and you will not be cheated" and did so. Thus we established some idea of the price of sweaters, jewelry etc. at the big central "Ocean Terminal" building where there are a lot of shops catering to the tourist trade. Armed with that information we then ventured out into Kowloon itself and the street shops and had fun bargaining with the shop keepers to get to a reasonable price. Nobody with any sense pays the asking price in these places so it becomes a game of wits between your desire for the item and their desire for the biggest possible price. I came away with a couple of sweaters and a couple of rings which cost me what I felt they were worth to me so I was quite satisfied.
We took the usual ride out through what are called the New Terri- tories, past the collection of high rise tenements that the city put up to house all the refugees from Red China and on over to the border to look at Red China. All tours do this but it's kind of silly. All there is is a small river forming the border and the land on the other side looks exactly like the Hong Kong land but there is a border gate with uniformed guards and all that. While in H.K. my room mate and I went out on our own and got into several strictly Chinese restaurants and I got very proficient with chop sticks in preparation for Japan.
Japan was the next stop by way of a short layover in Taiwan. An indication of some of the type of thinking by some of our squarer tour members occurred when we were walking from the plane to the transit lounge. One of the men was walking alongside the Chinese guide who was escorting us to the lounge and commented to him, "Well, I guess you wouldn't have a country if it wasn't for our Navy!" I was fit to be tied mad and ashamed all at once. When this dummy had moved off I took the guard's arm to speak to him and told him that I wanted to apologize to him for this man, that that was not the way most Americans felt and that I was ashamed and embarrassed that this man had said that. The guide didn't know what I meant by "ashamed" but I explained. He got the message and he appreciated my action. This type of thinking is what makes the "Ugly American" throughout the world.
In Japan we landed at Osaka and finally got by bus to Kyoto. It was Sunday night of the last weekend before school started and some 700,000 people had been to the Expo that day so everybody was on the road going home about 9:30 PM and it was a long haul. Next day we "did" Kyoto with its numerous shrines and temples and palaces. A beautiful place but one which had to be more of a base of operations regarding Expo than anything else. Strangely no tour from the U.S.
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