Last Wed. I was walking around Causeway Bay and noticed a lot more white people around than normal. It registered in my brain as odd, but I didn't think anything more of it. Laster that night, I was in our apartment working on something, when all of a sudden I hear this sound, like a airplane was flying really low nearby, but it lasted a full 5 seconds. WHaT the .... So I stand up and look out our window, and from there I could see that the Hong Kong Stadium was chock full of people. Huh? I wonder, what's going on? So, I quickly google Hong Kong Stadium, July 24th, and it turns out the Barclays Asia Trophy Soccer Tournament was going on, explaining the influx of white people. It was a 4-team tournament, with the first round of games on Wed., then the 3rd place game and championship game on Saturday. I was stunned that Drew and I had no idea this was happening, seeing as it was right in our own backyard, and as I kept hearing the crowd roar throughout the night, I was determined to check it out for the Saturday night games. I looked into it, and all of the Saturday games were sold out. So, Drew and I decided to be bold and try to scalp some tickets outside the stadium. As it turns out, there were a lot of people who were interested in only watching the 3rd place game, which had the South China team in it, and not the following championship game which was Manchester City versus Sunderland. So, Drew asked the people leaving the 3rd place game if we could buy their tickets off of them, as they weren't going to use them anyways, and it worked! For an eighth of face value, we got to watch the championship game. Granted, these tickets were in the nose bleeds, but they still had a clear view of the whole field, and it was really fun just being in such an animated crowd. There were a few players, in particular number 8 on the Man City team, that the entire crowd would boo every time they touched the ball. Literally every time. That player must have done something not very nice off of the soccer pitch. They even cheered when he slipped and fell in the mud. Splat. This was the first international football game for both Drew and I, and we had a ton of fun.
It had been raining cats and dogs for the last three days here, so the field was an absolute mess. The grass was dying, it was muddy, and it also rained hard several times during the game, so, by the end, the field was a giant mud pit. Luckily, our nose bleed seats were under the large awning that covers parts of the field, so we didn't get wet at all. The people with closer seats and with seats on the ends of the field did though. It was so funny to see. Whenever it started to rain, their umbrellas would pop up like mushrooms. Boop. Boop. boop boop. It was really funny to watch.
The hardest part was actually not getting the tickets, but finding seats once we got in there. Our tickets were for a general seating area, and since most people had been there since the first game, we had a struggle finding two open seats that were together. We just had to keep asking people. Also, as you can tell by this picture, the audience was 80% male. At halftime, I had to go to the restroom. This was literally the first time in my life where there was a wait for the men's restroom but not the women's. Ha!
High but dry.
At the end, they told us the crowd count, which was 39,500 people. My reaction was "Wow! That's a lot of people!" Drew's reaction was "Ha, that's less than half of what we can fit in the Big House." :) Some loyalties will never die.
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