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Published: April 4th 2007
Hong Kong Pedestrian Walkway
Hong Kong, a real city of tomorrow, today. Pedestrian walk ways and gardens and parks. Creative construction. Clean and very low pollution. Unreal! Hong Kong
Tomorrow land! Hong Kong is awesome! I stood in awe over and over as I looked at the skyscrapers and pedestrian walk ways, the clean busses, the efficient use of space. I was in awe later at the activists collecting petition names at a table by the giant escalator. They were protesting a building-zoning issue, publicly and getting a lot of participation from the passers-by.
Hong Kong territory, 1102 sq km, is divided into four areas--Kowloon, Hong Kong Island, the New Territories and the Outlying Islands. The northern side of Hong Kong Island is Central and is the area most familiar to the world through photographs. The southern tip of Kowloon is Tsim Sha Tsui, where we stayed. The area is bilingual, English and Cantonese. Traffic drives on the left, obviously influenced by the British. There are signs painted on the street, “Look right,” in English and Chinese. The money is HKD, or Hong Kong Dollars with an exchange rate similar to the Chinese RMB (about 7.5 to 1 USD).
Travel is more expensive on a holiday than at any other time. Our flights to Hong Kong were 3000 Yuan. That’s a lot of money.
Bank of China
I bank at Bank of China, so I was glad to see they had good taste in their skyscrapers. [grin] Then the hotel ran extra high because it was the Spring Festival holiday. Do you believe—the hotel was named “Rent-a-Room”. It’s behind the Prudential Hotel on Nathan Road on Kowloon. The room was the smallest hotel room I’ve ever been in. Of course, all real estate in Hong Kong is premium. It’s a small place with a large population. I think most of that population is trying to separate you from your money, not robbers and pickpockets, but savvy salespeople in the stores, in the streets, even on the sea.
Linell and I flew to Hong Kong February 18. That flight is always an international flight because there is no way to fly internally. It’s too small! We were on DragonAir. The planes are painted with dragon faces. Cool! The double-decker bus ride into the city gave us a taste of the richness of the area. We passed through a forest of ship containers being moved to the harbor for export. Hundreds of small boats with cranes were in the harbor. Look around the U.S. at all the “Made in China” goods. All the buses are double decker and burning natural gas, at least that’s what we concluded, definitely
amazing architecture
Labor is so cheap that architects and developers can create fancier buildings. Look at this one! not standard gasoline, no smell nor exhaust.
Generally, we saved money by eating breakfast in our room—coffee, crackers, cheese and sometimes fruit. Of course, we ate scrumptious meals out. Our first lunch was at a great seafood place (King Parrot); we had lobster bisque, grilled seafood and veges, tiramisu and coffee. Also, we ate Australian and Thai meals later in the week. When we finished the seafood, the waiter pointed us toward the clothes shopping area.
The next day an Australian teacher living at Rent-a-Room showed us a great coffee shop and internet café. I got to read the
International Herald Tribune, which I loved thirty years ago.
At the airport when we arrived, we were met by the tourist welcoming committee. They told us of the special events for Spring Festival. So, here we are two days later with all our fliers, hunting for the Lion dance. We found it at the Holiday Inn Hotel (and later we saw the same group at the Peak and again at the waterfront). We also found a tour group of senior Americans from Florida who pointed out several great shopping areas around. I bought silk pj’s, bathrobe, etc.
interesting shapes
These buildings are on Hong Kong Island in the area called "Central". There are also lots of fancy department stores, shopping centers, more pedestrian walks etc. The area around Nathan Street, the big hotels, the ferry, etc. is rife with Indian tailors, too. They are out on the sidewalks stopping all foreigners and Chinese and selling tailor made clothes. A couple were very aggressive. (I hope by now you realize how international Kowloon is.)
The lion dance made us hungry, so we ate lunch at a Turkish restaurant. I had doner kebab, which I love. We walked on down to the Star Ferry at Tsim Sha Tsui, to cross over to Hong Kong Island. (We took the ferry several times and took a harbor cruise. The view of this incredible place from the water was very interesting. On Hong Kong, all the big companies have waterfront buildings crowned by their names. The wealth here is unbelievable. The city is clean; the water is clean; the air is clean; even the ferry was clean.
We headed from the harbor to find the big, outside escalator in Central that’s 800 meters long, the longest in the world, that would carry us up the mountain. In the process we passed groups of women camped out on the sidewalks—maybe 10-30 women per group, doing each other’s hair and
buildings and red taxis
I like the comparison between the gray and white buildings and the red taxis. You drive on the left in Hong Kong. nails, watching DVDs, etc. Block after block. Linell guessed that they were Filipino house maids who had the holiday off, but since they lived in their employers’ homes, they had no where to go. Finally, we stopped and asked, and yes, Linell was right. There were at least a thousand, maybe two to three thousand of these women, some with young children.
Eventually we got to the midlevel escalator, called that because Victoria Peak is the high point. We rode up for a while then got off in Soho and walked around. We found an Italian restaurant with good people watching potential, We stopped for a glass of wine and eventually ate supper there. After dark we headed for the harbor fireworks show. It was misting, so the smoke from the firecrackers didn’t blow away, instead obscuring the actual fireworks. It was all strange, but we couldn’t go back to the hotel because the ferries weren’t running while the fireworks were being shot over the water.
We visited Victoria Peak, took the bus up and the tram down. We walked around the Peak and then ate lunch at Burger King. After the tram ride, we took the pedestrian
Normal Hong Kong street scene
Not all of HK is skyscrapers. Here's an example of a normal city street. bridge through the sky scrapers. There are shopping malls in the office buildings, off ramps to the parks below the bridges. All for pedestrians. It’s very modern, very safe, incredibly well designed for safety and efficiency. It’s used by everyone: businessmen and women, families, tourists, shoppers, whomever.
A day later we went to Stanley to see the beach and the large “flea” market. I enjoyed the shopping here—embroidered tablecloths, cute bags of all sorts, high-tech gadgets, etc.
I would love to come back to Hong Kong. As of now, it’s my favorite place in the world (other than my home). Maybe on the next visit I'll catch Disneyland! (Ha, Ha!)
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Mike
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Caramba Cafe!
An international chain?!? Wow - who knew?