A trip to Hong Kong. ~ Oddities Of A Girl Finding Her Place In The World

Okay, I admit. I was overwhelmed by Hong Kong, especially after spending two months in the vast openness with three or four people on a daily basis.

Coming from this (dots in the picture are trees in the distance).

Arriving to this.

Try switching to setting of being alone in nature with the wide sky to crowded city with tall buildings that you barely can see the sky. It wore me out right away.

People walk fast. People talk fast. People do things fast. They don't stop and look at things that are around them. They don't look at each other. They focus on their phones and their final destination. I don't have my phone with me, I leave it off to avoid international roaming charges thus I am surrounded by people looking at their phones. I see things that people are missing because they are on their phones. It drives me crazy.

That's only bad thing about Hong Kong.

After a week in Hong Kong, it has been decided that it is impossible to come back home before midnight. I am currently staying with a friend from university who lives in Hong Kong (her name is Michelle), she would take me out to places to check out and we usually tell each other that we got to go back around eight o'clock or so. Nope. Never happens. Always at midnight or later.

My bag didn't arrive Hong Kong until my third day, by then I have given up hope and started to shop for clothes to tide me over for a couple days. That is when I was told that at every metro stop, there is a mall. There are a lot of metro stops. I went to a couple of malls and of course I just had to have everything but I don't have enough money to do that. Michelle took me to a mall where all knockoff clothes are being sold at really cheap price. There, I learned how to assess clothes to determine if it is worth to buy then negotiate for a better price.

Nighttime at Mong Kok, the district you find those cheap stuff.

Jardine crescent street market at Causeway Bay.

Of course, Murphy's law in action. As soon as I finished shopping for clothes, I was informed that my bag will be arriving on the next day.

It is interesting to see that Hong Kong people have some resentment toward Chinese people from Mainland China because of cultural difference. Hong Kong people are more orderly and more polite than Mainland Chinese people (or as HK people said so). Sometimes when I travel on a public transportation with HK people and all of sudden, people barged in and pushed people around to arrive where they want to be at. HK people would just roll their eyes and tell me that they are Chinese from Mainland China. At first, I thought that was weird after all both people are from the same country then I thought about Americans.

Well, if you're being honest with yourself (if you're an American), there are some Americans have resentment towards other Americans based on where they came from. All Southerns must be hillbilly hicks, New Englanders are snobs, Northwesterns are tree-huggers, and Mid-westerns are bible-thumping Christians, just to name a few common stereotypes. All are so not true, by the way. It looks like you cannot escape from the stereotype of wherever you came from, be it your country or your region within the country.

I went to Tian Tan Buddha, the world's largest sitting Buddha, ate several different kinds of food (I will have another post focusing on food), met several Hong Kong people, visited other islands and villages. You need more than just a week to truly immerse yourself in Hong Kong. HK just has too much to offer for a weeklong vacation. Thankfully, I am staying here for two weeks and a half.