As it is really too hot to do anything mid-afternoon in Saigon, I’ll take this loafing by the pool opportunity to write up a post about Hong Kong.
As I mentioned, the anonymity amid chaos of Honk Kong was a welcome change from Japan, but despite the noise and bustle of so many animated people the city was very clean. Unfortunately, I didn’t think to snap a photo, but there was a sign showing litter as a feast for vermin. Pretty good angle: no one want bugs and rats running rampantly, so don’t toss your crap onto the street. Maybe I should make such a sign for in front of our house in Seattle.
We visited Kowloon at night and strolled through some markets. A busy fervor of commerce was a pleasant (though not peaceful) perspective on a city that ranges from people fishing with no rod from the ferry dock for a living to super-skyscraper dwelling moguls of international commerce. On the main streets in Kowloon you will be harrassed by Indian men trying to get you into their stores to buy, “fake rolex, good copy!”. Flesh and blood spam like this makes me chuckle. They are quickly sorted out of my inbox.
The notable turn from an essentially purely rosy perspective of Hong Kong came with our visit to the Big Buddha, which is amazing. Ha ha, I rolled that up in Katamari! The scale and beauty of the Buddha image is truly inspiring.
The experience of visiting the Buddha is accented by a backdrop of loud and abrasive (mostly Chinese) yammering. Of course, all of Hong Kong shares this condition, but at the Buddha it had the feel of being a bit disrespectful. I appreciate that everyone has different experiences, so it wasn’t really even irritating me, but just offered a different angle to the experience. Same goes for people’s adherence to posted rules. After a couple attempts, I got a good shot of someone tossing a coin in front of a “don’t throw coins” sign, but I opted not to take a picture of people taking pictures of the relic in front of the “don’t take pictures” sign.
After visiting the Buddha, we took a gondola ride which we caught in a “traditional chinese style village” complete with 7-11 and Starbucks. Ahh, official validation of the Big Buddha as tourist kitsch. *shrugs*
We seem to have skipped Hong Kong… and of course want to write about what is current!
A brief overview, which you can kind of follow through the flickr accounts (Mike, Keely):
We did a lot of walking around the city, both Hong Kong Island and Kowloon. We also visited some interesting sights, including the giant Buddha on Lantau Island:
Victoria Peak:
And Stanley Beach on the south side of Hong Kong Island:
We both really liked the city. It’s enormous and loud, but also fascinating. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such high density before. I am looking forward to spending some more time there and getting to know the city better. When we arrived this time, Judy had just come down with the flu, so we didn’t really get to hang out with her until our last day. Hopefully next time we’ll have more time together.
We’ve had really spotty internet access in Vietnam so far, so keeping up to date has been difficult. I’m hoping for a better connection in Ho Chi Minh City so that we can catch up before we leave for Laos, where I expect connectivity will be even worse. We’re ekeing out what we can, and taking tons of photos to post later if need be. Tomorrow I intend to write about Hoi An, so stay tuned
BTW- these are all photos that Mike took, because mine are taking too long to upload at the moment.
We got in to Hong Kong last night from Japan and crashed on Judy’s floor. Hong Kong is very cool. At the risk of generalizing, I’ll say that it is a lot like Tokyo in that it is crammed full of people, but they are not obsequiously polite or anal about cleanliness like those in Japan. Japan was great and the people we met there were very nice, but it is also kind of nice to feel less conspicuous than I did in Hamamatsu. Weakly humorous (if at all) political incorrectness aside, we had a nice little venture out this morning.
Like Manhattan, Hong Kong is a rich sensory experience, including olfactorally. At first there were many wonderful smells: incense, baked goods, fresh fruit, etc. Then we got to this busy street with tons of buses and shop after shop of stores with heaps of dried seafood out on the street. That there is a market for all that dried fish is a bit boggling. Then again, there are a lot of people here.
