HONG KONG The time we spent in Hong Kong was great - it's an extraordinary city. At first I wasn't that impressed - it just seemed to be a collection of grey skyscrapers and tower blocks as far as you could see. But as we spent time there I realised there are lot of things to like about the city.



Mongkok
On the Kowloon Peninsula is a place called Mongkok. It's a nondescript collection of buildings in the middle of a pile of other buildings. What makes it interesting is the shopping, and the amount of people all that activity draws in.



The streets of Mongkok are closed off each night and hundreds of thousands of people wander up and down looking for bargains. It seems like each street has it's own specialty - for example one street is shop after shop after shop selling sports shoes. Sometimes there'll be 4 or 5 outlets of the same chain, all within 10-20m of each other. At first I thought this was crazy, but then I realised it makes perfect sense. In a city of 7 million people, you want to give everyone as many chances as possible to go into your shop, and having multiple locations means more chance of a sale. What I really liked about the shoe shops was how each morning the staff have to wrap the display shows in plastic and use a hairdrier to shrinkwrap the plastic around the shoe.



There are rows and rows of market stalls as well, mostly selling food and tourist stuff like knock-off brand name goods and souvenirs.



However this stall was more interesting - it was selling decorations (baskets of fruit and colorful papers and lanterns) for the upcoming Mooncake Festival.



Buildings
Not all of the buildings in Hong Kong are dull - on the island itself various developers have put a lot of effort into having either the most way-out or tallest building. The Lippo Centre isn't one of the tallest, but it's certainly unique.



Rural Hong Kong
Hong Kong isn't just a city - there are large rural areas as well, and we managed to go to Lantau Island to see Tai-O Fishing Village.



The houses are all clustered along the river, and the village economy revolves around drying fish and selling the results to the tourists that come through. We wandered through the village for a couple of hours. It's a slightly weird experience - the houses are so close together and quite open, so we were kind of intruding in the villagers lives. But they didn't seem to mind, and it was nice and peaceful after the noise and smog of the city.



We didn't end up buying any of the dried fish, but it was nice to look around. And I liked how there were a lot of cats in the village. Must be the fish...  ¶ 8:40 AM