Hong Kong Day 1

We spent about 29 hours in transit between Canada and Hong Kong. I read most of David Lee Roth's biography, watched two of the airplane movies and got some light sleep along the way.

When we got into our cab heading to the hotel this morning, I was immediately struck between the similarities and differences between Vancouver and Hong Kong. Both cities are port cities. Both cities have mountains, though Vancouver's are more what you see in a Bob Ross painting (R.I.P.) and Hong Kong's are the lush, green kind you see in Hawaii. And Vancouver had a lot of ugly condos dotting the city itself, but I've never seen as many highrise buildings as I have here in Hong Kong. NYC ain't got nothin' on HK. Aside from the Central business district here, though, many of them look pretty dilapidated. We are staying on the North Shore, a little bit out of the city in more of a residential area, but residential by no means means houses; it just means the highrise buildings look more lived in.

We crashed hard and slept for a few hours to make up for the sleep we didn't get on the plane, and then got a late start. We took our free shuttle bus down to the main central train station and caught a ferry over to Kowloon. It was only an eight-minute ride but it was one of the rockiest boat rides I've ever been on. We had set out for some night market on Temple Street, which ended up being a lot like the market I dragged Bryan to in Brixton - nothing of worth at all for sale. We walked through an area that we joked was a lot like Chinatown in NY, because it was just as crowded, and it was filled with men telling you what they had for sale, be it handbags or watches.

Hong Kong is a great segue into Asia because of the fact that it was a British colony up until 1997, when it was handed back to China. This means that English is pretty widely spoken, and many signs are in both English and Chinese.


Bryan got a lot of great shots of the view of Central Hong Kong from across the bay.