First 24 hours in Hong Kong

The capital city from the Hunger Games exists, and it is Hong Kong. Shanghai and Beijing are huge metropolises but have nothing compared to the vertical scale of everything in Hong Kong. Driving out from the underground station at the end of the airport Express train, I strained my neck looking up at the enormous, colorful, brightly lit buildings—until, of course, I had to look forward to avoid getting nauseous because of the incredibly hilly, winding streets. It felt like I was on a roller coaster ride the entire way up to Sylvie’s apartment building, where I would stay for my 48 hours in HK.

Once I arrived at the magnificent apartment of the Wong family, I was introduced to an amazing view, tremendous hospitality, and great food. This would be a theme of the coming days.

Sylvie and I then, with the accompaniment of her parents, took a tram up to the top of “the Peak” a mountain right next to Sylvie’s house which has a little tourist complex on top. We looked over the cityscape, and the family explained a little bit of HK’s geography and history. I decided that, in addition to being the capital city from the Hunger Games, HK is also the insane baby of Tokyo and Hawaii. It is a series of islands with huge skyscrapers stacked on top of them.

Then we went to the other side of the peak, and looked out on the dark outlines of the mountains on the other side of the main island. At this point I gave up trying to compare HK to any city I had ever heard of, because the juxtaposition of giant urban developments and open mountains just doesn’t make any sense. Imagine the Adirondack mountain range occupying part of Manhattan—it really doesn’t make any sense.

That night I slept in Sylvie’s brother (who was still at school)’s room—which contained an excellent book collection including the Artemis Fowl series, a Fareed Zakaria book, and The Giver (to name a few).

We woke up the next morning around 9, and I took the Star Ferry to Kowloon island while Sylvie went to the doctor. Kowloon is not spelled, despite my uneducated guess as Calhoun—before you judge me, say it quickly to someone else and ask them how to spell it—or, you know, don’t do that cause they’ll think you’re weird. The water between the islands was the kind of blue you’d expect to find in the Caribbean, not at all like any water near New York City, and the view from the ferry was stunning. On Kowloon, I wandered around in wonder the streets listening to people’s endlessly amusing British accents and trying to get a feel for the pace of the city.

I met Sylvie and her mom back across the water for a Dim Sum lunch, which was phenomenal. Just thinking about it makes me want to stuff my face with squishy buns full of pork and sauce—although, let’s be honest, it doesn’t take a lot of provocation to make me hungry.

When we finished lunch, they dropped me off at the subway stop to go see the Big Buddha. It is the largest metal Buddha in the world, and, even knowing this, I was prepared to see a statue about 10 or 15 feet high—this means that is was NOT prepared for how huge this thing was.

After taking the subway to the end of the line, and got ticket to ride the cable car that takes you up to the Buddha. I ended up sharing a car with a group of French-Chinese middle schoolers and their teacher. Despite the peculiar sounding company, the ride was stunning, and the view of everything from the mountains, to the water, and even as far as the airport was awesome. About 2/3 of the way into the ride, you noticed a mountain further away with something unnaturally jutting from the top of it. This, was the Big Buddha, which looks like a feature on a giant mountain—it really was enormous.

The cable car ride ended a little way’s walk from the top of the mountain, and I dutifully made my walk up to it. I don’t really know how to describe being there except that it was pretty surreal to see something that old and enormous, with so many people—from monks in orange garb to tacky tourists like myself—all there to see it.

I made the trek back to Central to meet Sylvie+mom and we drove to a seafood restaurant on an outlying island (there are tunnels, don’t be silly, cars don’t drive on water).

I got a healthy nap while we sat in traffic on the way there and picked up Sylvie’s sister Sharon along the way. I was told that the restaurant was in an old fishing village. My first question upon getting out of the car was, “do all small fishing villages have skyscrapers?” Then I remembered that I was in Hong Kong.

We walked through what was basically an aquarium, with giant fish, and when we go to the last mini aquarium, selected our living fish from the different tanks full of lobster from Australia, Mollusks from South Africa, and tons of other stuff from all over the world. Dinner was amazing, pretty close to perfect, and the restaurant topped it all off by bringing us tremendously fresh mangoes to cleanse our pallets.

Following the long drive home, Sylvie and I went out for a fairly low-key evening and met a bunch of Sylvie’s friends from high school on a street that a significant portion of the HK youth (and a more significant portion of HK’s creepy old men) frequent on weekend nights.

I had trouble sleeping when we got back, which would have been fine except that 5 hours of sleep didn’t prepare me for the next 26 hours of my life—during which I would get nothing more than a 30 minute nap.

Miscellaneous:

-I got a not-terrible haircut in Shanghai and a free ride to the Airport Shanghai with some NYU women who were finishing their junior semester abroad.

-Shanghai has amazing soup dumplings which are a terrific breakfast

-Spring Airlines, the low-cost Asian airline, TOTALLY ripped me off and charged me an extra 50% of the sticker price of my flight for my overweight back. It also wasn’t possible to just transfer heavy stuff to my carry-on, because they make you put that on the scale along with your normal bag—and then evaluate aggregate weight.

-People call Hong Kong what china would be without the cultural revolution. This is both believable and depressing. For those of you who really like assassinating people, this can make you feel good about the assignation of Mao’s son (by US soldiers while he was visiting the DMZ from the North Korean side) which created a significant shift from Maoist policies after Mao died.

-Having cabbies who speak English is a true pleasure that is not often afforded to travelers on the mainland, but it is almost always true on HK