Discover Hong Kong - this web site shows areas of Hong Kong where most of my pictures were taken.
My friend, Lynne, from NYC was in Tokyo last week on a business trip for the Tokyo Motor Show. We had a pretty good time, I showed her around my part of town a bit and she also wandered around by herself on the days that I was working. We had dinner in Shibuya one night with one of her colleagues who was also here on business. Thursday night we went out with some of my coworkers to a free sushi and sake work dinner party thingy. All the while I was following my Astros through the playoffs, trying to listen to Milo Hamilton and Alan Ashby online in the morning while at work. It's hard to catch American sports live in Asia, because the times are such that you're either at work or you cannot find any places open early enough to show them. Argh! On Saturday, Lynne next went to Hong Kong on her business trip and I joined her. We got there Saturday night and I stayed until Tuesday, she until Wednesday. The first two games of the World Series were on at like 7:00 AM and we did not catch them, but checked up on the games online.
Anyway, Hong Kong was pretty cool. It's a much more international city than Tokyo I think. Where Tokyo is mostly Japanese with a small foreign population (Korean, Chinese, Brits, Aussies, Kiwis, Yanks, etc.), Hong Kong seems to have a more diverse population from all over Asia and the West. It was warmer than Tokyo, probably in the high 70s/low 80s. There are expats everywhere. English and Chinese both are official languages of Hong Kong, so mostly everything is in both languages and most people speak English, which makes it easier to get around. Also it's much cheaper than Tokyo and there's no sales tax, which is probably why there's so much shopping. On Sunday Lynne and I just walked around everywhere, taking the tram, walking the streets of Central, getting lost and finding our way. I ended up getting a pretty stellar long black wool coat with a Chinese cut and with fur on the inside of the collar that's removable. Plus they gave me a free Chinese style shirt. Lynne had a business meeting on Monday, so I mostly just walked around by myself in the Kowloon district, on the mainland China side. It was so crowded and there were little markets strung about everywhere I went. There was a flower market, jade market, goldfish market, camera market, Chinese goods market, Western goods market, and so on. If I had found more time, I would have gone to see the Giant Buddha on Lantau Island near the airport, but first you have to get there and then it's a couple hour roundtrip walk up and down the mountain. Lynne and I met up later and went to take the Peak Tram up to Victoria Peak, which is a high mountain right on the edge of the city. In the old colonial days, the only people who took the train up the peak were the wealthy people who lived up there and the few Chinese workers who worked for them. The ride up was freakier than I expected. It's on a 45 degree angle and goes really slow, like that first hill of the Texas Cyclone but about 10 times higher. And it stopped halfway up to let some people off! You ride alongside buildings that look crooked because you're at such an incline. But once you get to the top the view is really amazing. We were told to go at night and hopefully get lucky that there would be no haze or fog, and we lucked out. There is a walkway that goes almost entirely around the top of the peak. And there are some huge homes up there. We had dinner at a place overlooking the city and sat outside on the balcony.
The only thing I noticed about Hong Kong is that the air was pretty grimey and hazey, it's no place for a sensitive nose. I came down with some kind of allergies on my last day in Hong Kong and was coughing up a storm. But I bought some medicine in the Hong Kong airport and am slowly recovering. So then I arrived back into Tokyo sick and had to go back to work and miss the next two games of the World Series, but alas the Astros returned to their familiar form in getting you all riled up and excited and pooping out at the end. Swept in the series. I need time to contemplate this and get over it. I'm still proud that they got so far having come from where they came from in the middle of the season. Still, it hurts.
