Took the bus to the airport and was it an eye-opener. My other trips to and fro have been on the train. The “Whapoa” district was so different from anything I’ve seen of HK. Sparkling, new, trendy. We pulled up to the Harbor Grand Hotel in Kowloon. Wow! I’ve never seen anything this posh. Looks like one of the $1600 per night jobs. Like another planet, so different from the somewhat grotty but characterful and of-the-people Mongkok area where I was staying. For the super rich. Two other reasons I recommend you come into HK on a bus from airport, not the train:
1. There is mile-after-mile of like 60-story newish apartment buildings, glittery and spiffy. The extent of these is awesome. Hard to believe.
2. The HK docks are awesome. Like 1000 times as big as any ports I’ve seen. 10s of 1000s of containers stacked 10-15 high Huge cranes. This must be where practically all of China’s goods are shipped from. A number of bridges, one of them a beauty with spider-webby cables in diamond patterns supporting the 4 or so towers. Like yet another planet. The world is such a big place and it’s changing so rapidly, I feel like a hick from a small town gawking.
There’s a pretty good jazz trio playing here at the bar, they just did a great version of Five Foot Two…
Lloyd, you tempt us to visit Hong Kong ! I'd feel confused and breathless in such a giant city but I'd love looking at the docks. You never feel claustrophobia in a harbor
Hong Kong was one of the layovers in ''The Box Project'' (BBC News followed a shipping container for a year to tell stories of the world economy – you can track the container all around the globe on :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/business/2008/the_box/default.stm)
Have a nice trip back home