“Oh, Lord! Stop it! Seriously, you look retarded,” Ammon said as we made our way to the bus station.
Holding the collar of my shirt up to protect my mouth and nose, I shook my head violently, muttering under my breath, “not yet, but it’ll come, it’ll come.” They were all looking at me strangely, but I didn’t care. Terri’s final, farewell warning echoed in my subconscious. You’re going to keel over and die! she had joked in a feeble attempt to lighten the mood. It was the only time I didn’t crack even a smile at hearing one of our most commonly used expressions. And now, I was deathly afraid of what everyone who “knew so well” had shared with me – that rancid, putrid smells would wash over me the instant my nostril hairs tingled in the Chinese air.
“You can come out now,” Bree laughed, demonstrating how safe it was with a big gulp of seemingly harmless air. Flaring her nostrils, she inhaled deeply again to prove it was stink-free.
“Yah, right! This, coming from the girl who loves the smell of horse manure in the morning!” I said, hesitant to trust her judgement. But the air didn’t seem to have the same Total Recall effect that I anticipated. She was indeed, still her normal, Bree self, happy and joking and ready to take on a challenge. She didn’t even seemed bothered by her new single state. Maybe she’s being practical for the first time in her life. Nah!! I thought, glaring over my covered nose at her.
Bree’s cheery attitude began to irritate me later on the bus. Look at her, all happy in her little world. Why is she glued to the window like she gives a darn? Since when did she want to go to Asia? I played with my little zebra stuffy hanging on my bag in a moment of contemplation. What could she possibly be so excited about?
Scrambling off the bus, I tripped on the last step and was unceremoniously spat out into the spinning world around me. Men and women zipped by on foot or bicycles, and I immediately felt lost in the throng. My fairer features stood out in stark contrast with the hordes of miniature working clones with black hair and dark eyes. Actually, they all kind of look like my manicurist. I guess she was from China after all, I thought, taking my eyes off the road to look at my freshly done nails and promptly stumbled from the unaccustomed weight on my back.
As I recovered, I somehow inadvertently let my guard down and removed my hand from tightly clenching at my collar. I waited and waited for the dreaded smell to hit me, expecting to fall over, or at the very least, gag. So where is this awful smell hiding? Maybe I’d have to admit defeat and say I was wrong – but only to myself, of course. That was one nagging fear out of the way. Now, on to the next.
I was being bounced around like a pinball in the massive crowds, my pack steering me rather than the other way around as it sagged awkwardly on my butt. What the heck is in this bag? I wondered as I waddled down the street like an obese duck, constantly reaching behind my back trying to adjust my drooping pants.
What looked like routine havoc wreaked the streets. No one noticed me amid the rush of downtown Hong Kong. No one, that is, except for the few red taxis and their female drivers. Slowing down, they tried to tempt us to climb in, get the bags off our backs, and take a restful seat in the air conditioning. I swear as soon as I get this wretched thing off me, I’m chucking half of whatever the bleep-jeeps they put in it. Sensing that we were fading in the heat and noise, Ammon promptly reminded us about Travel Rule #2: No Taxis, and then quickened his pace without a single backward glance. I certainly did not want to be left behind so I reluctantly picked up my pace to match his. I’d rather go with these loonies than be lost here, I reasoned quickly. How on earth would I ever find them again? Phone call? No, who would I phone? Grandma? What could she do to help from Vancouver? She doesn’t know where I’m going either. I know. I’d just find an Internet café! I’d just email Mom, and then wait. But how would I know how to tell her where I was? And I’ve never even seen one of those before. How would I know what one looks like? I panicked, looking at the glowing shop signs and advertisements and searching vainly for recognizable street names. How do you pronounce THAT? They don’t even have an alphabet I can read. How will I know where they are if I don’t even know where I am!? I don’t have any local currency. I’ve got some American money hidden in there somewhere, but what am I going to do with that here? What if they never came back? How would I get home?
“Have you ever seen so many?” Bree asked out loud, disrupting my endless string of worries.
“Yah, but only when I was in London. It was exactly like this,” Mom replied, as we crossed onto a less crowded street.
“Seriously?” I asked, glancing down the road which was still flooded with red double-decker buses, a sight which caught me completely off guard. It really looks like this! Maybe I am in England – now that wouldn’t be so bad. “So it really is like the movies there, eh? Wow. I can’t imagine this being normal.”
“It was a British colony until just eight years ago, so the buses make sense,” Ammon added, looking up from his map for a split second.
The whole street seemed to be full of screaming “Pick me!!! Pick me!!!” florescent signs. Each vender was yelling louder than the last and competing with the shop next door as to whose wares could be bigger and brighter. There were Hello Kitties on all forms of merchandise to both my right and my left, along with just about anything else you could possibly imagine. The vendors sold it all.
“Whoa, this is a lot like Vegas,” Bree chirped, beaming at the variety of lights radiating from the city streets.
“Minus all the chicken scratch,” I pointed out. “Plus, there’s no English. I feel like I took a wrong turn in Chinatown and we’re gonna be lost forever.” Forever. It was a daunting word these days. Why was it that a year felt like a lifetime? I knew it was only one of nearly a hundred. It was nothing, only one percent of my ENTIRE life. But this was only the first of three-hundred-and-sixty-five days, and that seemed like an eternity.
I yanked at Mom’s pack as she stepped off the sidewalk, nearly getting herself shmucked by a little motorcycle darting through the early morning rush hour. This was immediately followed by a fierce glare from Ammon on my left, silently reminding us about Travel Rule #1: DON’T GET DEAD! We’ll see how long that rule lasts. There was no time to stop or think. We had to continue. We were as ready as we were likely to be now that we’d affirmed the wisdom of our top three rules under real live circumstances.
“Okay, then” I said to the world, only somewhat prepared to take on this madness as I stepped down from the curb.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My feet were on fire and yet felt icy at the same time as I lifted each one separately to scratch imaginary itches. Cramped in the small box they called an elevator that dripped with its own form of sticky sweat, my legs were weak and hot. I pushed my way out the moment the door opened, desperate for cooler air.
The man with the keys, groggy from being wakened from his post downstairs, twisted the knob and presented our room, if you could call it that. It was as small as a “Harry Potter” closet under the stairs and it contained nothing more than a bed, which was all that could physically fit in the space. My eyes widened involuntarily as I took in the sad sight. So, this is my new life.
“Oh, don’t be so dramatic, Savannah,” Mom yawned. I tossed my pack onto the bed and watched it roll off and get stuck between the bed and the wall. I directed the most irritated, disbelieving face I could muster at the light blue and black, sixty-litre backpack. I hate you already, I thought with the fiercest passion I’d yet experienced. And then I laughed with a touch of hysteria.
“Hey, you better enjoy it. This’ll be one of the best rooms you’ll get,” Ammon said, peeking around the doorway beside where I was still transfixed by our accommodations.
“What’s your guys’ room like?” I asked.
“The same.” With no space to walk, I crawled from the door onto the bed next to Mom.
“Can you believe this place?” In disbelief, I looked around at the room which held all of one door, one bed, and a crooked mir
ror on one wall.
“Ammon booked the best he could find for a reasonable price. Even this costs fifty dollars a night. Hong Kong is a big city; nothing is cheap here.”
“How can they charge that much for this?” I asked, baffled. “You can hardly even fit a bag in here!” I tilted my head towards our two packs which consumed the entire floor space.
For us, fifty bucks was a lot. Whenever we went on a family road trip, we’d either camp or all stay in a single, forty-dollar-a-night room in a Motel 6. That was another deep, dark secret that not even Terri knew. I always felt ashamed that I could only imagine the five-star hotels my friends stayed in on holidays.
“Yes, I know, Savannah. But it’s clean, and you don’t actually NEED any more than this,” she emphasized. Yah, and you don’t actually NEED underwear either, but it’s still nice to have them, I thought bitterly.
“Doesn’t it make you wonder how they ever got the bed in here in the first place?” I asked, too tired to argue. I was too tired for anything but the simplest complaints. I had no strength left to stage one of my usual, more dramatic performances. So this is their plan, is it? Tire me out so much I can’t complain. Keep me quiet. How could I let them take over like this? Those sneaky devils! A frightening realization hit me. No wonder my – they must’ve – I’ll bet they planted weights in my bag!!! I sprang to check my pack.
“What are you doing?” Mom jumped at my sudden movements.
“What the heck on earth,” I rambled, completely ignoring her as I flipped back the top of my big backpack and loosened the string to get into the main section, “could possi---BOOKS!?!?!” I exclaimed as I felt the hard flat surface and the bundled pages.
“Yes, books. Lots of them,” Mom said without flinching. “What about it?”
“That’s horrible. How could you do this to me?” I asked, too flabbergasted to be angry.
“I told you before we left that everyone is going to keep a journal, too,” she added.
“Yah, yah. A journal. Okay, I can see that. But you didn’t mention the rest of the library that comes with it!” I said, feeling deceived as I continued to pull them out one-by-one like a magician might pull rabbits from a hat.
I had only found a notebook and pen at the very last minute for a journal because of Mom’s insistence, but I never thought she’d actually try to enforce reading, particularly if we had to lug the books around with us! It was a family tradition, I guess. When Bree and I visited our relatives at their summer house on Lake Chelan, Washington, Aunt Pam expected us to read for an hour each day. But we’d spent our entire summer vacation time boating, wakeboarding, and Seadooing with our cousins. I couldn’t recall ever seeing, let alone opening, a single book, so it didn’t really follow that reading and writing would actually happen on this trip of our own volition.
“You’re cruel,” I said, pulling the last of five books out and placing it on the bed.
“It’s good for you,” she said.
“I’m already carrying all my school work!” I reminded her.
“That was your choice, not mine.” When they asked if I packed my own bag at the airport I should have said “Certainly NOT!”
“Yah, so?” Before the trip, I had been enrolled in self-taught correspondence courses, an optional form of home-schooling that replaces a traditional school using either the Internet or the postal system to send assignments and other materials back and forth. Each of my siblings had done this type of schooling at one point in their lives, though we had different reasons. I decided on my last visit to the school where my instructors were based that I would take a couple of courses with me on the road.
“You aren’t going to have time for school, Savannah. It seems a bit pointless for you to be carrying all that around.”
“Are you kidding me? At least there’s a point to this, an end in sight, but to read and write with no ultimate goal is pointless,” I retaliated. “Do you have any idea how heavy this bag is?”
“You can catch up with your coursework when you get back,” she said calmly.
“NO! ’Cause I don’t want to be behind. I already told you that!” Geez, is that really too much to ask?
“They said you can just skip some of the work,” Mom added.
“I don’t believe it. That’s so stupid. You can’t just skip!”
“You heard what they said as well as I did,” she said, mentally backing me into a corner.
I thought back to the meetings we’d had with school personnel. Some said it was ridiculous and too much of a risk to take me out of school. Others thought it was brilliant, that the lessons I would learn abroad would provide a better education than they could ever offer in the school system. Bree’s counsellor had voiced the opinion I heard far more often than I cared to. “After all, what better way to prepare yourself for the real world than to experience it firsthand?” I personally had yet to see the advantages.
Bree vehemently objected to bringing any schooling materials along, preferring to fool herself into thinking she had already graduated instead. My counsellor assured me that there were alternatives and showed me independent projects kids had done to catch up in similar situations, but I was determined not to fall behind. So what if I HAD insisted on doing all the work? Shouldn’t I be rewarded for that rather than punished!? “But still, I’m already carrying the school work,” I reminded her again.
“Books are great because you can just take them out and read them any time. Your school work is too bulky, plus you’ll need an Internet connection that won’t often be available. Trust me, you should just leave it behind and catch up later. Your brain will be engaged in lots of other ways.”
Bree came crashing in at that point, nearly slamming into the door when it hit the end of the bed and stopped abruptly in mid-swing.
I was sure she would share my outrage, and burst out, “These criminals put BOOKS in my bag!!”
“Have you seen the bathroom?” she asked, completely ignoring my protest. Her famous selective hearing had kicked in again.
“Oh no! It’s a squatty, isn’t it!?” I bolted upright in a panic. The state of the toilets we would be using was a far more pressing issue.
“No, you’re lucky this time,” Ammon said, coming in behind her.
“Phew,” I exhaled, leaning back. I’m safe for one more day, at least.
“You gotta see it, though,” she said urgently, as if I was somehow going to miss it during our four-day stay. “Like, the shower and sink and toilet are all together in a tiny room, with nothing separating them. So weird!”
“Why don’t I find that hard to believe?” I asked, glancing around me.
“The toilet is in the middle of the shower. You can just sit there and do your thing and get clean at the same time!” she laughed.
“Oh hey, you’ve got The Count of Monte Cristo?” Ammon commented when he saw the small pile of unwanted books scattered on the bed. “Can I borrow that one?”
“Be my guest,” I said, standing up to go check out Bree’s bathroom.
“Trust me, you’ll want them,” Ammon noted starkly, expecting everyone to be as nerdy as he.
“No, no. Trust me, I won’t,” I said, walking away and waving my hand above my head, “Take them all. Go nuts!”
Chapter 9: The Conqueror
Sandra was one of Ammon’s closest friends, though he often refused to admit he had any. They had worked in the same lab at Simon Fraser University for almost a year before we finally met her for the first time in Hong Kong. She was referred to as The Chocolate Chick because she brought a candy bar to work every day in an attempt to fatten him up. This act of generosity was strongly influenced by his study of the health benefits of chocolate, but also because of the way his ribcage protruded from his slender frame.
We learned quickly how friendly and positive Sandra was – the kind of person who celebrates her birthday by buying you lunch. She happened to be visiting her hometown when we arrived May 5th, 2005, and she was gracious enough to
show us around for a few days. Sandra fit right in with what I perceived to be the millions of little clones marching the streets with their black hair and round cheeks, and we eagerly followed our bubbly new friend around the city as the days raced by, on foot and riding the occasional water ferry and double-decker city buses. We were introduced to a wide range of traditional songs and food as well as to Mr. Buddha in my very first incense-permeated monastery. We did everything from tracing the Avenue of Stars, to hiking, to exploring little caves in Macau, the former Portuguese colony across the bay.
Sandra, my new four-day-old best friend, was like an angel from heaven, a piece of home. Couldn’t we just call it a deal already and let her take me home with her? Haven’t I put in enough travel time? When we had completed her four-day, introductory crash course to the marvels of her birth city, the five of us said goodbye at the front entrance of the subway station. I gave her one last hug and then faced the dark escalator which would lower me down to my very first underground metro. I only turned around once and, as the rest of the early morning rush hour swallowed her up, I saw a tiny hand waving. Oh, how I longed to stay by her side, but Ammon was pressing forward so confidently and it never once occurred to me that he, too, might feel a tinge of apprehension.
From a distance, the city looked a lot like Vancouver, with its high-rises, busy streets and waterfront activities. Its “Hongcouver” moniker and its incredible diversity partially explained why I felt as comfortable as I did there. The daily markets crammed between tiny alleys bursting with goods of all kinds amazed me, but we were being set free now, underway with all sails set, strong winds blowing, and a whole world of possibilities opening up to us.
I felt I was teetering on the edge of my last chance to escape. I knew that the farther we travelled inland, the farther we’d get from an airport and civilization. All along, I had been expecting some kind of Big Bang type of reaction. I resented the trip so deeply and yet, despite the months of foreboding, it had not yet “hit” me. I was still waiting for some sort of physical manifestation of my ambivalence about this trip, like a quake in my knees that would send me toppling to the ground, or something – anything! I wanted to be shocked! To be surprised! Where were my fireworks?! I almost began to feel ripped off about the lack of a significant personal breakdown of any kind, though we did, by sheer happenstance, see the nightly firework and laser lightshow from Hong Kong’s seawall on our last night in the city.
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