MTR is very efficient, has an extensive and far reaching network and would take you across the waters from the Hong Kong Island to the Mainland and back. Every station would have 5 or 6 exits marked with a letter and such lettered exits would have two or three exits each. So, that means you can actually surface from an underground station in up to 15 different places. Luckily, local maps tend to reference the lettered exits, so, chances are, you would get out fairly close to where you need to. But do not be surprised if you show up from down under in a different place every time. Yet, if you exited from A and saw a store you wanted to stop by at on the way back, be sure you'll end up checking out exits B, C, D, E and F before you eventually find your way to the desired A with the desired store... The good part is, you get to explore the neighbourhood!
MTR may well be the fastest way to travel across town, but it also has its downsides: you can freeze to death or get squeezed to death or filed off on the sides to blood by the dense crowd. Oh yeah, and as soon as you surface at one of the 15 exits, you'd soak in own sweat and would feel like a defrosted chicken pulled out of a microwave. If you have an important meeting on your schedule with an important suity someone and the etiquete dictates that you wear a no less suity something, be sure your full attendtion during the meeting will focus on wondering what odors the defrosted chicken in your suit emits and what your important suity interlocutor would think.
Next time you have a meeting with the suity someone, you'll know better and will take a taxi. Taxis are cheap and very safe! Dressed up to the nines, made up and perfumed - the incarnation of self-confidence - you take the elevator down and ask the security guard to call you a cab. You observe identical red-and-white Toyotas whooshing by the glass entrance of your apartment building and start getting impatient as the security guard hungs up again, dials for the third time and utters into the receiver these unrepeatable abrupt sounds that you would never be able to understand. When he dials for the fifth time, you wave your hand at him to give up and not bother, make it decisively onto the hot street, confident that stopping one of the dozens of red-and-white clones by a mere wave of your hand will take far less time. Surprisingly, no one is impressed by your hand. Maybe you are on the wrong side of the street? You cross the street and resume waving. You start losing patience, your buffer time is up and if one of these red-and-white empty-seated bustards does not stop RIGHT NOW! you'll be late to your very important suity meeting...
"What's wrong with them?! Don't they want to earn?!" - you reel with anger, as you walk to the parallel street, hoping you'd have a better luck there. Ten minutes later, you are seen on yet another street. Another five minutes later, sweat dripping from your forehead - reincarnation of wrath - you re-enter your apartment building and helplessly ask the security guard to call you a cab. He looks at you compassionately and starts his patient hung-up-and-dail routine all over again. Hopelessly late to your meeting, you eventually spot a cab releasing a passenger by your door and spring out onto the street barely thanking the guard for trying to help you.
Once on the road, you try to relax and strike a conversation with the taxi driver:
- Do you speak English?
- A lital. You speak Canton-easy? Canton-easy easy! You know “jo sun”? You know “koon mo lan”?
- (enthusiastically) Yes, I know “jo sun”! Jo sun! but not the other one… "koon mo lan"?
- Yes, koon mo nan! Jo sun! Goon monan!
- Ah, good morning, jo sun! ... Coud you tell me... How can one call a cab here? Could you give me the phone number?
- Happy Valley eigh to tan - no taxi! Monan - no taxi. Many forenahs, all take taxi.
When you eventually make it into the office, you spot the defrosted chicken staring at you from the mirror door of the elevator with two bruises of sweat-dissolved maskara...
So my preference goes to trams. Their slow crawl makes them too unpopular to be overcrowded, which leaves you with a pleasant warm breeze on the open upper deck, and guarantees you a calm 40 minutes of good read every morning and evening for just $2! These doubledecker trams are a relic leftover of the British rule and their ancient wooden fragility gives them a very romantic look.
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