One Night in Hong Kong
I spent the night in Hong Kong last night, to give the visa service time to process my visa application for Shanghai. I stayed at the YMCA in Kowloon, also known as The Salisbury, which is basically a very nice business hotel. It was an excellent travel splurge, well worth the $115, especially since I have free accommodations in Shanghai thanks to a generous and hospitable college friend and his girlfriend.
Amazingly, the Y has one of the best locations in Kowloon, across the street from the water and steps from an entrance to te Tsim Sha Tsui subway stop. It’s surrounded by fancier, more expensive hotels like the Peninsula, but also a short walk or $5HKD (~$.55USD) train ride from some of the bustling, vendor-filled side streets that have captured the imaginations of so many Westerners.
The very first thing I noticed while walking along Nathan St from my hotel towards the subway, were the numerous Indians aggressively offering to provide me with a “very good tailor”. Of course, the prospect of a custom tailored suit, shirt and tie for under $200 is very appealing; frankly a bit too appealing and I find it very tough to believe that I’d have gotten anything but crap since you tend to get what you pay for in life. But my instincts about their wares were really a moot point since I’ll be in Africa soon with very little space in my backpack for bespoke clothes and zero need for them.
I did end up buying some electronics. First, a macro/fisheye attachment for my 16-105 lense, which I did my best to drive a hard bargain for, but still feel I probably overpaid for. Also, an unlocked cell phone and SIM card so that I can communicate with my friend in Shanghai without paying a fortune in roaming charges to AT&T.
I intended to give my new fisheye lense a workout at the nightly 8pm light and laser show put on by many of the biggest buildings along the waterfront, but my lack of sleep on the AUK-HKG flight caught up with me and I fell asleep when I decided to rest for “just a few minutes” at 4:00 and slept straight through to 10:30. I still went down to the waterfront to snap some photos, but most of the buildings were mere shadows on the edge of Hong Kong island at that point, almost all the lights out for the night, except of course for the brightly glowing names and logos of various Asian conglomerates. They used to say “the sun never sets on the British empire” (of which Hong Kong was a part until 2000), but now it’s more like the sun never sets on the multi-national conglomerate.
