"Chinese Sex Toy Market Explodes"

"Neither Mao Zedong or Deng Xiaopeng could have seen the explosion in China'a sex toy industry."

You also get to see awkward Chinese guys discovering what a dildo is.

The Other Side of the Pacific

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Biked from my place to the ocean a few weekends ago...pretty epic day if I say so myself.  Took off around 10:30am and didn't get home until 8pm.  Wasn't straight riding--we stopped for lunch and to relax at the "beach" when we got there--but I figure we spent 6-7 hours on the saddle all in all.

A few pics here...

The rest on Picasa.  (Thanks to Libbie Cohn for the pics...)

Verticality

Moved on from HK yesterday to Taipei, home of the Taipei 101, the world's tallest building.  Still, HK's verticality will be hard to forget.  A small sample of pics:

The IFC, made famous to North Americans in The Dark Knight when Batman kidnaps the Chinese bad guy.

Outside the IFC:

On one of the many skybridges downtown:

In an older area called Soho:

Climbed up to the roof of a nearby building and got some different views:

And one last one from "Sneaker Street", in a shopping area that the government is threatening to tear down to, of course, put up more highrises.

More from Taipei in a bit.

SH vs. HK: The Showdown

Just a few differences I've noticed in my few days here so far...

• Stuff is probably about 1.5x-2x more expensive in HK. My random sample: passport photos from a photo booth: RMB32 vs RMB18. A (very poorly named) sports drink called Pocari Sweat: RM8 vs RMB4.5. Drinks? Depends on the place, but usually in SH you can get 2-for-1 happy hour pints for about RMB40. In HK it's about the same price, but you only get the 333mL bottles.
• Public transport is the biggest killer though. I've used probably RMB150 ($25 CAD) in four days. I took a RMB18 bus ride today; the most I've ever paid for a bus in Shanghai was RMB6, and that only happened once. It's also impossible to get around with a bike in HK.
• On the flip side, the HK metro actually makes money. The Shanghai one almost certainly doesn't.
• Exported stuff is much, much more accessible in HK. There's more selection, and it's all cheaper. For example, Kettle Chips are RMB18 at the supermarket here in HK, but in Shanghai, they're only available at the specialty export food market, and they're RMB40 ($6.50) a bag.
• 911 in North America, 119 in China, 999 in HK.
• Basketball courts aren't always jam-packed here. But everyone still sucks.

Another huge difference, and one I'll explore more tomorrow when I go hiking, is that HK is surrounded by nature. To get out and see some actual trees and forest in Shanghai, you gotta go a couple hours out. In HK, physically a much smaller city, it's just a short metro ride away.

Postscript: One of the few things cheaper (or at least comparable in price) in HK?  McD's.  The difference?  McD's is still somewhat novel to the Chinese, so they can price it at a premium.  Not so much in HK.  It's one of the cheapest meals you can eat (street noodles are a third the price in Shanghai).