Hong Kong...

If you’re headed to Asia, Hong Kong is a good entre for the inexperienced Westerner. Just enough English to help you get around. Just enough Chinese to keep you confused.

I arrived in the Hong Kong airport at around 7:30 in the morning. Mercifully, many people spoke English and there was plenty of signage. But trying to do something as simple as find the lounge where I was supposed to meet Pete was another story. Luckily Hong Kong is a very wired city so I was able to shoot a quick email to him, get his location and find him.

We chucked our stuff in the hotel room, grabbed some lunch and ascended to Victoria Peak via the tram for sunset. We watched the sun go down and the lights of the Hong Kong skyline go from speckles of glitter to a full-blown spectacle. But city lights… any city can do that. What other city in the world can make their skyline dance nightly like huge electrical dance club of neon?

The next day we explored the area. Hong Kong was pretty orderly. Getting around Hong Kong is actually pretty easy because of its public transportation system. My favorite stop was the Man Mo temple which is one of the oldest temples in Hong Kong and incense coils burn in honor of two deities.

I expected the buzz of Times Square and it wasn’t until we got to Mong Kok hoards of people crowd the streets. It’s kind of like a huge electronics mall, Chinese neon, misspelled signs, street food vendors selling a bunch of stuff I put in my mouth that I didn’t bother to ask what it was. The smells ranged from ginseng to jasmine to fish and I breathed deeply at everything to make sure I took it all in. later that night we caught up over drinks in the SoHo bars.

An evening bus took us just 20 minutes out of the city where we found a string of little beach towns of Stanley, Aberdeen and Repulse Bay which hardly sounds like its name with coarse sand beaches, palm trees and restaurants along the boardwalk.

Today, the plan is we head to mainland China where the real adventure begins. We’ll spend a week or so in and around Guìlín where is sounds like there are some cool caves and breathtaking scenery.