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Notations on Hong Kong by Sarah Lukacs
Sarah says:
In no particular order:

1. Fashion: Hong Kong women are *very* fashion forward. I mean, they are pushing the fashion envelope hard. Some things work, some really really don’t but they are not scared. And they are raging on white leather knee high boots. they’re everywhere on every age. you haven’t seen cute until you’ve seen an 8 year old in knee high white leather boots. I’m telling you, this city is crazy. which brings me to:

2. Shopping: Seriously, the thought crossed our minds and came out of our mouths that a week long trip to Hong Kong just to go shoppping isn’t such a bad idea. I’ve never seen shopping malls as large as what they have here. And all top name brands, very very cool. We saw a Louis Vitton on every corner but, mercifully, not one Gap. And with an exchange rate of $7.6 HK dollar to $1 US dollar, book your tickets now.

3. Food: There are many, many different kinds of hum bow, not just the bbq you get at home. We had a red bean and some kind green tea one for breakie on our first morning. we would never eat this at home - it’s a white bun with a sugar puree inside, people. but somehow, it felt right in HK. Watch out for the donuts that look like cinnamon sugar, though. they could be curry flavor. Now, you can get any kind of cuisine you want from western looking restaurants in which you’d feel very comfy and I must admit that on our 3rd night we went to Pizza Express. But on nights 1 & 2, we went total local Chinese fare and it was awesome. No one spoke English and we were the only Westerners. The 2nd night we were taken to their upstairs seating area which was a little weird at first because I think we were actually eating in what used to be an apartment turned extra restaurant seating area and it was kind of back alley but it turned out awesome and we were very proud to have gone there instead of the “chain” Chinese place we almost went to. eexperiences, all experiences. speaking of apartments…..

4. HK housing: David says he read that HK only has 4.9M residents. shocking when you see the housing situation on HK island. Imagine apartment blocks rising up 50 or more floors that house 15,000-50,000 people. They’re built in pods all over the entire island - even out in the middle of nowhere. Some are flat buildings bundled together in communities and some are shaped like four-leaf clovers that form weird 1970’s-yet-space age concrete pods. Either way, they are oppressive but amazing at the same time and to see people hanging their clothes out to dry 50 floors up is….well strange. aren’t they afraid they’ll lose something off the hanger??

5. Pollution: we are definitley not the only country contributing to global warming. our eyes and noses were burning the entire time. Oddly, though, it’s a very clean city in just about every other regard. Not a single scrap of garbage on the ground anywhere - or gum. so clean yet so dirty at the same.
Those are my notations. HK was meant to warm us up on being backpackers again and I think it did the job perfectly. We flew to Hanoi this morning on Vietnam Airlines - what a nice airline, btw!! The flight attendants where the lovliest long silk dresses over silk pants and you’re served dim sum for breakie. We’re here in our hotel now and everything is going great but I’ll save that for another installment. Stay tuned!

This entry was posted on Friday, January 12th, 2007 at 10:55 pm and is filed under Global Travels, Hong Kong. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.