Hong Kong and a Wrap-up for Indochina

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We're leaving Hong Kong this afternoon for Mainland China, and this may be my last chance to post for a while. No photos again, but I'm getting better at it!
We took the first class overnight train from Chiang Mai to Bangkok. The room had a small fold-down table, couch that converted into upper/lower bunks and a sink with mirror. The (squat) toilet is still down the hall. We spent the evening with a bottle of wine and some cards and awoke at 0600 for our 0700 arrival in Bangkok. The train was still not REALLY clean, with ground-in grime that would take concentrated abrasive detergent and scrubbers to get out. Though smoking is now forbidden, 50 years of smoke are still in/on the surfaces. Beds were made up for us with clean white sheets and blankets and were comfortable. The AC worked! By the way, all the trains have run on time. We dropped our bags at the Intrepid office at the New World Lodge and spent a few hours wandering through a Bengkok area that feels much more familiar now. We still wonder if the scraggly Westerners we see in the Khao San area have ever gotten out as we have or if this is their entire Asian adventure. In the early afternoon, we headed out to the Novotel at the Bangkok airport through a TINY street entirely occupied by one of the biggest cement trucks we've ever seen. Our taxi driver took the Buddha off his mirror and hung it around his neck, laughing. The Novotel is physically more impressive than the D2 Hotel in Chiang Mai, but the attitude of the D2 employees made it a special experience.
This has been a wonderful trip/adventure. If you're thinking of doing it, do it now. Cambodia is farthest behind in the development process, even in Siem Reap, which is amazingly out of character. In an earlier post, I noted the city's 5-star hotels for the tourists going to Angkor Wat, as well as the crushing poverty you see all around it. It's already too late to see an "unspoiled" Vietnam, which is building a huge highway (something like 14 lanes) between Saigon and Hanoi, and we were told that just Saigon needs 20,000 4-5 star hotel rooms to meet current demand from tourists worldwide, except the Americas. We've seen few US citizens, no Canadians, and no one from Central or South America. Laos has beautiful scenery, good roads, few tourists and interesting towns. It's much less developed for tourists and you can see and interact with local people just living their lives. As far as politics are concerned, Indochina has two kingdoms and 2 communisst countries. Thailand seems to be pretty well-managed, though there's been some chaos in the turnover of government over the past 2-3 years. The King is revered and 80 -- when he dies, the REAL people will be devastated. The Cambodian king is not respected because he involved himself in the politics of the 1970s and 80s when the people were crushed and suffering. He was living in China. Between the Khmer Rouge and the effects of the wars and rich ownership of all the land, the Cambodian people live very hard lives. People in the two communist countries seem to be more comfortable, and we did not see the government interfering in business, but know that some of the freedoms we take for granted aren't available.
Hong Kong is much less chaotic than it was when Tom came here 25 years ago. Traffic is MUCH better, due to an excellent mass transit system, and (to me) the city feels much like NYC. Most signs are in English as well as Cantonese, and it's very easy to get around. For those who are as ignorant as I was, Hong Kong is not one big island. Part of the city is on the mainland, and you still have to drive a ways and cross an international border to get into Mainland (Red) China. Although the British turned the colony over to China in 1997, it is a Separately Administered Region, and we're told the culture will change dramatically when we get to the mainland. We've taken the Star Ferry to the Island several times (we're staying in Kowloon, which is on the mainland), and have walked many miles through the streets. We took the double-decker bus to the other side of Hong Kong Island. Do this just for the ride -- the buses are just a little bigger than each lane of the narrow hillside road, and oncoming traffic as the road runs through hairpin turns must be terrified. We sat in the front row upstairs and we certainly were! We did go to the floating JUmbo restaurant in the Aberdeen Harbor -- fun, though very touristy.

Hong Kong has some amazing electronics bargains, and we splurged on a tiny (10 inch screen) laptop, digital camera, and an iPod for Tom's tunes. We stayed in the West Hotel on Wai Ching Street in Kowloon, and would definitely recommend it.

Well, gotta go -- we take the taxi to the train station for the first of five overnight trains soon. More later!

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