Hong Kong is pretty much amazing. And by amazing, I mean warm, and westernized. No problem finding Burger King or Starbucks here, not that Shanghai was too much different. It is certainly much more diverse here, as we aren’t the only non-asians walking down the streets. The amount of wealth here is truly amazing. Stand on the street for a few minutes and you’ll be sure to see several each of Audi, Mercedes, BMW, Lexus and Porsche mixed in with Toyota and Mazda. Notice anything wrong with the picture of the road? As Hong Kong used to be a British Colony all of the cars are switched and we’re driving on the left side of the street. First time experiencing that and its quite strange. Fun fact: only 1% of Hong Kong residents live in single family homes. Not surprising considering the number of high rises EVERYWHERE.
From the airport we went immediately into sightseeing mode (great idea) with our new tour guide Daniel. We stopped at a touristy market. I am without a spring jacket and figured I would be needing one for the next few days so I bought a new one, and got a pretty good deal. We drove around the city, and saw the golf course (pictured, and the next picture is the view from the other way), the horse racing course, and some of the few houses and some high rises up the hills.
We moved onto this pretty sweet trolley that took us up a mountain. It had several stops for people who actually live on the hill, and at the top was a shopping mall (random) complete with, you guessed it, Starbucks! The view would have been better had Hong Kong not been covered in mist. The ride up might have been at even more than a 45 degree angle, which made for some interesting pictures.
Next Daniel took us to see the less glamorous side of the city. We took a boat ride around the bay where some residents live on their own boats and fish for a living. They don’t pay property taxes as a result, but they were granted 90 year licenses to the owners of the boat, and when the person with the license dies it is unrenewable, so the family has to leave their boat. The government then sets them up in subsidized housing, which Daniel said consists of a “condo” of 160 square feet. One room. 14x9ish. Terrible.
Wednesday night almost all of us went to a hot pot restaurant. What happens is you order a broth (or three in our case) on a heated pad and then you order meats, veggies, noodles, etc and cook them in your hotpot yourselves. Somewhat labor intensive but quite a lot of fun. And very cheap, as most all local food is.
Thursday was our first day of meetings.Unicom was our first stop. They are one of the three telecommunication companies serving Hong Kong and Mainland China. Interesting points from that visit include learning that a few years ago the government (70% shareholders in Unicom) decided to restructure the industry. Unicom was burdened with a low profit part of the industry, and their stock prices declined accordingly. About 50-70% of all of the businesses in China have non-privately owned. I won’t be investing in any companies that the government can just do their bidding with.
We moved on the HKTDC, which none of us knew what it was going in (we figured HK stood for Hong Kong but that’s as far as we could get). Turns out it was the Hong Kong (yes!) Trade Development Center. They help foreign and domestic companies form partnerships, and give overall business information to whoever needs it. They had an extensive library, and all of their resources are open to the public.
Lunch. Was. Amazing. Daniel is my new favorite tour guide. He took us to an Italian/Indian Restaurant (Weird combination, I know) and we were able to PICK an appetizer, main course and dessert from the pre-selected list. I went with I went with the cantaloupe ham salad…best cantaloupe I’ve had in awhile, ravioli and tiramisu. A ma zing. May go traditional with dinner tonight…I should probably have at least something legit each day. We randomly ran into one of the MBAs not on the trip and are going to dinner with her...apparently she is stopping here on her way back from Bangkok and Phuket. She doesn't like 'how cold' it is here (50's) because I guess Phuket was in the 90's. Maybe i'll go there next year. No more northern hemisphere winter vacations.
The afternoon we visited Kerry Logistics. They're kind of like a UPS or FedEx. That's really all that is relevant. I was kinda falling asleep due to food coma during the presentation.
A few of us went to a suit tailor recommended by Daniel. They didn't have any pictures or examples of styles so I wasn't going to fork over a few hundred on something I don't know what will look like. I've been pretty good about purchasing despite the cheapness of EVERYTHING. I got 'tricked' into buying 3 (more) ties last night, bringing my total up to *cough*six*cough*.
Aside from the relatively warm temperature and westernization of Hong Kong I am liking their lack of censorship. Today is the first day I've actually been able to post directly to the blog, Steph has been updating for me, and she’s done a FABULOUS job! I hope I don't mess it up. Facebook also exists again. I didn't really miss that too much, but felt VERY out of contact without it or my phone.
-R-
something is wrong here:
electronics store, which Daniel said not to frequent because they are run by the chinese mafia, and generally give travelers problems. good advice!
Golf course on the mountain:
View from the golf course, (I know a few people who would like this!)
random architecture:
i didn't know what this sign meant, but i knew it had to be awesome. turned out to be a playground. awesome.
poor house boats:
irony: (not more than 200 feet from the poverty above)
hot pot!!!!
view from unicom on the 75th floor:
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