Story time! I had an unexpected solo adventure last Saturday morning. CUHK had arranged a soy sauce factory tour and a trip to the Ping Shan Heritage Trail for exchange students, round-trip transportation provided. Due to some weird mix-up in my planner (completely my fault) I thought the meet up time was later. So when my friend Jessie texted me to check in on me, I realized I missed the bus.
With nothing else planned for the day, I figured I’d just try to meet them at the Koon Chun soy sauce factory. I was already close to the train station, so with the help of Jessie and Google Maps, I took several screenshots of the route I needed to take to get there and got on the train.
(Usually, I carry my old phone with the HK SIM card with me whenever I go off campus. But it had died the night before and I had left it plugged in to charge. When I woke up in the morning, I didn’t think much of it since I was going on a university-organized tour and did not really need it. The old phone with SIM card allowed me to telephone and use Wi-Fi. But for the remainder of the trip, I relied on a different phone with only “Y5” connection. Wi-Fi = Y5, get it?! I didn’t make that up.)
After riding the East Rail Line all the way to Hung Hom, I transferred to the West Rail Line and got off at Yuen Long. The whole train ride lasted about an hour. And since I was trying to conserve my phone battery, I had nothing to do but cycle through frustration, stress, and self-encouragement. Once I got out of the train station, I had to find Bus 36. When I first pulled up the route to the soy sauce factory on Google Maps, I was not excited when I saw that I had to get on a bus. But I reasoned with myself that it was going to be easy to find it (i.e. there are signs everywhere) and that I’d just have to be super observant to figure out which bus stop to get off at.
I was wrong about the first part. Google Maps lied about where I’d be able to find the bus. I walked up and down the street across from the train station, examining the many bus route numbers and letters on the signs and on the ground. Eventually, I asked around with my broken Cantonese and someone told me Bus 36 is a minibus and wasn’t going to be coming here. I spotted a couple of minibuses coming out from under the train station, so I crossed back over and found several minibus stops. (Minibuses were more intimidating for me because unlike the big, double-decker buses, there are no specific stops. The drive goes on a route but you have to tell the driver where you want to get off just prior to the location and I had no earthly idea how that was going to work with the language barrier and simply not knowing where I was going.)
The sign for Minibus 36 was different from all the other minibus stop signs and I was the only one standing by it. I stood there for half an hour, battling with the intermittent wifi so I could text Jessie and stressing out about whether this was where I was supposed to be. Several times, I considered just giving up and getting back on the train to the University since I was right under the station. But I had traveled an hour on the train already and wasn’t about to waste my morning for nothing, so I kept waiting for that minibus. Finally, after dozens of other buses had come and gone, Minibus 36 came careening through the road, only slowing down when I waved at the driver.
I swiped my octopus card and took a seat next to an old woman. The bus was full of old people. I doubted any of them understood English. Two women were talking loudly to each other over two rows about eating lunch. Google Maps said I had about 10 minutes until I had to get off, so my eyes were constantly switching back and forth from the clock to the street signs that were zooming by. Somewhere after the minibus got off of the highway, I spotted a sign with the name of where Google told me to get off at: Fung Kat Yeung. I got lucky. One of the passengers requested to get off right after we passed the sign and I simply hopped off the bus onto the side of the road with her. I walked back to where the sign was, realizing that I was in the middle of nowhere and there is no wifi. At this point, it was going to be hard to find the soy sauce factory or even my own way back to the MTR.
Stressed out, but knowing I was so close to the Koon Chun factory, I headed down Fung Kat Yeung and asked a woman for directions (I had to compensate my poor language skill with some Western confidence.) She spoke a little English and told me her husband could use Google Maps to help me. A little leery, but desperate, I followed her to a little restaurant to meet her husband. They were good people and gave me directions that I needed. I thanked them profusely and they wished me luck.
Then I got out of there as quickly as I could. Upon close reexamination of my Google Maps screenshot and with new clues from that couple, I realized that I had to cross the highway, presumably through a pedestrian bridge or tunnel. I could clearly see no bridge nearby, so after walking south along the road, with cars and trucks zooming by, I found a dark tunnel and quickly made my way through it. Luckily, there was no one creepily hanging around in the tunnel and I found a sign saying Castle Peak Rd, which meant the soy sauce factory was right around the corner.
The security guard was very confused when he saw me approaching the gate of the factory from out of nowhere. I walked up and asked him if this was the factory as there wasn’t any sign – just a big colorful gate. Then I gave out the biggest sigh of relief when he responded affirmatively.
I made it!
I didn’t get kidnapped by anyone or get stuck on Minibus 36 to who knows where. Although I physically didn’t have to walk very far, my mind went all all over the place. It was like my personal mini-episode of the TV reality show, Amazing Race, where I had to deduce clues, navigate in foreign areas, interact with locals, and travel on public transportation.
The other exchange students were having lunch (poon-choi again) in a classroom. And when I walked in, Jessie jumped up and gave me a hug. She was surprised I had actually made it. My other friends asked exactly how I got to the factory that was in the middle of nowhere.
The rest of the day was rather uneventful in comparison and a lot less stressful. The boss of the Koon Chun soy sauce factory gave me and two other friends a mini-tour of the factory while everyone else finished eating. We got free souvenir packets of different kinds of sauce at the end of the visit. All was good.
ABC in HK 