We spent our last (cloudy, dreary) day in Hong Kong taking it easy and preparing for our fairly long journey to Australia via Seoul. We headed to Santorini for a light, Greek lunch, saw Interstellar (mixed feelings, but mostly confusion) and headed back to Little Bao for our final meal in Hong Kong. Here are our top takeaways from the past week.
Mid-flight moonrise on our flight from Hong Kong to Seoul.
1. Personal space is apparently something we have taken for granted. People in Hong Kong had no problem running into us while waiting in line, brushing past us on the subways or standing inches away from us on elevators, busses, etc. Definitely took a little getting used to.
2. Hong Kong feels really crowded, with no organization to the chaos. People are often glued to their mobile phones and pay no attention to anything else when waking around the city.
3. Despite the lack of order when it comes to walking down the street, we found riding the subway to be incredibly easy and an efficient way to get around. Both Tokyo and Seoul had very intuitive subway systems too, but Hong Kong is so much smaller than either of those cities that we found it even easier to use.
4. The topography is very similar to San Francisco - lots of steep and narrow streets. The Soho part of Hong Kong is actually accessible by multiple escalators on the streets so people can get there without gasping for breath. We learned this the hard way the first time we walked around there!
5. The city feels very international - more like London than New York. There are many people from different backgrounds / countries who live and work in the city.
6. English is spoken everywhere. This isn't to say that English was scarce in Japan or South Korea, but because it is one of the official languages of Hong Kong, English was ubiquitous.
7. Hong Kong was probably the most expensive city we've been to so far in Asia. We enjoyed almost all our meals here, but the prices were comparable to (or even slightly more expensive than) what we would expect in New York.
8. We get the sense that the weather is pretty dreary here all the time. It was cloudy and rainy for each of the five days we spent here. And I asked one of my friends who has been here for work a few times and she said every time she's been the weather has been the same. Makes us feel a little better about the lousy weather we had, but something to keep in mind if you're considering a visit here.
9. The currency conversion is trickier here than Japan or South Korea. I think we were spoiled by the ease with which we could do rough conversions in our head (in Japan, divide by 100; in South Korea, divide by 1,000) so forcing ourselves to divide by 7.5 in Hong Kong was a bit of a pain. Good thing the Australian Dollar is almost 1:1 with the US Dollar!
10. Overall, we experienced what a lot of Westerners experience when visiting China: culture shock. As mentioned in #1 and #2, this most obviously manifested itself when we were getting around the city; however, there were other small things we noticed in our interactions with the locals that would be considered rude in America (when is the last time someone sitting at a table next to you hacked up a deep, throaty ball of phlegm and spit it on the floor next to you?). Anyway, we didn't really know what to expect coming in, but now appreciate why some people find Chinese culture off-putting.
Peak: Seeing the light show and colored skyscrapers on Victoria Harbor
Pit: Our minor altercation with "Joe" really set us off on the wrong foot with Hong Kong
Next Stop: Sydney, Australia