Hot Hot Hot!

OK, so it's really hot here in southern China. I mean REALLY hot. It's so hot that a guy on the street started to show us nudie pictures of some girl he was trying to pimp on his iPhone, and my co-worker's response was "It's too hot for that." Actually, he phrased it much differently, but this is a family blog, right?

Yesterday was a bit of a debacle for us. We usually take a 9:45am ferry from Kowloon, Hong Kong to the mainland, but for whatever reason, that ferry no longer exists. Rather than wait for an afternoon ferry, we took a cab over to the other ferry terminal in Hong Kong central. By the time we hit the mainland, it was about 1:30pm and right around 100 degrees. It was wicked hot.

We trudged around in sopping wet clothes looking for a place to have lunch. In the end, we landed in a little noodle shop. Nobody spoke any English, so I just pointed to a picture on the menu and out came this little pot.

It was quite tasty. It was basically rice with bacon and mushrooms. I love little restaurants like this over here, because all the waitresses giggle at your cluelessness. I'm fairly sure they were also laughing because we were soaking wet with sweat, but alas.

Upon reaching my hotel room, I noted this sign on the door.

Notice the particularly rectangular shape of the lock, as well as the direction the arrow indicates it should be turned. It's no wonder that the instructions included with products produced here are of so little value.

It's still ridiculously hot today, but there's a typhoon coming tomorrow morning which has cooled things off a little bit. I spent all day yesterday asking random people if they realized that this area was about to be demolished by high winds and flood waters. Everyone looked at me strangely. Apparently they had a similar storm last week. One co-worker noted that "there might be a meter of water in the street in the morning, so it might be hard to get a cab." He was not kidding.

Apparently typhoons here are a much different deal than our hurricanes back home. For starters, what kind of name is "Typhoon Hagupit?" That doesn't carry nearly the weight of an Ike or a Gustav. Plus apparently these things don't cause nearly the mayhem they seem to cause in the U.S. Hagupit is now forecasted to miss this area by a bit (if you look at the map at the link, Shenzhen/Hong Kong is in the delta at about 114 degrees east), so all they're expecting is lots of rain. I'll keep you posted.

I had a delicious breakfast of eggs, bacon, donuts and melamine. We're about to head out in search of lunch. Ciao!