After 28 hours of air travel, I arrived in what we can call "the forbidden city for a shopaholic." I came to my hotel around 11 pm, and the streets were full of cool people doing what I like most, most of the time: shopping! Stores, food, human traffic all around me, and after calm as paradise Montevideo, I was like: yeahhhhhhh!
PS: By the way, from the airport to the hotel, to the convention center to the bus, metro, boat, the best customer service I have ever seen, people are so nice and well organized, it is the british detail orientation and chinese diciplne, what a great combination I have to say.
I had a bite and went to sleep, I literally could not keep my eyes open but woke up really early on Sunday, after breakfast with the rest of the NGO crowd at my hotel (we are staying in a YMCA kind of association's lodge, not bad, in the middle of Nathan Road) I hit the road to get my press credentials from the WTO people. On the way, I managed to get a cool haircut, took a nice ferry ride, and get lost on purpose to see the city a bit more. After 2 hours of bargain, it is still on the air whether or not I am Press or NGO (due to a tiny fuck up, I am first registered as an NGO, therefore I can only be counted as one and not press, etc etc blah blah!) but I am in, they gave me one of those ugly conference bags full of information I dont need and an ugly scarf--it is warm and beautiful outside, but well, it seems like they are concerned about the ac in the convention center???.
After a pretty hard fight the WTO press people, I did my first assignment on the protests the local and international NGOs organized in Victoria Park amongst the curious eyes of the Indonesian domestic workers (there were literally thousands of women, outnumbering the protestors, sitting in a park watching these people who are fighting for their rights, but not giving damn, gossiping and eating, it is their only day off I am told)The protest walked through ther Hennesy Road, the super busy shopping district, while shoppers stopped for a moment to take pictures with the cameras or phones, then went back to where they left off. SOme jewelry stores closed their front doors with bodyguards but life went on, plus the protestors were peaceful and had no urge to vandalise anything.
will write more later... I hope to get back to the streets and see more of HK before things get busier here!
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