Hong Kong: Christmas '06 - Part 1!

Spending my first Christmas away from the family was a tough choice but came about for a number of reasons:

1.) I'd never been to Hong Kong, and it was currently close enough to constitute a short hop.

2.) I'd heard the food was good.

3.) Having decided to move to Japan, all other decisions seemed to be fairly straightforward.

4.) I hadn't sorted out a ticket back to Britain in time and it was looking really expensive.

So, Hong Kong it was, and why not? The third most densely populated territory in the world; a unique fusion of east and west populating an island of such monumental commercial clout that it'd make even Rupert Murdoch misty eyed. Plus you didn't need a visa to get in. Lovely!



















If my entrance into Tokyo had been via lofty highways, then driving into Kowloon from the airport was the exact opposite, emerging amongst the bowels of this huge urban beast. Hong Kong International lies a few miles to the north of the city centre on a purpose built island just off Lantau. The route inland is a sparse expanse of featureless concrete; the dull orange glow from the endless streetlamps numbing visitors into a motorway stupor. Leaving the tunnel as we reached Kowloon however, we were hit by a wall of tower blocks and neon light so staggeringly vast that I felt squished into a tiny speck of human insinificance.

Ye gods, the size of it! Eight million people squeezed into a barely inhabitable spur of land and a couple of minute islands. A brave new world of flashing signs, death-defying taxi drivers and 24-hr massage parlours. Hello pseudo-China!

Home for the fortnight was a small guesthouse in bustling Tsim Sha Tsui (roughly pronounced "jim saa joi", although the laughs my attempts elicited from my Chinese-Canadian friend Pat convinced me that a basic grasp of Cantonese was well out of reach). The rooms were spread throughout an apartment block that extended nine storeys up from the shops on street level. The elevator was made, I kid you not, by a company called "Schindler's Lifts." Nervous laughter failed to cover the ominous rattle as we creaked up to the eighth floor.

Space, understandably, is one of Hong Kong's most prized commodities. If you've got enough room to swing a cat, you've clearly done rather well for yourself. Either that or you've broken into the place of someone who's done rather well for themselves and are having a merry time working your way through their drinks cabinet. In our room there would be no swinging of cats, nor any smaller animals for that matter, but it was clean, cheap and had a TV with people on it who spoke English. After four months in Japan this was something of a novelty.
































Our first day consisted entirely of stumbling about on the streets with our necks craned backwards, gazing dumbfounded anywhere other than where we were walking. Skyscrapers towered overhead, venturing upwards to impossible heights. Vast, colourful signs dripped from buildings, advertising wares in unfathomable script. For every electronics store there was a herbal remedy shop, the shelves groaning with jars of extortionately priced roots, herbs and animal appendages. For every upmarket clothes shop there was a downmarket food stall, the hotplates sizzling with curious lumps of... something.

















On the pier by Kowloon's Star Ferry terminal we got our first look at the island of Hong Kong itself. In the midday sun you can barely see through the smog choking Victoria Harbour, but as the sun set it revealed quite a sight. The Hong Kong waterfront is home to the world's largest permanent light show and, every evening at 8 o'clock sharp, a recorded voice introduces the buildings across the water one by one as they light up and wave back at the crowds gleefully. Then, to some of the most excruciating music imaginable, they flicker excitedly in a dance of stunning colour. It's genuinely charming, and as the skyscrapers boom away, sweeping floodlights and lasers across the bay, the smallest buildings join in with a playful "parp."





























There was a tangible sense of pride in the air, and Hong Kong genuinely felt like the kind of town its inhabitants prized above anywhere else. It was loud, polluted, overwhelming and utterly seductive. Mouth agape, I wondered what a terrible crime it must be to become desensitised to such a bonkers landscape.