You Get What You Ask For...

A friend of mine recently locked herself out of her apartment in Hong Kong.  She went to the apartment complex’s management office, said that she needed to call a locksmith, and asked if they knew who to call.  The office employee said, “Yes, but do you know how much that costs?!  It’s really expensive!”  My friend replied that she knew it would be expensive, but she didn’t have a choice.  The office employee repeated several times that it would be costly.  My friend was pretty frustrated, but finally convinced the employee to give her the number of a locksmith.  A small fortune later – for about 20 seconds of work – she made it in her apartment.

Imagine her surprise (and frustration) when I said, “The management office can just have maintenance personnel unlock your apartment if you sign a form.  And, it’s free.”!  We figured out that it all boiled down to a miscommunication.  She stated “I need to call a locksmith” rather than saying “I need to you to unlock my apartment.”  Things like this happen all the time, so we’ve tried to become more specific with our communication in Asia; we do this by stating a need - or what we want to happen - rather than asking a question (the answer to most questions is almost always NO; if you say it as a statement, people usually go along!).

So, I shouldn’t be surprised at what happened to us over the weekend…

Some of our friends were moving away from Hong Kong and asked us if we wanted to take their fish tank and fish.  They hadn’t found a home for it and we must have looked like suckers because we said yes…

That same afternoon, we had errands to run near Mong Kok, which is home to the Flower Market, Fish Market, and Bird Market.  All those markets are complete tourist traps, but we thought it was a great opportunity to check out all the wares we might need as newly minted fish owners. 

We didn’t have our map with us, so we wandered around a while, then stopped and asked a young woman if she spoke English and if she could point us to the fish market.  She told us we were going the wrong direction and needed to cross a very busy street, then turn right.  We followed those directions and found nothing that remotely resembled the Fish Market – it was more like an industrial zone.  We turned around, stopped and asked a couple more people, who then pointed us to an old man who worked in a Chinese medicine shop – they said he knew English.   Indeed he did, but said we needed to go the opposite direction that the first young woman told us.

We wandered a bit more.  A nice man could see we were lost and asked, in English, if he could help us.  We began explaining our desired destination, when another man was walking past and overheard.  He said he was walking toward the Fish Market and would show us the way.  Great.  We’d found our good Samaritan.  We had to walk through a stinky fruit market, but it looked promising.  The man advised us that the vendors in the Fish Market marked the prices high, but we could negotiate very good deals.  I had visions of beautiful, exotic fish for a reasonable price.  It sounded good.  He pointed and said we needed to turn the corner and we’d be there…

Well, sure enough - we got to the fish market, but not the one with cute and beautiful little fishies who are waiting to be taken home to lovely aquariums for (hopefully) a long life.  Nope, we were in the dead center of the fish market where fish were in various states of slaughter. There was a terrible stench; large crowds of people peering into the large aquariums trying to decide what looked like the best dinner; and many men with large cleavers in action - or ready to be at a moment’s notice.

Needless to say, there will be no pictures to accompany this post!

No doubt, we got what we asked for...and learned yet another key lesson: if we want to go to a destination that involves animals, fish, or any other creature that may in some way, shape or form be considered edible, we’re taking a map!