Michele’s overall impression of Hong Kong is that everything is so alive, mine is that everything is so modern and works so well. All the cars are new, the subway is BART plus 10 years, the buildings are new, the hotel we are in is new….with a view that shows how dense Kowloon is.

We started the day looking for a Starbucks or something. The Chinese breakfasts really looked unfamiliar. We ended up at a sort of French place where we had tea/coffee, scrambled eggs, and toast called egg mayo toast with egg –  sort of like eggs with eggs. But good eggs with eggs. After breakfast we went on a ATM hunt – the exchange rate is about 7 to 1 so you get HG$100 bills out of the ATM and they go very fast.

We spent the day sort of just wandering around Hong Kong gawking at the buildings and the people like the rubes we are. This is a huge tourist town and we are everywhere (I read somewhere that Paris is the biggest tourist town in the world with 35 million tourists a year, London second with 15 million, and Hong Kong third with 12 million.) By the end of the day, we had taken a ferry to Hong Kong island,

walked around the business district,

had lunch at a random restaurant,

taken an escalator up to the zoo which was not much of a zoo but a great escalator,

a tram to an overlook to watch the sunset, and the subway back to our hotel.

Everywhere, the natives seem young and hip – especially the girls (women?). The natives seem to be mostly Chinese, naturally, with a sprinkling of Brits. Lots of trendy stores that are familiar.Lots of sightseeing buses. And lots of tricked out vans, with drivers waiting in them, that seem to fill the eco-niche of limos.

Typical street scene downtown.

Everybody seems to love mirrored glass buildings.

Another street scene.

Michele trying to figure out how to get a ferry to Guizhou- we gave up and are going to take the train.

Did we mention that Hong Kong is dense? Very dense.

Hong Kong is definitely in the tropics and everything grows even better than in LA.

We came up here to watch the sunset which didn’t happen. Hong Kong just sort of faded into the merk.

-S

We left San Francisco on our way to China by first flying to Vancouver. We left Vancouver  about 2:30 Tuesday afternoon flying north to Hong Kong. We reset our watches to Hong Kong time and the plan was to go right to sleep but they were serving a hot meal featuring oven proof bread, a handy salt substitute (we think) and red wine.

Then we went to sleep, missing most of the mysterious landscape over Alaska and Russia.

Finally, we landed about 6 PM  Wednesday evening at Hong Kong’ gorgeous, new, almost empty airport. And then took the nicest train I have ever been on into Kowloon. The train was quiet, fast, clean, and had this nifty arc of LEDs over the door that told you where you were on the trip.

We got into and out of our hotel – modern, clean, smart – and stumbled around Hong Kong for a while, it is a strange new world. Strange – among other reasons – because in many ways it seems almost like here.

By then, we were ready for our first dinner.To be safe, we went to someplace familiar, Cheers. We ordered pork, chicken (the one without the head), and veggies. All of it was very good and almost all of it was more identifiable than I expected. It was sort of Chinese food as if it were served at TGI Fridays.

What has most struck me about Hong Kong – through jet-lagged eyes – is how modern it is. We expected frenzy, but not modern, clean frenzy. Check out these steps with a TV on the risers.

-S

Here is a dream I've had for many years:

We are going to  fly to Hong Kong on Tuesday April 7th, where we have hotel reservations for three nights. From there we will take the bus into mainland China and spend the night in Guangzhou which is the biggest city in Canton. Canton has an amazing food market and, as this is turning into a food trip, what better place to start.

After spending the night there, we will fly to Guilin. From there it is a short bus ride, south, to Yangshuo where we will stay for about a week. At Yangshuo, we will take a balloon ride over the Li River, a boat ride on the Li River, and a cooking class near the Li River.

After about a week, we plan on going west to visit some rural , and hopefully seldom visited, villages. From that area, we will take the train north to Wulingyuan Park wherhttp://autoshanghai.auto-fairs.com/en/leftnavigation/informatione we will stay for a couple of days.

Wulingyuan is one of the most popular Chinese tourist spots but not very heavily traveled by Westerners. We are hoping for interesting hiking. But very different than here. For example, one trail starts after a 1,070 foot elevator ride. I think that hiking in China makes the Mist Trail seem like a wilderness experience.

Our last destination will be Shanghai and the 2009 Shanghai Auto Show (more Buicks and Audis are sold in China each year than in the USA)