The March of Death.

So Thursday marked the return of Arthur (my cousin) and my aunt Gina from Manila. Friday Arthur had the day off, so that basically meant that we had one day to cram our ambitions of seeing Hong Kong, our way.

We kicked off the day by heading to Central to eat a some crucial cheeseburgers. Arthur's was a massive 2 patty monster, topped with a fried egg, while mine was basically a southwestern American burger.
We crush them off, and fully loaded, we head to some malls to case out some urban clothing shops. After milling about with no prospect of purchases (mainly due to the extravagant prices), we head to Mongkok for one last call to glory.

But first, we have to stop at this local record shop called White Noise, catering to consumers that listen to fringe music. Arthur is buddies with the owner. What really marked the experience is the great local graffiti peppering the region of town that this shop is in. The shop is on the 3rd floor of some obscure building, and the walk up brought you through a gallery of murals and wall paintings. Truly original work.

First mall in Mongkok we hit is Sino, our favorite, as far as tradition goes. This mall is full of toy, clothing, and electronics shops, not for the faint at heart. Most of the shops have an interesting design, where instead of having everything laid out unsegregated, they have shelves/cubes of 'little shops', where people pay the store to sell their products in their own respective cubes. This allows for a large diversity of products to be sold, that are totally random and interesting. Most of the things sold are gadgets and toys, but I could not bring myself to buy anything, as spending money in Hong Kong is very easy to do, and very dangerous.

After hitting yet another mall (and me purchasing a few trucker hats, designed by some local artists), we decide to head home to rest our exhausted legs for a potentially long evening ahead of us.

Off we go, into the night. We are to meet Arthur's friends who own their own Tattoo Parlor, Star Crossed, Julia and Ras, along with their friends Lara and Henry. All of these folks are extremely cool and friendly people, and I enjoyed their company very much. The predetermined meeting spot is a local big band Jazz bar, who's name has unforgivably slipped my mind. The band itself was comprised of a motley of older Filipino men, busting out some amazing big band tunes. Absolutely refreshing and awesome. Arthur's friend Rachel then shows up, and off we go to a seedy club in the heart of the red light district of Hong Kong called Amazonia.

The reason we go to the bar was not to pick up any local Filipina prostitutes, but rather to see 2 local rock cover bands tear it up. Both bands were totally fun to see. Shots of Jager and Kamikazes were bought, and at one point, a prostitute jumps on stage and flashes her package to the crowd. Stunned. Unfortunately, no pictures on my part of the evening, so please just use your imagination. What an eventful evening, but well worth the adventure.