Our final destination before home is Hong Kong. To be honest we hoped to have a stop over on the way home and we asked our travel agent to book us into any destination that she could get for us as ‘frequent flyers’. You may remember that our 11 flights for this trip were all part of an around-the-world frequent fliers Qantas package which we were able to redeem without cost (apart from $600 for taxes). Lois managed to get us a flight to Hong Kong, a place we had never been to, so we thought – why not! And again we have been incredibly surprised and delighted by our short stay here.
We have done the touristy things. We rode the tram to The Peak and viewed the city and harbour at sunset. We sampled just a small slice of the vast opportunities for shopping. We rode the old and cute double decker trolley cars up and down Hong Kong’s main island. We caught the Star Ferry across the harbour for the total cost of 22 Aussie cents. We even experienced the sparkle of Hong Kong’s famous nightly light show. We can’t help but love this crazy Asian city, which feels like Chinatown on steroids.
Hong Kong is in many ways fascinating. As the model of Chinese capitalism it shimmers. There seems to be more French, New York and Italian designer shops here than anywhere in Europe. There also seems to be many more Asia tourists than western tourists. At the same time it’s obvious that the city is increasingly associating itself with its new status as part of China. Olympic fever is almost at boiling point and Chinese nationalism is evident, yet they still tolerate a permanent protest outside the main ferry terminal staged by the members of Falun Gong. The food is cheap and better than any Chinese food we have eaten at home and the aggressive hawkers on the streets, who try to sell us suits and watches, only add to the exotic flavour.
Hong Kong rightly deserves its boast that it is Asia’s World City.
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