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August 21 2009

Thanks to transitstanzas for a slice of “home;” I have a family member headed back to Hong Kong tomorrow morning, and I’ve been thinking of the fragrant harbour all week because of the Canada Line. ProTip: the green public light buses have numbers and regular routes, while the red ones, well, don’t. I’ve never taken a red one - we usually take them from our apartment to the mall for dim sum (instead of the other option, which is to walk along the boardwalk to the train station with that other mall, then take the train 2 stops over), and I think it costs…I think no more $3.20, but my memory is really hazy on it. (Less than fifty cents CAD.) But I see them parked in clusters like this, when we go shopping in the evening. I figure they must do their best work during rush hour. They’re pretty fun. You call out to the driver when you want a stop, and he waves his arm back. The bus leaves when it’s full or as full as he’s going to get without pissing off who’ever already on. The buses are a slice of the driver’s home - he stores all his cleaning materials for the vehicle up front, and there are often little trash cans for people to throw away their food wrappers; and by law, of course, he’s staring blankly from his driver’s identification card. Riding them is one of the perks I’ve had of being in Hong Kong with someone who speaks the language or knows the place, because you won’t hear about these routes on the Internet or from printed schedules. You learn about them by asking the driver, or reading the cardboard or plastic signs hanging from suction cups stuck to the front window, stop locations written in traditional Chinese with white paint or black sharpie. Someday, I hope to be able to call it home without the quotation marks, but we’ll see.

Thanks to transitstanzas for a slice of “home;” I have a family member headed back to Hong Kong tomorrow morning, and I’ve been thinking of the fragrant harbour all week because of the Canada Line. ProTip: the green public light buses have numbers and regular routes, while the red ones, well, don’t. I’ve never taken a red one - we usually take them from our apartment to the mall for dim sum (instead of the other option, which is to walk along the boardwalk to the train station with that other mall, then take the train 2 stops over), and I think it costs…I think no more $3.20, but my memory is really hazy on it. (Less than fifty cents CAD.) But I see them parked in clusters like this, when we go shopping in the evening. I figure they must do their best work during rush hour.

They’re pretty fun. You call out to the driver when you want a stop, and he waves his arm back. The bus leaves when it’s full or as full as he’s going to get without pissing off who’ever already on. The buses are a slice of the driver’s home - he stores all his cleaning materials for the vehicle up front, and there are often little trash cans for people to throw away their food wrappers; and by law, of course, he’s staring blankly from his driver’s identification card.

Riding them is one of the perks I’ve had of being in Hong Kong with someone who speaks the language or knows the place, because you won’t hear about these routes on the Internet or from printed schedules. You learn about them by asking the driver, or reading the cardboard or plastic signs hanging from suction cups stuck to the front window, stop locations written in traditional Chinese with white paint or black sharpie.

Someday, I hope to be able to call it home without the quotation marks, but we’ll see.

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