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| Hong Kong Skyline from Kowloon |
This past week saw my wife and I visiting the beautiful and exotic
Hong Kong. As a former British Colony, semi-autonomous region of China
Hong Kong has become an economic powerhouse in the Far East and along with
Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore is known as one of the "Asian
Tigers". Hong Kong is known as financial city and is often
referenced in the same breath as New York, London, and Tokyo. All of this
things meant that I was expecting Hong Kong to be very similar to any and all
of those cities that I have previously visited. I was very wrong.
One amazing thing about Hong Kong is that as far as I could see
there were not any bridges to Hong Kong Island. There were tunnels, mass
transit, and plenty of boats but not a bridge. This lends the skyline an
amazingly pristine look and probably makes traffic to and from the port a lot
easier to manage.
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| All of the black in this picture is wilderness (except the water) |
Second, Hong Kong is not as large (space wise) as London, New
York, or Tokyo. Each of those cities has a downtown or central area that
everyone associates with the city. This is where rich people live,
tourists visit, and major companies have their offices. However, around
these central locations there are usually sprawling metropolises that go on for
miles in every direction as smaller towns are eaten by suburbia and the
infrastructure of these mega cities. In Hong Kong it is very different.
The city in Hong Kong is very compact and is scattered around the edges
of the main island and the associated areas but never more than a half-mile
from the water after which is almost complete wilderness and isolation.
No sprawling suburbs and no shantytowns on the edges of the city.
The reason for this is geography, after about half a mile the sides of
the mountains become much too steep for people to travel up in anything other
than the funicular railway to the city's highest observation point.
This interesting geography was completely unexpected and made this major
city appear to be both isolated and pristine even though it housed millions of
people and tourists.
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| Our Cable Car to the giant Budha statue |
The geography of Hong Kong also means that space is at an
even higher premium than other big cities so almost every building is a
skyscraper. Manhattan is probably the best known town for skyscrapers in
the USA but it has nothing on Hong Kong because not only is the financial
district crawling with massive buildings but apartment complexes are regularly
more than 50 floors tall in every part of the city. Although buildings in
New York, London, and Tokyo are usually 4 or 5 stories it is nothing compared
to the sheer height of the buildings in Hong Kong.
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| The previously mentioned Giant Budha Statue |
Finally, I was impressed and surprised by how easy it was for a
non-Cantonese speaker to get around and function in Hong Kong. There were
a few times when Jade's Mandarin came in very handy to people who could not
understand English very well but overall it is a city that is easy to manage
and quite enjoyable. One thing to note, however, the hostels in the
Tourist district are really expensive for what you get (basically a cell).
It was difficult to make this our first stop after massive jet lag
because we did not want to spend any time in the nasty hostel but also needed
to rest earlier as we got our clocks on the right schedule.
Hong Kong was an amazing place and 3 days there was absolutely
perfect for how much we wanted to see, spend, and do before our main
destination of Taiwan, which I will write about soon. I hope you enjoy
the post and if you ever need any pointers about visiting Hong Kong just ask!
Also, feel free to ask me any questions about my travels or the photos
included, it's always nice to know that people are reading your blog ;-D.
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| The janky little "cell" at our hostel |
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