First impressions of Hong Kong

Wow, it has been more than a week already! There have still been so amazingly many things that drew my attention that I really had to sit myself down and finally write something down.

What I’ve been doing is mostly playing a tourist for now. With people from couchsurfing there have been several dinners, get-togethers in bars and more casual meet-ups. It’s really nice to have some people around who are also new to this city and who are looking for others to hang out with. At times I’ve been hanging out with my new housemates – who are really great! – and at times I’ve just been exploring on my own. There is just so much to see! All the new colours, flavours, smells, sights, people, trafic systems, etc, it’s really nice that I could take some days to get familiar with it all. Besides, they say the best way to get over a jetlag is to drink a lot (of water), stay up late and sleep in. So what better way is there than to meet new people and spend some evenings having dinner and drinks together?

There are many things that will probably be less and less noticable for me as my stay continues, but were very obvious at first. This of course goes for the warmth when stepping out of the airplane, but also the smog seamlessly blending into the clouds and the huge amount of handgrips in the public traffic, which are all indeed used at pretty much any time of the day. It also became evident why the rental prices are so high, why the houses are small, buildings are tall, why there are so many people on the streets – again, at any, yes any time of day and any day of the week – and why a lot of people seem concerned about personal health. Many ways are suggested to prevent spreading of germs, including the famous masks, and the subway-stations (MTR) are proud to announce that all escalator handrails are anti-bacterialized at least five times per day.

Other than that, only some of my expectations were in order, it seems. The only people taking pictures of me were tourists from Madagascar, only one person decided to touch my skin while passing by, but he looked like a creep anyway, most people do speak quite good English, some basics, or at least are very good with gestures. I must admit that it is true that the Chinese do not believe in food left-overs, but the really ‘weird’ dishes are hard to find in Hong Kong. Those should be much easier to find in mainland China. And yes, some things can be recognized from movies, like the bamboo scaffolding and small alleyways, or other warm countries, such as the small stalls all around the city, the parks, palm trees, late dinner, and probably some things that have already slipped my mind!

So basically I’m really having a wonderful time. I feel very safe, it’s been easy to approach people and ask them wathever silly question I have, and people have been very friendly. So right now I’m getting ready to have some traditional mainland ”Hot Pot”. I have no idea what it is, but it’s something new and with a bunch of nice people, so it should be good!

Untill we write again,

Karin



PS. Some pictures should have been added, just for you!