29 March 2011
My favourite place in the world
Woke up early again to find my legs were indeed tired from all the walking yesterday.
This is a good thing, because my feet are fine, readers of my previous adventures might recall my little toes threatening to fall off, thats because Adidas shoes are too skinny at the toes for my fat hobbit feet. New Balance shoes however are fantastic.
With a bit of time before I have to leave for the airport, all I did was walk about and get some coffee, but now at the risk of being a sentimental asshole, I am going to be self indulgent and write down some stuff about why I like Hong Kong. Skip past it if you wish, next update will most likely be from Taiwan, or Hong Kong airport if theres any flight dramas.
The good things about Hong Kong
• The mix of east and west works really well.
• The transport is fantastic, not just the trains but the ferrys
• The landscape, I love the mountains, and theres so many outlying islands with cheap ferry connections
• Proximity to Macau, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and by short cheap flights to almost anywhere in asia makes day trips or weekend trips easy.
• The metropolis - everywhere theres new shops, restaurants, supermarkets, bright lights, the kind of stuff that bores most people.
• The cost of being a tourist is relatively low.
• You are anonymous despite being in China, it might be racist but in Tokyo you are aware that people are uncomfortable with you being there.
• Everythings open late, every night of the week, including holidays. Sux if you own a store I guess, good if you dont.
The bad things about Hong Kong
• The pollution, it has to be said, its not getting better, it ruins the view of the fantastic landscape. Im not sure what can be done about it.
• The internet sux, its either super fast if white listed or super slow if Beijing needs to deep packet inspect whatever you are looking at.
• The tourists, yes I am a tourist, but theres a lot of sports team type groups that charge around drunk insulting people.
So I do think I would still like to work and live here, perhaps for just 6 months. A lot of people apparently think thats a good idea but return home soon after arriving.
I do wonder if they are coming here expecting to sit in bars in Central and drink themselves stupid like they did on their 2 day holiday.
Theres a section of Hong Kong that seems closed off from most things Chinese, full of mainly English people trying to pretend they are in England, I guess if you were trying to live like that it would be difficult for you whenever you left that area.
This is Kowloon park, right on Nathan road, full of people doing tai chi and a few old men doing kung fu sparring. They were really good at it too.
Another view of the park.
Redundant photo of upmarket shopping area, I had to put something here though, couldnt just have that huge block of text above and no photos.
Theres a film festival on, I have seen a lot of posters and demonstration areas like this one.