All OK in China, though it’s taken me a full week since our return to get to this first post about Hong Kong.  A busier and/or slower week than usual plus our internet connection has slowed to a crawl.  Again.  And is really getting on.  my.  last.  nerve.

Hong Kong.  Wow.

I was in Hong Kong 26 years ago as a college student (ouch) and loved it.  Now I remember why.  Hard to sum up, but I think it’s San Francisco squared.  And it’s China. And it’s London.  A great combination of Chinese and Western.  It’s even a bit of Hawaii (same latitude).  For Art and me, it’s everything we want in a “perfect city” and our time there was way too short.

In addition to too short a time, Art wasn’t feeling 100% and so we were not on our usual high-impact “adsventure” track of sight seeing.  He’s in the middle of a “polymyalgia rheumatica” bout (maybe, who knows, but this is what was diagnosed after 4 visits to the ER, lots of bloodwork, and a rheumatologist consult), and is slower than usual, but back on steroids this week and feeling much better.  Of course, this blows his chance to ride in the Tour in July…

In spite of a slower pace (which we all needed anyway) we saw a ton and I was surprised how today’s Hong Kong is pretty much the same Hong Kong I saw all those years ago. Surprising since the Brits gave Hong Kong back to China 14 years ago… and I wondered what would happen.  Luckily, in one of its wiser moves, China basically left Hong Kong alone, creating one country (China) with two governments (mainland versus HK).  It’s treated as a separate country, so our flight was an international flight, and we had to pass through immigration and customs both coming and going.  The language of Hong Kong is Cantonese, not Mandarin, but everyone speaks some measure of English so it’s super easy to get around.  Once there you can actually access the internet with no restrictions.  You can turn on the TV and watch the BBC or Nat Geo or major sports.  Imagine that.  We’re not a “big on TV” family, but we’d had no English-speaking TV or news for 12 weeks and Art is totally jonesing for his sports.  TV aside, the Chinese who live in HK live way differently than mainland Chinese, but that is another story for another day.  For us, HK was mostly just an awesome city.

We had two rooms at the Bishop Lei International House, a sweet hotel in the “mid-levels.”  Hong Kong sits on a steep hillside overlooking the sea and the “mid-levels” is the area literally halfway up… mostly fancy apartment buildings and private homes, but also the hopping Soho area where there are infinite great restaurants and hip shops and galleries (side note: and after the Bishop Lei, the kids know what to expect in Paris one day when we tell them the hotel rooms will be small but the neighborhood awesome). We took the 120 year old Peak Tram up to to Victoria’s Peak, used the world’s longest covered escalator (daily), took a glass bottom cable car ride from Lantau Island up to Ngong Ping and the Tian Tan Buddha, ate at a monastery, explored the fishing village of Tai O, took several ferry rides and several double decker bus rides, went to Stanley and Kowloon and the Jade Market.  And ate.  A lot.  Mexican, Italian, New Zealand burgers, and Bubba Gump’s… because as good as Chinese food is, we’re all craving variety*.  And yes, we even watched the royal wedding on TV since it was on at 6pm and the girls were totally intrigued. [*to be fair: you can get variety in Beijing, just not close to where we live]

The weather was warm and mostly misty/drizzly, plus a little humid… and really felt like Hawaii.  Especially on the outer islands which are hilly and dense with tropical vegetation… not to mention resorts… and amazing homes.  It’s one of the wealthiest cities in the world… and there is much in it to knock your socks off.

There was so much that we wanted to do, but didn’t get to (more of the islands, Soho and the mid-levels, the zoological gardens, swimming at the beaches, Ocean Park Amusement Park with a roller coaster that hangs off the side of a cliff, a “junk” ride, high tea at the Pennisula, etc.) that we’ll give ourselves at least a week next time.  You know… if we ever recover enough from the Spring of 2011 to actually come back to Asia one day…

Here are the first of the misty/foggy pictures.

From Ngong Ping we hopped local bus #21 to get to Tai O.  This little fishing village was my favorite surprise of our Hong Kong trip.  To be continued…