disturbing day...

we have no classes on fridays, so dennis, mia and i decided to hit soho for some exploring. stopped off at the travel agency to get our visas for china on the way. the travel agency we took our stuff to was in a shady area.... lot of clubs with names like "tycoon" and "paradise"... ew.
soho was fantastic once again... found many new shops and chatted to some of the designers. check out the links!
rather than join 100 ex-pats for the international club's hot pot dinner (large groups of foreigners are awful) we decided to get some sushi in tsim sha tsui and head to wan chai to meet up with the first year class. i can honestly say that i will never go to wan chai again.... not even if they build an h&m there.... not even if the h&m give clothes away for free. i will not go there. it was like being in the patpong of hong kong. disgusting.
the clubs and bars are stuffed full of ex-pats, mostly guys.... and ladies of ill-repute. there are a lot of girls in shorts and boots sitting on chairs outside the bars, inviting foreigners in. the waitresses didn't like us (the girls) being in their bars, and kept threatening to kick us out if we didn't buy drinks. the guys we were with pretended to be our boyfriends and made us stand in between them so that we didn't get accosted. by the time we left, there was a veritable parade of cabs outside being hailed by middle-aged ex-pat men and their much younger asian "dates". my whole crew was traumatized. i had no idea that this kind of area existed here, which may have been a little naive. i expected there to be clubs and bars like that, but not a whole district. it made me ashamed to be a westerner and really sad for the women we saw.
turns out that the area became famous because of a novel/movie called "the world of suzy wong" about a chinese prostitute, and is still often called the suzy wong district. had i only known that before going out, i would have joined the other international students for hot pot.
i'm never going down there again - and i'm never going to trust any guys that spend any amount of time in that area.