Tim had a busi\u00adness trip to Hong Kong, and since I\u2019m cur\u00adrently under\u00adem\u00adployed, I thought I\u2019d tag along. It was only for a couple of days, which is a shame giv\u00aden how much there is to and see in Hong Kong. It was also my first trip.<\/p>\n
First impres\u00adsions are that Hong Kong is clean and very organ\u00adised. You arrive at the spark\u00adling new air\u00adport, right out\u00adside the arrival doors there\u2019s a booth to sell tick\u00adets to the train (if you\u2019re doing this, get the trav\u00adel\u00adler pass that cov\u00aders the MTR<\/span> and the train trip, it\u2019s very con\u00adveni\u00adent), the train is on the same level as the arrivals hall and whisks you into Hong Kong, to be met by a shuttle bus that takes you to your hotel. All very use\u00adful for the jet\u00adlagged trav\u00adel\u00adler (and in my case, one with a bad cold to boot). The only oddity was being told to take off my hat in the air\u00adport for what looked like a cam\u00adera and was likely a thermal imager (after\u00admath of the SARS<\/span> out\u00adbreak, one suspects).<\/p>\n The shuttle to the air\u00adport drove along some of the main roads in Cent\u00adral, and my first impres\u00adsion was how much like Singa\u00adpore it looked. Lots of traffic, tall shiny build\u00adings with lots of glass, con\u00adcrete over\u00adpasses over the roads, inter\u00adspersed with palm trees and oth\u00ader vegetation.<\/p>\n Walk\u00ading around Wan Chai the morn\u00ading was a little dif\u00adfer\u00adent \u2014 there were no palm trees there, although there\u2019s still the same crazy traffic. I walked along Gloucester Road to the beat of an alarm that every\u00adone ignored, walk\u00ading by gleam\u00ading bath\u00adroom fix\u00adture com\u00adpan\u00adies and jumbled hard\u00adware com\u00adpan\u00adies, over to Vic\u00adtor\u00adia Park with people walk\u00ading around slowly, stretch\u00ading as they go, and then back along Hen\u00adnessy Road, one of the main shop\u00adping streets on Hong Kong Island. The oddest thing to me was that I was taller than many people on the streets, both men and women. <\/p>\n <\/p> This part of Hong Kong is remin\u00adis\u00adcent not only of Singa\u00adpore, but of New York, Lon\u00addon, and almost every Chin\u00adatown I\u2019ve been to. Chinese herb\u00adal\u00adist shops jostle with glob\u00adal names (in par\u00adtic\u00adu\u00adlar Star\u00adbucks and McDon\u00adalds, but also well-known cloth\u00ading and phone com\u00adpan\u00adies), the people mostly speak at least one Chinese lan\u00adguage as well as Eng\u00adlish, the Eng\u00adlish is accen\u00adted with UK<\/span> pro\u00adnun\u00adci\u00adation. They drive on the left, and mostly walk on the right like the Eng\u00adlish do. <\/p>\n At lunch\u00adtime I headed back to the hotel and dis\u00adcovered the ped\u00ades\u00adtri\u00adan over\u00adpass sys\u00adtem. A bit quick\u00ader than the streets, and a lot safer than try\u00ading to cross the roads. It was also notice\u00adable that the people using the over\u00adpasses (which lead through shop\u00adping centres and hotel lob\u00adbies) were, on aver\u00adage, taller, bet\u00adter-fed, and much more expens\u00adively dressed than those walk\u00ading on the streets below. The typ\u00adic\u00adal busi\u00adness appar\u00adel seems to be dark suits, for both men and women. Pin\u00adstripes seem to be con\u00adsidered flashy.<\/p>\n Hong Kong is intense. I walked through much of Wan Chai, Cent\u00adral, Tsim Sha Tsui and Mong Kok, just look\u00ading at things and absorb\u00ading the atmo\u00adsphere. I saw lots of obvi\u00adously poor people, but few home\u00adless people and the only beg\u00adgars I saw were in the tour\u00adist areas of Tsim Sha Tsui. I marveled at the mid-levels escal\u00adat\u00ador sys\u00adtem<\/a>, and at how thin all those build\u00adings look from the top of Vic\u00adtor\u00adia Peak. You can tell that Hong Kong does not have a sig\u00adni\u00adfic\u00adant risk<\/a> of a large earth\u00adquake by how close the apart\u00adment build\u00adings are build to each oth\u00ader, and how tall they\u2019re built, even on the reclaimed land. The build\u00adings on the mid-levels look like they\u2019d bang into each oth\u00ader when sway\u00ading in a big quake.<\/p>\n I want to go back and see more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tim had a busi\u00adness trip to Hong Kong, and since I\u2019m cur\u00adrently under\u00adem\u00adployed, I thought I\u2019d tag along. It was only for a couple of days, which is a shame giv\u00aden how much there is to and see in Hong Kong. It was also my first trip. First impres\u00adsions are that Hong Kong is clean and \u2026 Con\u00adtin\u00adue read\u00ading \u201cHong Kong Impressions\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[79],"class_list":["post-597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel","tag-hongkong"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=597"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":635,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597\/revisions\/635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}