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We had lunch at Cafe de Coral, which is a fast food chain in Hong Kong. But Asian fast food is very different from American fast food! So if you're imagining hamburgers and fries, try imagining pork over rice instead. After lunch, we took the shuttle back to the hotel, returned our Octopus cards--oh yeah, I forgot to mention Octopus cards! So Octopus cards are these cards you can buy in subway stations in Hong Kong, which you can use for public transportation...and also a ton of other things. Almost all the big stores take them, so it's a super convenient way to pay! You just put however much you want on the card and then you're set! All of the machines that read them also tell you how much you have left on the card after you swipe it. I thought it was a genius idea. America needs to adopt this.
Anyway, after we returned the Octopus cards we went back to the hotel and just waited for the shuttle to the airport. Everything went pretty smoothly, until...our flight got delayed. By an hour. All I have to say is, thank god for free wi-fi in Hong Kong International Airport. So we arrived in Chengdu an hour late, and my uncle (my dad's younger brother), who I call Yao Ba, had been waiting for a while because he didn't check the flight status before leaving. We managed to fit all of our luggage into his car by shoving two suitcases in the back seat, so I was squished in there with them. We managed, though, and got back to their apartment just fine. However, they live in a 6-floor walkup...so you can imagine how tedious it was hauling the luggage up there. But we made it back alive, and finally arrived in Chengdu!
The US has credit cards (and gift cards that aren't specific to one store) instead of Octopus cards, but you can't use them on the subway =/ I heard of someone designing a credit card that showed you how much money was available on the card itself, but I don't think anyone actually makes them. It'd probably be too expensive for the cards to have little screens, unless you're really rich, in which case you might not want to publicly display how much money you have. The machine telling you how much money you have left is a much, much smarter idea.
ReplyDeleteYeah I know. I wouldn't want a screen on the card telling me how much money is left...that takes up too much space. I really like the idea of Octopus cards, I think America definitely needs to get them!
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