Hong Kong is exactly what you expect (at least for me) and more. It is a vertical city, full of people, lights, shops, street markets, restaurants...everything. Almost every street you go it is crowded and all that people move at superslow mode (that's the crazy thing about HK!). It is really difficult to get into the rhytm.
You don't really feel the recession in HK, especially when you see Chinese people quequeing in front of one of the many huge Luis Vuitton or Gucci stores. You can definitely find anything you want (real or a good copy) in HK. And if you look inside one of the many jewelries, you'll see them all crowded and busy. And it is not particularly cheap and it is quite common to see 30.000€ or more expensive jewels in the shop windows (in some even more the 150.000€ diamond rings!).
Except for this famous names, Hong Kong has quite an interesting fashion and I defnitely enjoyed looking at the style of the girls around here...completely different from what we wear in Europe (with a lot of fluffy things, fur everywhere, big fluffly boots, a lot of "chinese schoolgirl" style....). I almost bought this piece, but I resisted. Please, girls, notice the super fashion ears :-)
Hong Kong is famous also for the numerous street markets and the jade market (one street with shops selling only jade). They have a lot of manufacts and jewels made of this beautiful maninly green stone, but you can see it also in white or grey.
Hong Kong is full of neon lights and colours. All the street are very lively and colorful. The traffic is intense but fluent and the crowd disciplined. All together: a very oredered chaos :-).
At night, all this is even more beautiful to see
A funny thing, is the bamboo structure they use to work on the buildings. It looks quite scary but it seems not to be more dangerous then what we use.
Hong Kong has also a lot of green areas and parks. At Sunday Victoria's park (on HK island side) is full of young people, mostly girls, sitting on the ground is groups and enjoying a snack, playing a game or jusy chatting. They play guitar or perform. I like this typical Chinese performance very much. It was a dance in costumes with a traditional Chinese music, like a lullaby. It was probably telling a story but I can't tell you anything more about it. It was in Cantonese (at least I suppose) :-).
Hong Kong is a mixture of beautiful glass skyscrapers mostly dedicated to office space, lights and colours and the old, but still tall, buildings that are mostly residential. I haven't seen any apartment but I heard that they are very small and considering the size of my bed there (not even long enough to make me fit in...chinese size bed) and of my room, and of the bathroom.....it is not difficult to believe it ;-).
In the middle of this sea of tall buildings.... (this is the view from the Peak, that you can easily reach by tram)
...there is the small temple of Hong Kong, on HK island side. It is located in the hearth of the old city, but still surrounded with tall buildings. You can feel in the air that you're getting close to the temple, as they burn so much incense inside it that the air around looks foggy. Going inside made me think of how poor is our (or at least my) knowledge about Chinese culture.
It is really an interesting city, with a lot to see and a lot to do. The food is good and it is safe toeat it even in the street cheap restaurants. The only problem of the least, is that you might get toilet paper when you ask for napkins ;-)
But the food on that plate was really good and the toilet paper made me have a good laugh, so all good :-)
The most beautiful thing I've seen in Honk Kong is definitely the "symphony of lights", the largest permanent light show in the World in which the buildings from the HK island side partecipate with laser and other types of lights. It starts at 8pm every day and you can watch it from the Kowloon side, sitting on a terrace in Tsim Sha Tsui, by the ferry station and the watch tower. If you want take a look to this link to have a better idea of what I'm talking about:
symphony of lights video, from youtubeIt was just fantastic and I went to see it twice :-)
