Visiting Hong Kong - City Of The Past
- September 16-19, 2005 (Hong Kong, China)
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| Close to 7 million people live in Hong Kong,
which is hard to believe before going there. This was my first trip to
Hong Kong, and was the last of cities left on my list to visit in Eastern
Asia. I must agree that most of these cities look and feel quite
similar, and the main activity in each one is shopping. The same
stores can be found in each city, and the dining is bound to be good.
However, it was interesting to visit to see if there is anything that sets
Hong Kong apart from the rest. |
I have to disappoint everyone by
announcing that I did not see any dirty Chinese dinner tables while in Hong
Kong. The main reason may be that we mainly went to more upscale
establishments, but it is also true that the Chinese population in Hong Kong
consider themselves more civilized the the mainlanders.
However, Chinatown in Hong Kong is very impressive, almost as good as the
Chinatowns in Shanghai and Beijing. It can be argued that they have
overdone it though. |
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| The main thing that sets Hong Kong apart from
other cities is its amazing skyline. Even New York can not compete
with this city, actually I can not think of any other city even coming
close. With a crappy camera, however, it is not easy to take a picture
that gives the skyline any justice. |
Yuka has been to Hong Kong several times
before, and she had wanted to drag me along to Hong Kong for quite some
time. While we did not have much time in the city, we managed to do
some sightseeing. This is from the Yuen Po Street Bird Garden. |
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| Yuen Po Street Bird
Garden features a bunch of street stores selling birds of all kinds of
varieties, thus it is probably a good place to catch the new bird virus that
has become so popular recently. Many Chinese apparently also keep
birds as pets, and there were a bunch of old guys in the park that had
brought their birds along to enjoy the fine weather. |
This picture was taken at some fancy
restaurant located in Tsim Sha Tsui with a fine view of Hong Kong Island.
As most restaurants with a fine view, the food was bland, but even I can not
complain much with a view like this. |
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| While Hong Kong is an extremely modern city,
there are still plenty of crumbling buildings around that could have been
constructed by any incompetent North-Korean construction firm. The
building to the left is Chungking Mansions, which houses some of the
cheapest hostels in town. If I were still a student, that is probably
where I would have stayed. |
The Peninsula Hotel is still considered to be
the best hotel in town, especially if grading by historic ambivalence.
Yuka is of the opinion that I kind of ruin this picture with my Monty Python
inspired pose, while I feel that I add quite a bit of value. |
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| If you do not feel like spending a minimum of
$400 per night to stay at the Peninsula Hotel, there are tons of other good
hotels in the city that offer good value. While prices are not low, I
would recommend getting a room with a harbor view. After all, while
Hong Kong is an interesting city, I see no reason why anyone would want to
visit more than once. To make that one time special, harbor view is
the way to go. |
These two pictures were taken from our room
at the Marco Polo Hong Kong Hotel, which provided descent but impersonal
service until check-out. However, they managed to charge a different
credit card than I had requested them to, and I had to communicate with them
for several days before they realized that they had screwed up.
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| A must-do attraction in
Hong Kong is taking the Star Ferry, which apparently has been operating
between Tsim Sha Tsui (Kowloon) and Hong Kong Island since 1888. The
ferry is extremely cheap, and reminded me of the Staten Island Ferry in New
York. The ferry is also a great place to take pictures of me making
strange faces. |
We walked around Hong
Kong Island quite a bit, which was not very enjoyable as my knees were still
hurting from my recent and disastrous climb of
Mt.
Kinpu. Anyway, finally I can say that I have been to Hong
Kong, and that leaves me one less world city to visit before departing this
asylum of a planet. |
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