HK: City that never sleeps

I've been in HK for about a week and ahalf and todaty i'm flying home at midnight. What are my impressions of HK?

1. The food and generally everything that i've been buying has been very cheap. I've been having $18HK dollar breakfasts which equates to like $3 AUS. Most of my meals hvae been between $18 - 40 HK ($3-$6). I love being able to walk anywhere during the day (especialy at night) and gettting a snack. seafood stores here are so fresh, you can see the massive fishtanks with live fish swimming around. although they can be a bit cruel, as i've seen a fish scaled alive (!) in macau with its head split open, and then chopped in half. I've also witnessed a fish cut down the middle and with full internal organs displayed, lying on a table, and it was still breathing.!

2. Public Transportation is awesome. Its cheap and reliable. They have this thing called the Octopus card and its like some debit card/smart card which you just put against this box and it debits money out of your card. I've used it for ferrys (about $2HK = $0.3 AUS) to cross the river from HK island to Tsimshatusi), trams ($2HK), trains, buses, and even to buy pearl tea drinks. If only we could have this in Sydney!!!!

3. Honkies work hard. just seeing a lot of old grannies pushing really heavy carts full of boxes, people finishing work late, etc... i think a lot of old people that don't have family must fall through the cracks in Hk society.

4. Weird/or very hip fashion? I've been to a couple of honkie stores, and i just cannot purchase anything in there cause its just too funky/honky for me. Sometimes i see people on the street (especially in mongkok) and they have zebra pants with punk rock hair styles.

5. shopping paradise. its seems that they are certain congregations of certain products. I went to this little shopping centre in tsimshatsui and its was just full of mobile phone shops. Both levels with like 30 stores all sold phones. In Sham Shui Po there's like the golden computer centre, which only sells computers and perhiperials. IN mongkok there's like whole streets that only sell sport shoes! And to top if off there's also streets in Prince Edward that sell birds (very festy), goldfish street which sells every type of fish imaginable, and several streets that sell only flowers.

clothing just seems so cheap over here. you can get jeans here for as low as $60HK ($10AUS). So i bought three pairs in the markets but unfortunately they turned out to be too small (anyone want a pair of 33 inch jeans?).i tried out heaps of jeans in the stores but they were all too tight - they didn;t have much that were loose fitting - either honkie people like tight jeans or they have thinner body builds to western people or i just like baggy clothes!

6. Not many people seem to sleep early! I've been to mongkok, causeway bay and sham shiu po, and macau at around 11pm. and the streets are just absoultely jam packed.

7. i don;t know what the deal is, but there seems to be an incredible amount of broadway, city call stores in the main street of mongkok. on this one massive street there are the SAME stores every one hundred metres. HK is like some kind of giant electronic store. different suburbs specialise in certain goods.

8. there's a lot of foreigners in Central (Jung Waan). In fact, in Lan Kwai Fong, there deosn't seem to be any chinese people. Its like a nighttime area with heaps of bars, and it attracts the expat crowd. And i serioulsy didn't feel comfortable walking arouind there despite being chinese! the only asians there seem to be funky asian americans!

9. a basketball nation? every where i go, there seems to be basketball courts which are packed out. Team Aussie Chinese expats (Me, Chris Lau, Ip, Ken Chan) got our arses whupped last saturday at Wanchai partly cause we were rusty, but we should have won. Honkies have a different style of playing basketball. Big guys have no idea how to post up or use their height. Not many people take it to the rack hard. HK may not be a basketball powerhouse but you hvae to give them props for playing ball at Wan Chai at 11pm on a weeknite.

10. I miss home and all my family, dawen and all my friends . I never realised it until this week when i have been itching to go home. I really feel for Ip and C-Lau cause they are gonna be gone from Australia for the next couple of years. since i was in Hk, i've pretty much been by myself with no-one to talk to except Ip at night.

11. I gotta get a PS2! GOTTA get NFL street!

12. Macau is pretty much an extension of HK. more on that another day!

See you guys soon! i arrive in aust on Friday like 11am!