My Experiences with Hired Vans

Today I was tasked with spending the whole day (ie leaving at 7:45 am and not getting back until 7:30 pm) at a fair for charities at the YWCA in the mid-levels on Hong Kong island, just at the base of the Peak, which offered an amazing view of the city.

It all began at 7:15 am when I crossed the road near where I live to get something to eat at the supermarket. But turns out they don't open until 7:30, so I had to settle for Pringles at the 7-11. Back on the site, I gathered the materials I needed and waited for 13-year-old Zoe to join me, who had very graciously agreed to keep me company today as she is on school holidays.

We had hired a van to take us to the fair (it's over an hour drive to get there in traffic, and taking boxes on a crowded bus or trying to drive there and pay for the obscenely expensive parking costs is out of the question). At 7:45 am I got a call from the van company, and it was a three-way call with me, the Chinese speaking-only driver, and a translator from the company. I was waiting where we had agreed, but the van was not in the right spot and didn't see me. The translator started saying, "You are late. Hurry up!" and then me saying "I'm here, where are you?" and in the midst of this were strings of Chinese and overall it was a chaotic phone call, which ended in a dial tone and me having no idea if the driver was coming or not. But he turned up, and we loaded our things and climbed into the very dodgy looking van for our trek to Central.

The driver then started very adamantly saying something to Zoe, who is Chinese but was brought up in Canada and only speaks English. I tried to shield her from him, and make him talk to me rather than freak Zoe out by letting him get so seemingly angry with her. He finally called someone (which I was about to do on my end) to translate, and turned out he wanted the address again since he didn't know where to go. I gave it to him, and we set off.

I know the way to drive there myself, and when the driver went the wrong way I didn't know how to explain it to him to turn around. He got back on his phone (presumably ranting about the idiots in his van) and with my very limited Chinese I could tell he was getting directions.

We got to the right highway, and ambled on with the millions (literally) of other people headed the same way. He zipped in and out of lanes, speeding as much as he could and braking just as rapidly. He nosed his way in between big buses and honked his way past motorcycles.

Then, I looked over at Zoe, and to my horror she was throwing up. The mother gene immediately kicked in and I helped her clean herself up, and calm the driver all at the same time. He softened up a lot towards us after that. Poor Zoe though. She apparently had been having some sickness after the dinner the night before, but thought she'd be ok.

We finally got to the Cross Harbour Tunnel (with the rest of Hong Kong) and pushed through some pretty hairy traffic, eventually succeeding and getting across to the island.

The rest of the day had it's own twists and turns, including me finally putting Zoe in a taxi to get to the bus to go home since she wasn't getting better.

At the end, another volunteer, Mandy, turned up and she and I gathered our things again and went down to the street to wait for another hired van to collect us. This driver's English was much better than the morning's driver, and I prided myself in being able to communicate with his broken English and my very, very broken Chinese (consisting only of how to say where I live, and a few other words), and show him on a map where to go and even which tunnel I preferred to use (Cross Harbour is waaay cheaper than West Harbour). We settled in for another bout of heavy traffic, but had some incredible views of the city at night from the highway near the Peak, and eventually found our way home.

I'm now exhausted, and need rest in a bad way. But it was a productive time of sharing with people about our work and hopefully even encouraging a few of them to join us.