Hong Kong: First Taste of the Pearl
Trip Start
Sep 24, 2008
1
16
76
Trip End
Jul 21, 2009
Hong Kong,
China
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
View from Botanical Gardens
. Just above the lowlands are the Mid-Levels and up above are the mansions; obviously the further up you live, the wealthier you are. HK provides one of the loveliest skylines on earth with incredibly modern and towering skyscrapers set against a backdrop of very lush and tropical hills/mountains. As most know, there is an extremely large ex-patriate population in HK, with people mostly from the UK, Australia, other parts of Asia and South Asia. Similar to NYC, it is also a very transient town and thus people are eager to meet one another and the population is very mixed. While NYC is the most diverse city on the planet, it is also segregated. You do not get that feel in HK as anywhere you look, you will see people from multiple ethnicities and speaking multiple languages. That being said, other than the hole-in-the-wall joints, and particularly in the expat neighborhoods, English is spoken everywhere. You will find Western pubs and can walk by a bar and see an NFL game playing. Juxtaposing this are bamboo scaffolding and tons of hole-in-the-wall joints.
HK even trumps NYC when it comes to certain elements of modernity. The metro is phenomenal, clean and relatively inexpensive and every station has detailed exits that are categorized by letter and with a list of attractions/buildings that are serviced by each exit
Crazy Asian flower
. The Airport Express, the fast train from the airport on Lantau to HK Island, allows you to check-in in downtown Hong Kong and then go to the airport later. When I left, I checked in first thing in the morning and then it took me 30 minutes to get to the airport and 10 minutes to get through Immigration/Security and get to my gate. Genius. Just like NYC, mainstream HK life is incredibly materialistic and a night out at any of the swank bars/lounges/clubs or restaurants will dent the wallet just like it does back home. However, cabs, bodega items, rent and standard food are all relatively cheap as compared with the other major world cities. The city literally never sleeps as you can buy booze and find grub anytime of day or night. Nobody walks as the cabs are dirt cheap and the hills are brutal, which is disappointing. It was nice, particularly for me needing to re-up on certain things, that the pharmacies have all the name brand items that I know and trust. Also, because there is a plethora of labor coming over from the mainland, the streets are impeccably clean and you will actually get tickets for J-walking, so people wait at all traffic lights. I met up with Annie and her colleague Ritwik the first night out on Nov 3 (after an amazing and needed afternoon nap since I hadn't slept in two days) and we went to a swank lounge with stunning views called Acqua and then out to a very chill hookah bar and finally some late night grubbing
Orchid 1
. The place was an extreme hole-in-the-wall that provided delicious beef (it's been a whole country since I could eat this) and pork with egg and rice and clams and Ritwik/Annie had to order in Cantonese. I very much enjoyed the night out and Ritwik, a traveling fiend like myself, had some great pieces of advice for some of my future destinations in SE Asia. Hopefully, we'll all link up somewhere along the road for a weekend.My only full day in HK was spent doing what I like to do the most: walking briskly around a city in order to get my bearings and stumble upon unexpected joys. I headed down the hill through SoHo and another big expat neighborhood before winding back up the hill at the city's Zoological and Botanical Gardens. I spent quite a long time in here as they were wonderful gardens set right in the middle of the city (kind of like CP) with fantastic views of the buildings and an amazing array of plants unique to India and Asia. My cousin Preet, botanist extraordinaire, would have loved spending a full day at this place. They had a greenhouse with gorgeous orchids and carniverous plants and the zoo housed mostly monkeys and lemurs. Unlike the Congo Gorilla Forest at the Bronx Zoo, the finest zoo exhibit you will ever see in terms of providing a natural habitat and thinking about the animals first, most of the primates here seemed quite sad and did not have a proper enclosure to provide for foraging and other natural things they like to do
View North from the Peak
. Once I got my fill of walking around down in town, I headed to the Peak Tram to check out the stellar views on top of the island. The Peak Tram is very much like the SF Cable Car, an extreme tourist trap if I have ever seen one, but it's cheap and takes you to the top! At the top were the typical Fisherman's Wharf-esque shops and restaurants, but the great thing is you could run away from that and take a beautiful hike around the whole peak, through very lush vegetation and with jaw-dropping views the entire time. HK, Kowloon and Victoria Harbor very much remind me of other great harbor cities: SF, Sydney, Vancouver, but it particularly reminded me of the Bay Area. I would liken the views from the Peak as those from Twin Peaks where you are behind the city and looking out onto Oakland (Kowloon) and the mainland beyond. However, SF is not nearly as vertical, dense or populated as HK. After getting my hike on and seeing sunset and all the buildings illuminated as dusk and darkness set in, I made my way down the hill and then across the harbor via the metro to Kowloon to catch the famous nightly sound and light show. Kowloon, and Tsim Sha Tsui in particular, is a huge shopping area and where most of the nice hotels lie, so there isn't much to see. However, there's a gorgeous harborfront promenade dubbed the Avenue of the Stars that provides amazing views of the lit-up HK Island skyline and all the junks motoring by
Hari at the Peak
. The Ave of the Stars is also their Hollywood equivalent for HK cinema, so there are stars and handprints for all of the film greats. The light portion of the sound and light show was incredible - almost 20 buildings on both sides of the harbor have light fixtures that participate in this show with spotlights shooting way up into the sky, laser beams being shot off the roofs and the entire facades of the buildings lighting up in various patterns and colors. However, the sound portion of the show was the cheesiest Asian EMO you could dream of. Definitely worth suffering through the music to see the splendor of the lights and their reflection off the harbor at night. I wrapped up the night having a beer with Annie in her apartment (poor girl was beat because I kept them out until 3am on a Monday night!) and beginning to watch the election coverage as the polls had just started to open on the East Coast. As she went to bed, I went out for a meal and a couple of drinks and because of the large expat population, there were tons of Obama shirts everywhere that day and the following day when I left HK on Nov 5. The buzz throughout the bars was all about the election, continuing the trend I saw in India where this was dubbed the "mother of all elections". I would arrive in China the next day to see the next President-elect, Barack Hussein Obama.
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