had our backs to it. This action startled the Chinese lady sitting on the ledge near me so much she proceeded to turn around and vomit, I really don't get how this drew such a reaction, but it has us heading for a taxi back to the hostel soon there after. Sam, Danielle, and I ate at Inn Side Out again for dinner, this time I got BBQ chicken pizza, tasted amazing after weeks without eating any cheese. I picked up a fr
ench press at Starbucks before passing out, probably the best move ever, after two days with coffee again I am feeling much more awake, thus finally getting around to writing this. I barely slept that night though as the heat and small bed woke me up at 2:30am and I finally got back to sleep at 6am, 30min before we needed to get up and go. (Pictures of Monkeys on the trail and Danielle and Marta, Mikes girlfriend, coming out of a WWII tunnel. Also a picture of a warning sign by one of the entrances to a trench.)We got up and met up with Danielle to head to the border. We were too many to fit in the van once we made it into the PRC, so Mike showed us how to take the bus back in case we ever needed to again and all four of us went back to the factory that way. I worked all day powered by my new coffee maker, yea I am still pumped, and tried to call it a night early after being exhausted from the lack of sleep. Unfortunately I distracted myself with a movie or two and didn't get to bed until after midnight anyways.
Today (Tuesday) has been pretty standard work wise, but I now need to join the managers and ex-pats for a dinner with some local officials in honor of CNY and have been told I will be forced to drink to excess. I will report back on this in my next post....
Well I did not get the video to load onto here until today so I will update on last nights fun. We went out to dinner with some local officials, being a more reputable company we don't hand out bribes, but forming a relationship with people in the area is always important. So once a year we take them out for dinner, but as became evident as the meal began the dinner was not about food. Drinking in Chinese culture can be summed up in one word, Baijui. It's hard to judge the alcohol level in the stuff, although wikipedia says it's high, because the taste makes you gag to the point any burn in your throat goes unnoticed. I only choked down 3 shots that were poured with no measurement into a wine glasses. Others were not so lucky, in a very short period of time many people were wavering on their feet while grinning ear to ear. I switched over to beer, or as I have come to learn, a beer made from rice for the most part. After "proving my manliness" by chugging a few glasses with the locals we all got along without a hitch, alcohol speaks no language.
We then went for something I have been waiting for since I got here and is well known throughout the world. A Chinese foot massage. After a couple drinks most of my reaction to kick as someone touched or tickled my feet had left me, so I was able to enjoy without lashing out. We ended up going for the 2 hour version that was essentially a full body massage, although much was still focused on legs and feet. Total cost per person, $12usd. Can't beat that. We went back to the factory after that to pass out. But it is important to note that the horrid taste of Baijui still lingered through the night even after consuming the bubble tea and fruit plate included with the massage and having an Oreo when I got back to my room.
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