First, let me say that there is no way I could visit this place and not use this as a headline for a post. Impossible.
Second, I’ve been sneezing almost non-stop since I’ve gotten here. I have some sort of super hay fever. Perhaps it is some variant of SARS or the bird flu. I think the warm weather released all the sickness that was being suppressed by the cold weather in Korea. I’ve had a non stop runny nose and sore muscles.
That being said, Hong Kong is great. I get a vibe here I only experienced in parts of Chicago (around Michigan Ave.), Manhattan and parts of Buenos Aires. It is a very cosmopolitan city, but in a very different way than New York is. You see many Malaysians, Indonesians, Pinoy, mainland Chinese, as well as the occasional westerner. While not universally spoken, it is a very easy city to get around in if you speak English. Almost everything is in Chinese and English.
I have a hard time believing that, but for the political history of Hong Kong, this place would exist at all. Yes the harbor is deep, but its location on a bunch of rocks is hardly where you would want to put a city.
Today I’m off to see the typical Hong Kong sights like Victoria Peak and eat more Chinese food. Wish me luck. Life is hard.