Hong Kong. Its one of the cities that I’ve most wanted to see on this trip. Its history and modern political/economic dynamics interest me, the food’s supposed to be good, and the skyline unreal. Plus, its the center of the Asian financial world (up there with Tokyo), so that makes it more interesting as well. We took a bus from Guangzhou, which stopped at immigration midway for us. The ride from Guangzhou to Shenzhen and then across to HK didn’t take too long, but once in HK we were greeted by a pillar of the developed world: traffic. We sat in gridlock on the highway for over an hour. Eventually, we got dropped off at a metro station in Kowloon. The first thing I noticed was English; oh how I’ve missed it. People asked us if they could help us, signs were in English, newspapers and magazines were in English, and I was already thinking about how we could easily read menus and order food later.
Travelling in developed, English-speaking places is not perfect though. Bombay, KL, and Singapore have been some of the most expensive, worst-value rooms we’ve stayed at on this trip. But Hong Kong takes the cake. We headed to the Tsim Sha Tsui, an commercial center at the southern tip of Kowloon, with a lot of budget options. Bypassing the usual “hourly rate†hotels, we ended up at Mirador Mansions, one of several ultra low-budget places. Like its more infamous cousin up the street, Chungking Mansions, Mirador is a towering (probably over 15 stories) block of decrepit concrete. Its an eyesore in the midst of modern HK and its tenants seem to be mostly African and Indians. Some online reviews I read described the ground floor as looking similar to a UN refugee camp. The building houses dozens of small guesthouses and hotels, so we headed up to the 14th floor and began working our way down. We looked at a few places and eventually settled on what we agreed was the nicest place: a bed in a small a room with about 2 feet of space on the sides of the bed, with a tiny attached bathroom. Luckily, it was the cheapest too, at 200 HKD (25 USD). The only worse value I can think of are the hotels in NYC.
The upside of having a crappy room is that you spend all your time out in the city. So after arriving, we quickly got back out and wandered the busy streets of Tsim Sha Tsui. With some of HK’s nicest hotels, the area had a lot of swanky luxury-brand stores, but it also had neon-sign filled little alleys with hole-in-the-wall restaurants and shops. It was raining all day, but that made it all the more interesting. I think you get a better feel for places when the weather is bad. You just see how normal people live and how life is, without all the tourists and sightseers that are so prevalent in nice weather. Despite the rain, HK was packed with people shopping and working. Bus stops had lines and often people had to wait for a second bus before they could board (despite the fact that the buses were double-deckers). Walking without getting our eyes poked out was another challenge as we tried to navigate the umbrella-filled streets. For the most part, Hong Kong felt a lot like any major American city. It is busy, wealth is prevalent, English was spoken. Another thing that made it seem more like home, was the liberal culture. It wasn’t as liberal as European norms, but HK is perhaps the least conservative place we’ve been since then. Billboards and advertising were noticeably more provocative. It made me realize just how conservative everywhere we’ve been has been. On a somewhat related tangent, HK is such a contrast to mainland China. The media is objective, web access is uncensored, and from the time immigration stamped us in there’s been a less uptight feel about certain things.
We also checked out the waterfront, which I was pretty impressed with. For one, unlike most ports, the water was relatively clean. Looking across Victoria Harbor, the skyline of Hong Kong Island was amazing. The sheer number of skyscrapers was hard to comprehend, but even more so was the fact that they were built up into the hills too. Super tall and skinny apartment and office buildings filled in all the space between the dominating bank buildings. We couldn’t even see most of the buildings though, as they poked through the rainy cloud ceiling. After dinner, we returned here to see the spectacular city lit up at night.