Well I must admit, I was a little nervous about coming to Hong Kong. I wasn't sure what to expect, as I heard mixed
reviews about the city.
Well I must say it is quickly becoming one of my favourite cities! It is quite clean compared to other large cities I
have been to, the air is no where near as bad as Cairo or Naples. The food is pretty decent, and not knowing any Chinese
isn't too much of a problem!
If you are into shopping, this is the place to be, so many huge shopping malls with all the designer stores, and not the
knockoff ones either, the real deal. This is a very fashionable city, I felt underdressed just walking around in jeans a
t-shirt. There is a lot of money in this city, and from the looks of it, there not afraid to spend it!
Lots of expats here as well, there are loads of English speaking areas where you can go to an English pub, which makes
sense since it was under British rule for quite some time. Even the lady voice on the subway sounds similar to the one
in London, when she tells us all to "Mind the Gap" in English, Cantonese, and Mandarin.
The first couple of days here I was feeling a bit under the weather, some sort of flu, which got me thinking, for my 8
months of travel in this leg of the journey I haven't really been sick, (knock on wood). So I can't really complain!
The last couple days I have been exploring the city, which is so easy to get around, the transit system here is great!
There is an Octopus card, similar to the Oyster card in London, that you can load up with money and pay for your transit
fairs, but what differs from London is you can use it a 7-11's, Various restaurants, and vending machines to pay for
your purchase. Which is very handy, don't have to worry about change! You can even get free money at various credit
machines which will give you a couple of dollars for visiting a certain area, like a mall, or walking up some stairs. I
have only found two so far.
Last night I went out and explored the night life, pretty intense, there is a section just filled with small pubs and
bars, and around midnight it really gets busy, also at that time you see a fair number of really drunk people being
loaded into cabs, these are the people that start drinking right after work. Quite entertaining.
I started the night by going to this place called The Keg, a Canadian pub that was playing hockey, so I watched a period
of the Oilers/Penguins game, and had a Molson Canadian, it was comforting! Then I went a club called Fevar on the 5th
floor of a building, it was 200HKD ($24cdn) and that gave you all you could drink for a couple hours. They played some
good hiphop music, so I was quite enjoying it there, a good mix of whites and asians, it was a lot of fun for a small
club, I stayed there until 3:30am before deciding to call it a night.
Now I am off to explore the city some more, there is a fair amount to see here. I am here until Monday, then I am
heading to Shenzhen for a while.
Posted by Jason Willock
