In retrospect, scheduling a holiday to Hong Kong at this time was probably not the smartest decision possible. Between the H1N1 fears and the bad weather, our experience left much to be desired, but we still managed to have an enjoyable time overall and got to know Hong Kong more. Part of this was because it was a last minute arrangement and we were originally supposed to go with a tour group including older family members to Taiwan, but it was cancelled and my wife and I had to decide where to go on our own during our scheduled holiday time. And so to Hong Kong it was, including a day trip to Macau as pictured above.

What I mostly learned about Hong Kong is that it’s one huge contiguous crowd of people! Having never been to HK or even any part of China before, the sheer number of people was staggering to me. And all of them constantly walking briskly and purposefully from one place to another too. Indeed, one evening spent in Causeway Way on the day before the Rice Dumpling Festival was nearly standing room only on the streets. We met up with a couple of friends from high school who showed us the ins and outs of living in HK. To get a restaurant table, we had to get waiting tickets from four or five different restaurants and see which queue was the shortest. At the longest queue, the number currently being served was 61 while the ticket we had was 161. Between this sort of thing and the need to constantly walk between bus and MTR stations since hardly anyone actually drives in HK, I see that Hong Kongers get much more exercise than Malaysians.

Another thing was that navigating the various buildings in Hong Kong was far from being a simple task. I suppose Malaysia had an advantage in this respect because all of our shopping centres are so new and benefit from being modern designs, but many of the old buildings in the shopping districts in Hong Kong are tightly cramped affairs with tortuously winding corridors and escalators, elevators and stairs placed every which with no rhymn or reason. Constantly getting lost and confused in them was not a pleasant experience and necessitated much backtracking! For some odd reason, businesses in Hong Kong seem to be able to afford large numbers of staff so there’s always someone nearby who can give directions but I didn’t expect that such an expensive city would find it worthwhile to employ people to push elevator buttons or stand at attention next to shopping mall directories.

The good thing about Hong Kong being a hyper-urbanized playground is that parts of it feel like something right out of a science-fiction film. Our route from the MTR station to our hotel in Tsuen Wan for example could theoretically be done entirely without touching the street level by following the elevated walkways and traversing through mini shopping complexes (there sure are a lot of shops in Hong Kong!). After a few hundred years of constantly building ever higher on top of older stuff, I can easily picture Hong Kong becoming something like the futuristic city in Luc Besson’s The 4th Element.

Anyway, neither my wife nor myself are particularly avid shoppers, so that aspect of Hong Kong was lost to us. My wife did enjoy the food there and we were both amused by the constant need to share our table in dining areas with completely unknown strangers. I enjoyed the sightseeing well enough but most of the really spectacular views, including the view of Hong Kong from the Peak, the Symphony of Lights event in Victoria Harbour and the views from the Lantau Island cable car ride were marred by the fog and bad weather. There were drizzles every day during our stay and we basically had to huddle under an umbrella everywhere we went.

Macau was much the same. The historical sights were charming enough but the bad weather dissuaded us from going on long walks there. Neither or us had any real interest in casinos, and even if I did appreciate watching the prostitutes along the infamous catwalk in the Lisboa Hotel, it was mostly just a been-there done-that kind of trip. We’ve both realized from this trip that we’re unlikely to enjoy playing tourist in huge commercial cities and will be careful in the future to pick places that are more culturally rich, offer natural scenic views or are just plain relaxing, like our week in Bali’s Club Med.

Overall, as my wife observed, it was nice to visit just to gain an insight on how Hong Kong works and how the people there live, but it’s not likely that we’ll be back anytime soon.