Last night I was headed out to see my friend Donna and her family as their youngest, Kate, was in the Wizard of Oz at the International School. I won't delve into how strange it was for a Kansas boy to see the Wizard of Oz in Hong Kong just yet, but suffice it to say, it was.
So, I remembered that we would be meeting at 6pm for dinner before the play. About 4:30 I decided to check my e-mail just to make sure I was right, and I wasn't. Donna lives about 40 minutes away by taxi, and I was to be there at 5. After finishing up the fresh salad I was to bring, I readied quickly, exited the apartment, and pushed the elevator button. I waited and waited. 11. Still on 11. My determination in pushing the button didn't seem to be helping so I finally surrendered to the reality of the stairs.
Hong Kong apartments, or at least all that I have seen, have double staircases that run throughout them. I suppose this is a fire safety mechanism. One staircase is accessible from the waiting space off of the elevators and the other by your back door. Unfortunately, the one by our elevator exits into the alley and is locked from the inside. I made it all the way down just to realize that I couldn't go out that way as there was no way to lock it back up. Back to the apartment, I pulled out the keys we've looked at once for our back door, moved all the kitchen things that we had piled up around it, and squeezed out. With only about 10 minutes lost, I was finally down the stairs and out of the building; the elevator indicator in the lobby still read 11.
Normally, I would take the bus as the cost is more reasonable for a long trip like the one to Stanley, but I jumped in the first taxi I could get. The driver seemed nice and also seemed to understand quite a bit of English. I could tell he was a little nervous about something when I said Stanley, and as soon as we hit traffic, he spoke up.
He was going to run out of gas. We had to stop at a station.
At this point, I had already called Donna was later than the revised time I had told her, and just laughed. What else can you do? The driver was super nice and we went for about 10 more minutes and then pulled into a little station. We chatted most of the time, and he told me about growing up in HK and coming out to the areas we were passing for summer swims with his friends.
Not having driven yet in HK and with no likelihood that that will ever happen, a trip to the gas station was actually kind of cool. The driver said he only has to do it once per day but usually his trips are so short he thought he was in good shape, until I came along. The station we went to only had full service, not surprising, as there is service here in places that Americans never knew or has long since been transitioned by business to the consumer (actually a new book out on this subject that sounded interesting). The taxis use a different fuel than normal cars - something a bit more efficient, I assume. What amazed me was the cost. For a taxi, the driver indicated he'd pay about HK$2.10/liter, which if I did my conversions right is about US$0.07/gallon. Now, that seems a little fishy to me, especially after doing some checking, so maybe I remembering his price wrong, but the important part was the differential to private gas prices. Joe Driver pays approximately 5x the cost for gas that a taxi does. Ouch, taxes, but that makes sense if you want to encourage public transportation.
That was the adventure. We got filled up, and I was delivered before having to push the taxi up a hill. I was late, but once I stopped caring, being late was sure a lot of fun.
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