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After landing in Hong Kong this morning, I was excited at the prospect of doing a whirlwind tour of an entire city during my allocated one day in-transit. I was acutely aware that this day would act as a benchmark for the rest of our trip - if we could survive Hong Kong, we figured we could handle anything.
Our first impression was ‘it smells like India’ which, coming from two born-and-bred Indians, was not altogether an insult or a compliment. We found it quite simple to travel into the city, and walked around the busy, crowded streets for what seemed like ages. We were taken aback by the sheer size of the place – massive skyscrapers, up-market fashion stores, people everywhere, a la New York - minus the class. It just seemed a bit depressing. On street level, shops after identical shops, selling either kitsch knick-knacks galore, or over-priced designer wear, with so much energy consumed in giant LCD displays for this brand, or that, that I was sure the entire city would short-circuit if one extra TV was plugged in anywhere. The place was over crowded with building after identical building, all of which appeared to contain thousands of anonymous, tiny, cramped, identical little flats. Ticky Tack boxes seem to be a thing of the past – here there be Ticky Tacky monoliths. We were recommended a trip to The Peak in order to see the massive city from its highest point. I was thrilled at the opportunity and so off we went. The tram ride to the top was fun – we fell into the dog-eat-dog race for the best seats, and I must say rather proudly that we won – regardless of the fact that the guy who jumped queue behind us tried to get the best seat by trying to squeeze his young daughter between and ahead of us. The ride up was exhilarating, the incline of the mountain was insanely steep and the views were stunning to say the least. The few remnants of the natural vegetation of the island was evident here, and reminded me of my trip to the rainforests of Borneo last year. The anticipation of seeing this beautiful scenery and the massive Hong Kong cityscape from the peak was building. Thus, imagine our confusion when we disembarked into what appeared to be a gigantic shopping mall. It appeared as if the prime property of the Peak views were the perfect place to sell handbags, McDonalds and, I kid you not, entry to the biggest EA Games arcade I’ve ever seen. In fact, it took us a good 20 minutes of walking indoors through convoluted lit-up arcade malls lined with shop after shop before be even managed to get outside onto the Peak itself. Here we noticed a strange phenomenon, but one which would fast define our impression of the Hong Kong tourists – the photographers. Don’t get me wrong, I am the most sentimental old granny you’ll ever meet and I have the almost obsessive compulsion to document every part of my life, but you see I like to document things I’ve actually seen. Here on the Peak however, were masses and masses of people facing away from the view and getting their friends to take pictures in front of it. Now I’m sure you think I’m being a bit harsh here - after all, who doesn’t want a shot of themselves in front of a beautiful view so you can look back on it and reminisce? I gave them the benefit of the doubt. I sat down and watched them. Each gaggle of tourists would position themselves in front of said view, without so much as glancing at it, and would then move off to the next attraction once the necessary 3 or 4 photos of them smiling were taken, so that the process could begin again. I think my real moment of shock was when I saw a girl on a balcony overlooking the most stunning, sweaping view of the bay I have ever seen, and she was facing decidedly away from the view snapping photo after photo of the Burger King sign in front of her. We found the same thing in Madame Tusades. In fact we took a 5 minute video of tourist after tourist approaching the figure of James Bond from behind, posing for photos (with very creative Bond-esque poses) and then moving on without so much as a turn of their head to even look at the figure itself. It seems like the world has suddenly gotten so fast passed and rushed that people literally visit places to take photos thinking they’ll look at them later because there’s not enough time to look at the attraction it self now. After all, if the wasted time viewing the attraction they’ve paid to see, they might miss out on taking photos of all the other attractions. Don’t they know they’ll never find the time to look at these millions of photos ever again? I just hope Europe isn’t like this. We walked the streets of shore line and park areas, which I enjoyed immensely as it was full of the hustle and bustle of most Asian cities. Our noses became congested from the pollution within hours, to the point that I was becoming slightly jealous of the people walking the streets with surgical masks wrapped across their faces. We did have fun whistling through our noses at each other however – quite a bonding moment I think. We then took a ferry to Kowloon and saw the old Olympic Rings, tried some local food (yummy, as expected), walked the markets (very fun and more like the HK experience I was hoping for) and after the sun set, was treated to STUNNING views of the massive city skyline. We were quite surreally teleported to what we perceived as “The-Future-if-Anime-Ruled-the-World”, when the entire Hong Kong skyline erupted into a crazy laser light show in-synch with kooky anime music. It was really the largest scale advert I’ve ever seen, with the participating company names being loudly announced on radio with a simultaneous burst of flashing light and colour from the relevant company building on the skyline. We felt the giggles come on, just realising that we were seeing such a unique and large scale display of off-taste opulence, when we noticed many of the other foreign tourists also stifling laughs and glancing at each other with comically raised eyebrows. Ah well, it’s a once in a life time experience for sure – I’ve seen it once and sure as hell don’t want to see it again! After the show we went back to the airport with what, I would like to think, were overwhelmingly neutral feelings about Hong Kong city. We were glad we went and saw it, good points and bad, but feel no need for a re-visit. One thing is for sure – I’m not going to live my dream holiday in Europe from behind a camera lens. Or from in front of one for that matter.
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