Hong Kong Visa Leave

This week, I was able to combine a business trip with a Visa leave. The business trip was to Shenzhen (pronounce Shen-Jen). With two other people from our Shanghai office, we spent the day on Thursday visiting with our sales team clearing up some communications issues and then to our distribution center, which is, let's say, old school. We found some things we can do to help them so the trip was a success.

That night, I took a bus across the border to Hong Kong, one of my favorite cities and certainly one of the best places I have ever visited. I spent the first night visiting Kowloon which is across the bay and where most of the tourist action seems to happen. Since I've been here three or four times, I knew what to expect and generally where things are situated. Of course, the rate of change here is enormous as there is always new things being built and expanded. I still see very little Mainland China influence on the go-go pace.

Saturday was my day to go to Macau via high speed ferry but that fell apart when the Typhoon Megi warning level was raised to 3 meaning ferry service could be suspended at any time so they strongly discouraged me from going. For once I listened to reason and of course, the typhoon turned the other way, and it was a non-issue. That will teach me to listen.

Planning for the storm, I shifted gears and decided to buy a book, watch a movie and take some photos of the turbulent water during the storm. I did capture this gentleman



with his fishing line in the sewer. Please let me know if you can think of what he might catch.

So, it was off to find the movie schedule and I was able to go see "The Girl who kicked the Hornet's Nest" which would have been very disturbing if I hadn't read all three books by Steig Larsen. I enjoyed the movie with shoes off and big bottle of water. I did see a glowing review of the third movie which was just released. Definitely, something you need to read or see in sequence. The book I bought was by Lee Child, it's #15 in his Jack Reacher series. A very enjoyable group of stories about an ex-military wanderer, do-good type of guy. I know it's junk fiction but highly recommended as Reacher is a pretty amazing character. My top four of these types of guys are Lucas Davenport (author is Sandford), Mitch Rapp (by Flynn), Gabriel Allon (by Silva) and Reacher. These all high standard, no mushy romance with an unlikely female showing up in the middle. These guys just kick ass and do what many people wish they could. Hey, it's fiction so suspend your belief a little. On deck, is Einstein's biography.

Anyway, after the movie, I decided to try a highly recommended Canadian burger outlet called Triple O's, quite good, but not equal to the California one called In n Out Burger. (Of course, in California, the bumper stickers for this restaurant used to be popular and the teens would remove the first and last letters of the word burger to form a different slogan. I'll leave that for you to sound out.) Then it was back across to Kowloon and shopping in the well known night market which doesn't have great deals but has a nice environment so it's fun to go and watch. I tasted some local dishes here like bok choy and noodles with chicken. Very good. Then back across on the ferry to find out the typhoon was a bust here. Total hours walked for the day was around 6 (12-14 miles).

Another photo from the day peeking into a bridal shop window...



Here's what I really like about Hong Kong:
English Spoken here - English is more than a nice to know language, it seems almost everyone here speaks and understands it, making it very easy to ask questions and find things.
Lots of Money - In Shanghai, because it's more spread out, you don't see as much bling on people, their cars, etc. as you do in HK.
No mopeds or motorcycles - There are none of these in the city center making it safe to walk on the sidewalks.
No honking horns - For all of its traffic, HK has almost no horn honking. Except, get this, when people jay walk. Of course, I wouldn't ever do this but I did observe some people crossing illegally and getting honked at.
Cars yield to pedestrians - Even with it's go-go pace, cars generally yield to pedestrians and buses are definitely gunning for them like they do in Shanghai.

Some annoying things about HK:
Expensive - Everything costs more than in Shanghai
Crowded - Any big city with a compact city center would be like this.
Indian Tailors - Every twenty feet someone is trying to get you to buy a tailored suit. It is very annoying so I just ignore them. If I'm wearing my headphones, I just sing to them.
Massage shills - Almost as annoying are the people trying to get you into their foot massage places. Not sexual or dirty, just annoying.
Pollution - It is pretty awful. Even on Saturday when the sun was shining, everything was enveloped in a haze. I have never been able to take a good photo of the HK or Kowloon skyline because of the haze. The local paper claims that 1,100 people died from air pollution last year. How would they know?

One other observation...
Women seem much, much more independent here. They smoke in public (a big no no in China), act with more confidence than what I have observed in Shanghai, etc. The next thing you know, they are going to want to vote. What is this world coming to?

I got up early Saturday, found out that I could go to Macau and take a return boat directly to the airport, so that's what I did. With the sun out, it made for an nice day, with lots of walking. Have I said that lately? The gambling is supposedly bigger here than Las Vegas. I suppose in the U.S. with Indian casinos and Atlantic City to compete with, a lot of $ have been siphoned off of Vegas. Of course, on early Saturday, only the real low lifes are in the casinos so I decided not to be one of them. I went searching for the Macau where people have lived since the late 1500s and where the historical sites are. In the middle of some of the nicest areas, Western businesses have taken over and it's tough to see the old city without some kind of advertising in the way.

Here are some of the photos of Macau:

This is the "Ruins of St. Paul" - The only remaining part of a church built in 1602 but destroyed by fire in 1835, made entirely from granite.



Same wall from a different viewpoint...



And another viewpoint...



This is Leal Senado Square paved with traditional Portuguese tiling...