The City of Angels

I'm in Bangkok!!! Just arrived, should be fun...

Hong Kong

Hong Kong is a neat place, it doesn't have any specific must-see tourist attractions or anything, but it's really interesting.

Fishing beside the Hong Kong Convention Center, with Victoria Peak in the background.

It's been described as east meets west, and it seems true. Since 1997 it has returned to being officially a part of China, but it's a Special Administrative region and is largely autonomous. It's "one country, two systems". Its political and economic systems don't really follow the party line from Beijing, but Hong Kong is a money-maker, so it's ok. Hong Kong really bears almost no resemblence to the China that I know from Beijing. Hong Kong has its own currency, it issues its own passports, it has a separate language (Cantonese), they drive on the opposite side of the road and traffic seems organized, most everything is in both Chinese and English, most of the population speaks at least some English, the air is cleaner, the city itself is clean (~US$200 fine for littering and for spitting), and it just generally seems much richer. Hong Kong is a wealthy place and you can tell from people's dress, from the cars, from the stores, from the prices, just from people's mannerisms.

Hong Kong is divided into four main areas: Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, the New Territories, and the Outlying Islands. Hong Kong Island is the economic heart of the colony but only comprises about 8% of its land mass. Kowloon is the densely populated peninsula across Victoria harbor to the north. The New Territories, which officially encompasses the outlying islands, occupy about 88% of the total land area. I'm staying in a hostel on Hong Kong Island.

I arrived in Hong Kong on Sunday, but I lost my wallet in the Beijing airport so unfortunately my first day here was almost entirely spent talking to airport security personnel, cancelling credit cards, and trying to figure out how to get a new ATM card sent to me. I wasn't mugged or pickpocketed or anything; I'm just stupid. I was at a pay phone and I took out my wallet to get out a calling card and then set the wallet down. The phone wouldn't take my card, so I picked up my two bags and jacket and moved to try a different one. However, in my haste/tiredness (it was a 7:30am flight and I hadn't slept the night before)/idiocy I made the move sans wallet. I realized this 5 minutes later when I was attempting to put the card back. I ran back to the phone booth but the wallet was nowhere to be seen. Sweet.

This week is May holiday in China, so businesses and schools are off. One of my classmates from Beijing is here in Hong Kong visiting his mother for the break, so I've met up with him every day and he has been able to show me around.

My friend at Lan Kwai Fong.

Sunday night we went to a bar district called Lan Kwai Fong. The atmosphere was great, especially for a Sunday night, but the drinks were also greatly expensive. Since I was on the just-lost-my-wallet budget and he wasn't too keen on treating me all night, we headed to a nearby 7-11 and opted instead for their two-for-one Carlsberg specials. We just walked the streets and people watched. No open container laws to hold us back!

Yesterday I went to a couple of outdoor markets in Kowloon. One was more touristy and the other was for locals. I bought 6 pairs of chopsticks for around US$2.50 and a similarly priced Hong Kong T-shirt, so I was happy.

Today I went with my friend and his family to a really nice dim sum restaurant for lunch. Dim sum could be likened to tapas, where you order a bunch of small dishes a la carte and combine them to make up a meal. The food was great, we had dumplings filled with pork and shrimp, steamed rice noodles, and then more exotic dishes like shark fin. Apparently, the chef at the restaurant is the protégé of one of the greatest chefs in the world. As was explained to me, there is some sort of ranking among world chefs and there are only three, meaning the three best, that hold a title to the effect of "Master" chef. The chef at that restaurant was the top student of one of those title holders.

View of Hong Kong from Victoria Peak.

After lunch we went up to Victoria Peak for an amazing view of the city. You could look out over Hong Kong Island, with building upon building stacked upon one another, each towering higher than the next, and then you could look past to the harbor with ferries and junks crisscrossing back and forth carting people and goods from one bank to the other, and then finally across the harbor to the Kowloon side. On either side were mountains covered in lush greens, and behind were the beaches near Aberdeen.

We came down from the mountain and took a ferry to the Kowloon side. It was getting dark, so all of the buildings were beginning to light up on HK Island across the harbor, making for a scintillating view. We walked around the Hong Kong walk of fame, and I took my picture next to Jackie Chan's and Jet Li's hand-printed stars.

Bruce Lee statue on the Walk of Fame, with HK Island in the background.

Hong Kong has a population of about 7 million, of which over 80% is Chinese. It's really an international place though, and when you walk down the street you will see people from all over the world. Random note on that population: apparently pretty much every Filipino here is either a maid or a prostitute. Last night we went out to a few bars and the Filipino prostitutes were out in droves. Today the maids had the day off, but since they have no place to go, they all just picnic-ed underneath the China Bank skyscraper. It was funny. We drove by a crowd of at least 1000 Filipino maids. It looked like they were staging a giant sit-in or something.

Interesting tidbit: all of the scaffolding for the construction here is made out of pieces of bamboo tied together.

Bamboo scaffolding? I guess it works...