Hong Kong: How I see it

Hong Kong is worth the visit, maybe two. Big, like New York City, and home to heaps of ethnicities predominantly Europeans, Chinese, Southeast Asians, and Indians. Great foods from everywhere. Beautiful parks, palm trees, flowers, mountains, beaches, and hiking trails.  Home to the greatest skyline in the world, tall buildings stand next to Colonial-era remnants, mosques, and tenement housing, the city has enough to keep the unentertainable entertained. It is clean, safe, and diverse in it's wares.

Now the bad news...

Hong Kong is expensive. Not as expensive as London, Maui or Japan, but pretty damn pricey. And that takes the fun out of things sometimes. Hong Kong is westernized. The Brits built it and the Chinese made it into what it is today. Posh, Glitzy, over-the-top Glamour shopping of all the ridiculously unnecessary and over-priced name brands like Rolex, Cartier, Armani, Channel, Omega, Christian-Dior, Rolls Royce, Ferrarri, Bentley, Coach, and Louie Vitton, run amock here like the plague. As for me, retail shopping of this nature does absolutely nothing for my soul. Unfortunately, there is so much of it here, it, sadly, has become the first, second, and third most popular activity in this town. Everybody is doing it. But I accept things for how they are, it was like this before I got here, and although I choose to not understand the logic in it, I contend that a watch that sells for 153,000 HKD ($19,741.94 USD) seems a bit extraordinary. And yes, there is a guard with an assault weapon standing outside the front door so if you want to die, try to steal something and you've come to the right place.

You take the good with the bad, and you enjoy a dimsum, or a night time stroll along Tsim Sha Tsui Promenade overlooking Hong Kong Island. You get a massage or a Chinese Green Tea and you take a day in the mountains or at the beach or in the park or on a boat ride while you ponder your existence and what's this life for?

I did not ask to be born, I was just put here, on Earth to rummage and roam and to play and to maybe eat some spicy foods on the cheap, while I take a leisure holiday away from Hawaii.

The Taiwan-derer; Khaohsiung to Hong Kong

Hong Kong Island

And by Night

The switchover from Taiwan to Hong Kong went as smoohtly as one would expect, no dramas whatsoever by the customs officals nor the security screeners.  That's because we're not in Kansas anymore Toto.  No anal probes, no full body radiation, no secondary inspections, I kept my shoes on and surrendered, only momentarily, a wooden pair of chopsticks I had stashed away.  The boys in blue were friendly and kind.  Onto China Airlines: immaculate service once again.  A beautiful meal, coffee and tea service, hot hand towels, and smiling courteous stewardship.  Mind you this flight is only 90 minutes, but what it displays is how embarrassingly inept our domestic services are for flights of six and eight hours plus. Our American carriers give you nothing. No blanket, no meal, you can pay extra to bring your suitcase and you can purchase a bag of Skittles or some Oreo cookies for dinner.  As a world traveler, the United States' domestic service standards don't really appeal to me, for I have seen the other side.

Arriving into Hong Kong International Airport is a trip because after landing on an island runway strip in the water, you take a rocket shuttle to your baggage claim, of which there are 26 being serviced. A Double-Decker Bus ride from the airport to the hotels is where I ended up, staying in the budget-style Chung King Mansions on Nathan Road in Kowloon. Don't let the name fool you because these ain't mansions. They are tiny, private yet clean accomodations, the least expensive in town, but the experience of walking through the bottom floor is one for the curious. It could, would, and probably has, scared people. Seedy? Uh, yeah!

We got us some tea drinking weather

Tea House

Taiwan is hot! Sweaty hot.  I hate to admit this because I like heat but I felt it totally necessary to just spend entire days drinking cold blended fruit beverages and Chinese teas from the tea houses perched on the hillsides overlooking the city.  One day, as I was meandering rather aimlessly, I came across a flight of stairs  400 tall.  I ascended because I had nothing else to do.  Lo and behold, there was a Buddhist tea house with flora and fauna and birds overlooking the city of Kaohsiung and it's massive harbor.  This felt nice because it was rather pleasant and quite relaxing for a hot October day.

We went surfing a few days before that.  Then I took a night train south along the east coast to Hualien where a few of us rented an economy car and drove it through the Taroko Gorge, an epic journey to middle earth.

Tainan is a favorite of mine and that's not just because I lay in the park drinking Bordeaux from the bottle and eating Beetlenuts.  As it is the oldest city in Taiwan, once a Dutch stronghold in the 1500's, it's filled with Taoist temples, it's the food capital of Taiwan, and it's small relative to Taipei, big to Maui.  Calm but buzzing, old but new, it is the perfect Asian city.  I rank it amongst my world wide favorites along with Chiang Mai, Kyoto, Barcelona, Paris, Miami, Tokyo and New York.  I may require some more time in it.