Seeing Hong Kong

Typically I'd send this off as an email, but I've got this fancy new blog thingy and I must, must use it.  So Mark and Sari, apologies where intimacy is lost, but enjoy pictures, links, and movies instead.  I think it is the case with people who grow up in Big Cities that they have very little knowledge of the grander tourist spectacles their homes have to offer.  I've never been to The Golden Buddha, eg, but I think that's quite worthwhile, as is riding the Peak Tram, a tram, the Star Ferry, the Botanical Gardens, Lan Kwai Fong, and maybe the shops -- all of which are varying degrees of free.  I've created some kind of list below of things I vaguely remember and things that guidebooks might not trump as much as they should. 

A Brief Background in Geography:  Hong Kong is nearly equal parts islands and mainland (Kowloon).  The whole place is made of granite which becomes landslide with the torrential rains you get in the subtropics.  Often you will come across a wall of reinforced concrete with hundreds of little drains poking out: these are manmade but, given time to moss over (as most everything does), they can look quite odd and natural.  

The place is quite vertical as most dense cities are.  Victoria Peak is the name of the large mountain that takes up the front of HK Island.  It is named for Queen Victoria and the top of it was prized by the early English Tai Pans and businessmen for its horrible foggy climate that reminded them of home.  It also has a spectacular view and the walk around it, beginning at the base of Mt. Austin Road, is a wonderful little hike for the rare clear day.  You can see the whole island.  Special care should be taken to look upwards as there are hanging caterpillars, harmless but disgusting. 

A Briefer Background on Names:  Hong Kong is also the name of the main (not the biggest) island.  It means 'Fragrant Harbor' and this can be remembered as a good working definition of irony.  Kai Tak is the name of the old airport that was right on the harbor.  After a stomach defying landing, one was quickly met with the rich smell of rotting eggs.  Ozone is now pumped into the harbor and the airport has moved, but if YouTube is any indication, many are nostalgic for the rich old days.  

Aside from Hong Kong, fun names include Ap Lei Chau (the most densely populated island in the world), Lamma (an island easily accessible by ferry and with many of the best, cheapest seafood restaurants in the world), Happy Valley (once a marsh, now home to the world's most popular horse racing track), Sai Kung (site of a couple of tigershark attacks in the 90's), Tolo Harbour (site of an ill-fated triathlon where a friend of mine is convinced he contracted some undiscovered waterborne illness), Junk Bay (a style of boat, not the synonym for trash), Cheung Chau (an island shaped like a barbell; also, where I was briefly held for questioning over a bicycle accident), and Aberdeen, to name a few.

A Brief List of Things to See, Split into Three More Lists: 

Buildings:  It might be a pathetic fallacy to say that Hong Kong has a habit of erasing any marks of her past.  Most of the old buildings have been torn down to make way for the new.  Still, I highly recommend the Lyndhurst Terrace area and West of SoHo (South of HOllywood Road).  This particular area suffered typhoid fever outbreak and was just late enough to the post-WW2 economic boom (perhaps it was just a bit off-center) to allow the occasional old (30's-40's) building to remain unrazed.  There are still some temples for pirates (going inside is completely kosher), old warehouses, the world's longest escalator, and at the Western End of Western District you should be able to find an old mental hospital in the Colonial style that the kids called Sleepy Hollow.  If you're going to go on a guided tour of any area in HK, I recommend scrounging around for something here.  As Harlem is a prism for American History (War of Independence/Splitting the Atom/Civil Rights), so Western is for Hong Kong.

Of course the rest of the islands buildings are harder to miss.  Some of the newer ones are tacky (I like the IFC, however) and the Hong Kong Bank and Bank of China will be the buildings both the country and Foster and Pei are remembered for.  Enjoy Spiderman climbing Jardines Tower (at the 6:54 mark) which is most famous for its horrendous fung shui and charming sobriquet 'The Thousand Assholes' Building.  Enjoy the Symphony of Lights, which is a nightly exercise in oneupmanship, purple, and waste. 

Food:  There are very few things I am dead certain of but I am dead certain that the Chinese have the world's best food.  It is often done a disservice by the level of quality in the States*, but what can you do.

*[Sad fact: the US' immigration policies, wet foot-dry foot so to speak, greatly discriminated against the Chinese.  Much of American Chinese food was recreated from memory with American ingredients by men who were not allowed to bring their wives or any other women to the country they worked so hard for.]  

I am a big fan of dim sum and often order char siu bao (pork bun), siu long bao (crab something), and wo tip (turnip fried in fat).  Of course, none of that is particularly veg friendly, but the Chinese do have a tradition of vegetarian cuisine that is a near perfect simulation of their meatier offerings and is generally considered healthier.  I can also recommend the congee or jook which is the perfect breakfast.  

Drinks wise, Chinese milk tea is sweet black tea and lovely, and Yakult is a brand of yoghurt drink that had some kind of poison scare in the 90's but that is worth the investigation.

Night Life:  Mainland China has a lot of knock-off goods, but Hong Kong has 

its own brand of knock-off nightlife.  Lan Kwai Fong (map) was once as a strip of bars that sailors would drink up on their way to their beds/gutter, and not much has evolved since.  Most of the bars are indistinguishable (my brother would say Volar and Dragon-I are the best), but the street is really the best place to be.  You can buy a Heineken (very popular in HK) at the 7-11 (also very popular) and stand outside looking at the Chinese Elvis, dancing spiderman, or the woman with the shiny knicknacks.  If this gets tiresome, shuffle over to the alleyway for some really nice open air bars, sedate expatriates, late night seafood, and altogether less sixteen-year-olds (the drinking age is eighteen I believe).  

Wan Chai, extending your night, is both a little bit seedier and more interesting.  It's significantly more neon and you do run the risk of performing karaoke the closer you get to Causeway Bay.  Personally, nerdily, I like the dancing jumping videogames (I'm not this good; I'm not even this good) and the soccer bars for real color.  

And, as Bill Murray sang in Lost in Translation, there is more than this.  The horse-races are really exciting, the night/ladies market is brilliant, the beaches (Deep Water Bay; Aberdeen) are quite peaceful, and you could do worse than to just walk around southern Kowloon.  

Last Recommendations:  My highest recommendations are

for visiting Shek O village, the only remaining indigenous village on Hong Kong Island, and Cheung Chau, the barbell shaped island with four-wheeled bicycles for rent.  Shek O is all bright colors, spicy seafood, a small, curved beach, rockclimbing and peace in a big, busy city.  Cheung Chau is similarly peaceful, and while Lamma island has pirate caves, CC has a unique mix of people, a very strange/possibly abandoned hotel, a dumpling climbing festival, and an obsession with windsurfing.  

All that and, of course, Macau.