Hong Kong - A World of Contrast!

On the flight from Kota Kinabalu to Hong Kong, I couldn't get a certain song out of my head. It was from a cartoon I used to watch as a kid called Hong Kong Phooey. Hong Kong Phooey, number one super guy. Hong Kong Phooey, quicker than the human eye. The song played over and over as we flew northwards, until it suddenly occurred to me that perhaps someone aboard the flight was called Phooey. Imagine that, a real life Hong Kong Phooey!

Hong Kong was a landmark for me because it was my fiftieth country. Since 1999 it has been a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China but still remains an almost autonomous country in itself. Instead of the Chinese Yuan, they use the Hong Kong dollar, and instead of needing a visa to enter the country, like in mainland China, passport control was a cinch. After clearing customs we were soon in a car heading for our hotel.

Hong Kong was surprisingly hilly with rocky crags and cliff faces rising up around the airport road. Very soon though we came to the urban sprawl that Hong Kong is famous for, namely its skyscrapers. They were everywhere, eye candy for the architecturally minded. Very quickly we joined the tail end of a traffic jam which rapidly became a free for all, with our driver even blocking a police van from squeezing past our left flank. Eventually we made it through the bottleneck and arrived at our hotel.

The Park Lane was located in Causeway Bay on Hong Kong Island. The room had a fine view of Victoria Bay and Kowloon beyond. We took a walk around the immediate vicinity and Angela was delighted to find it was full of shops. She said it reminded her of a cross between New York and Bangkok.

People were everywhere, storming into subway stations, rushing along streets, sidestepping slower pedestrians, or else gathered in crowds to cross roads. Gawky teenage boys stood around with their outlandish hairstyles and BlackBerries. Teenage girls paraded past in skimpy clothing, most of them stick thin but pretty looking. The heat was intense, the sort of heat you get after opening an oven door, and this made the car fumes even more noxious. At times, especially when walking between buildings, it felt like we were drowning in hot air.

“You go back to the hotel and read,” suggested Angela. “I'll look around the shops for an hour! I know you'll get bored otherwise.” To keep me happy, we stopped at a supermarket where I bought twelve cans of Harbin Chinese lager for less than the price of a single can of Carlsberg in the hotel minibar. As Angela went off to shop, she looked like a child who had found a street full of candy shops selling the best candy in the world.

As night fell, and the lights came on across the city, Angela and I caught a tube to Temple Street Night Market in Kowloon. As we climbed out of the underground, I couldn't help but feel we'd arrived in the Hong Kong I'd seen such much of on television. Glittering neon signs written in red Chinese lettering hung over the streets and chop houses. The smell of food being cooked filled the air as we walked towards the market which was clearly a tourist draw judging by the amount of people heading towards it.

“I'm hungry,” I said as we neared the market. I'd spotted a large outdoor eatery named Temple Street Spicy Crabs and thought it would suffice. The place was packed with people, all jostling for space on the plastic white tables. A couple of nerdy oriental men with square black glasses sat nearby chewing on something from their plate. Further along a whole family sat around a table sharing a meal of shrimp and crab.

“Wat yu won?” barked a hard-faced waitress as soon as we'd sat down. It took us a while to work out what she'd said and when we did, we ordered some drinks and something called Chicken in Black Bean. The waitress nodded and disappeared, reappearing only to plonk down our drinks. Angela decided she needed the toilet and when she returned she gave me some bad news. “It's a hole in the ground. Not the worst I've been in, but not the best.” Sighing I nodded and got up.

Upon entering the cubicle I was pleasantly surprised. From Angela's description, I'd been steeling myself to some sort of third world latrine but it wasn't that bad. The hole was actually a porcelain bowl in the ground and it actually felt quite refreshing as I stood there. In fact the breeze on my bare ankles was quite nice. Until that is, I realised that it wasn't the breeze but droplets of urine splashing back up at my legs. I tried to move my feet outwards but it was no good, the damage had been done. I left the cubicle a broken man.

Our meals arrived and only added to the gloom. We each received a bowl of green peppers, black beans, and some parts of a chicken that should have been thrown away. “It's pure gristle,” said Angela as she picked up a piece with her chopsticks. I looked at my meal and shuddered. In the end, of the twenty or so pieces of gizzard in the bowl, I managed to extract perhaps one mouthful of edible meat. The rest I had to discard, including a ball and socket joint.

Temple Street Market was smaller than expected, comprising of just two main isles. It sold the usual assortment of stuff ranging from knock-off watches, hair clips, paintings, leather bags, fake designer clothes and porno DVDs. Tourists were everywhere but the prices were cheap. We wandered from one end to the other, and along the way picked up a few bargains.

The next morning was overcast, with low level clouds skirting the tops of skyscrapers. With some drizzle in the air, we caught the incredibly well run underground (known as MTR) to a stop where we could walk to the famous Peak Tram. As we descended the escalators into Hong Kong's subterranean world we could not help but be impressed. Everything was so clean and tidy with not a scrap of litter to be seen. There were also shops and cafes, giving the whole subway the slight look of a shopping mall.

“Have you noticed the doors?” said Angela as we took our seats in one of the air-conditioned tube carriages. As I looked, the automatic doors of the train were closing, but behind them, on the platform side, some outer doors were also closing. “I wonder if they're there to stop people committing suicide?”

The Peak Tram opened for business in 1888 and is reputedly the world's steepest funicular railway. As Angela and I sat and enjoyed the eight-minute ride to Victoria Peak we hypothesized on the best way to save ourselves should the single cable that was hauling us upwards suddenly snap. I opted to jump out of the window while Angela opted to curl up behind a bulkhead. “Maybe we shouldn't be even thinking about this,” Angela suggested.

Even though there was still a bit of drizzle, the view from the peak was amazing, offering a panoramic view of Hong Kong and its harbour. We were also dazzled by an eagle which was effortlessly riding the thermals around the lush green mountainside, unaware that it was flying above some of the most fabulous skyscrapers in the world. The peak contained plenty of shops and restaurants, and even had a Madame Tussuad's. A waxwork of recently deceased Michael Jackson was near its entrance and Angela somehow persuaded me to pose next to him. In doing so, she managed to take the cheesiest photo of me in existence. It was still making us laugh hours afterwards.

In one shop we succumbed to the tourist temptation and bought a handwritten (I actually saw the man doing it) framed picture of our names written in beautiful Mandarin script. “This could say anything,” I said as we admired the finished product. “In fact it probably says 'tight-arse English bastards.' I was referring to the fact I'd haggled the woman down on her initial asking price, even quibbling over fifty pence.

Our next stop was Ngong Ping 360, which sounded like some sort of robot but was in actual fact a 5.7 kilometre collection of cable cars. It was a long way off, over near the airport, but with such an efficient tube service we were there in no time at all.

“You want crystal cabin or normal carriage?” asked the woman behind the counter. After some consideration we chose the normal but significantly cheaper normal carriage. The crystal cabin, we later learned, was identical to the normal one except for a section of floor made from clear glass. The twenty-five minute ride was pretty good for the view. From our dangling position we could easily see planes taking off and landing at the huge airport. “We don't need a crystal carriage,” I mentioned to Angela as we enjoyed the fine vista outside. “We can slum it with the plebs.”

Perched more or less at the top was the largest seated Buddha in the world. It took ten years to build but Angela and I didn't bother climbing the two hundred steps to reach it. We'd already seen a massive golden reclining Buddha in Bangkok and we'd circled a gigantic yellow one in Sri Lanka, so now presented with another giant Buddha, we were content to view it from the cultural village that had grown up around the cable-car stop. It was all a bit of a tourist trap really, but a nice one at that, and we had a quick snack before heading back down.

As night fell we arrived at the harbour area to catch a Star Ferry across to Kowloon. As we made the quick crossing we couldn't help but marvel at the night time skyline of Hong Kong, a true wonder of modern times. Some of the skyscrapers looked like they were putting on a light show; multicoloured neon lights dancing all over them. “You know,” said Angela as we leaned over the railings to catch the breeze, “I'm not really into concrete jungles, but this really is something else.”

We finished our evening by taking a short stroll down the Avenue of the Stars, where fans of Hong Kong's cinema can see handprints of their favourite stars. We didn't recognise anyone apart from Bruce Lee, who had his own statue, but the whole avenue had a backdrop showcasing the gorgeous skyline.

The day after we'd taken a trip to Macau, Angela I and visited Stanley located on the southern end of Hong Kong Island. The taxi driver's first name was Kong, I noticed, which is why I mentioned to Angela that we had met Hong Kong Kong. Stanley had been a fishing village before the British came, but was now a retreat from the hustle and bustle of downtown Hong Kong. There was a nice little beach and a pleasant waterfront lined with bars and restaurants. There was also a market selling everything a tourist could possible want, which we had a wander around. “Let's see the temple,” suggested Angela, referring to the Tin Hau Temple dating back from 1767.

When we neared what we thought was the temple, Angela stopped in her tracks. “This can't be it,” she said. “It doesn't look old enough.” But it was the temple, and when we went inside we couldn't help but feel a twinge of disappointed. The interior was made up of small square room filled with statues of gods, devils and ships. All very interesting but hardly evocative, as the guide book had it to be. Suddenly a teenage girl sat in one corner shouted towards us. When she had our attention, she gestured towards a box which said DONATION. Shaking her head, Angela put ten dollars in and then we left.

Our final afternoon in Hong Kong was spent on Cheung Chau Island, a tiny but popular place for families on a weekend. The small fishing island turned out to be very pleasant way of spending a few hours, strolling around the seafront shops or stopping for a beer in one of the many bars. “It reminds me a bit of Whitby,” I said to Angela, referring to the small British seaside town. Like Whitby, it seemed to have retained some of its former past, with narrow alleyways full of tourist shops, and fishing boats moored in its harbour. And also like Whitby, the island used to be a haunt of pirates and smugglers, who often hid their loot in the caves which dotted the island.

On the other side of the island was a small but very busy beach. People were packed together sunbathing or swimming in the warm sea. One man, sitting upon a bright pink lilo suddenly keeled over into the water in a most comical fashion like a shark had just got him. The chances of this were slim though because a large shark net surrounded the whole swimming area.

We took a wander through the backstreets, stopping every now and again to visit a shop or to buy some fruit from a street hawker. This part of the island was how I imagined the Hong Kong of yesteryear to be, with fortune tellers and old folk sat in doorways doing nothing apart from staring at passersby. We soon arrived back at the harbour side again, a section of the island dedicated to the sale of seafood. Small fish, large fish, brightly-coloured fish and ugly fish were in tanks by the sides of restaurants. Whenever a customer chose the fish they wanted it was captured by a man with a net before being prepared for consumption. Nearby was a large building which turned out to be an indoor meat market. Women sat on chairs hacking up large pieces of fish, and further along a man with a cigarette dangling from his mouth was chopping up a piece of pork.

The return journey back to Hong Kong Island was even better than the journey in. In fact, in an act of pure unrestrained lavishness, I upgraded our seats from ordinary class to deluxe class. Angela was excited; it wasn't often we got to walk past the poor souls in the cheap seats, sitting there in the stifling heat looking all miserable, while we climbed into our air conditioned upper deck. We ventured outside and found some seats which offered a fantastic view of the island as we left the harbour. The sun was setting, fishing boats were sailing past, and with the wind in our hair, it was just about perfect.

“How much did it cost to upgrade?” Angela asked. I told her that the cost didn't matter; only that she was comfortable. “Come on,” she pressed. “How much was it?” I had no choice but to come clean. “Forty pence!” she said after I'd spilled the beans. “Was that it! Forty pence for all this! What a bargain!”

As we travelled to the airport to catch our flight back to the UK, we thought back on the things we'd done on our third Asian adventure. In just short of two weeks, we'd had our feet nibbled by fish in Kuala Lumpur, seen orangutans in Kota Kinabalu, visited majestic mosques in Brunei, and walked past the wacky casinos of Macau, but we both agreed that Hong Kong had been our favourite of the lot. Cable cars, boat rides, busy markets, interesting food, shopping malls, and idyllic island retreats: just some of the attractions that Hong Kong had to offer.

Strengths:
-Lots to see
-Extremely cheap and efficient tube system
-Friendly people
-Superb skyline
-Getting to Macau (and even China) is quite easy for a day trip

Weaknesses:
-Smog over the city (sometimes)

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Part of trip: South East Asia II

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