Hong Kong

Hong Kong is awesome so far. The city has so much more life and energy than Singapore that the two cities can't even be compared. Not that Singapore was bad, it was just...tame.*

I'm staying in Kowloon, the area across Victoria Harbor from Hong Kong Island. I met up with some colleagues from law school for dinner and saw them again for lunch today before they took off for Taipei. This evening I'm meeting up with a friend from Peace Corps who is working here in the financial sector.

I did some sight seeing this morning. I checked out a Taoist temple north of Kowloon and then visited a songbird market where I hope to have picked up some avian flu. After lunch, I took the ferry to Hong Kong island and visited a really awesome temple filled with incense coils giving off acrid smoke. I also strolled through some street markets selling freshly minted antiques.

My first impressions of Hong Kong are pretty positive. The city reminds me of a gigantic Chinatown in New York with Houston summer humidity. Enough people here speak English that I'm able to get around and get what I want (with some pointing) without any trouble. Tomorrow I head to Macau for a night. I'm curious to see how the Portuguese is and if people really speak it there or if Cantonese dominates.


*Singapore is the host of the 2006 IMF/World Bank annual meetings in October so expect to see more coverage soon. There was a story in some paper this morning about the IMF and World Bank criticizing Singapore's policy prohibiting demonstrations of more than 5 people. Singapore says that it must maintain law and order and that the policy will remain. I guess the IMF and World Bank want more protestors.