I am totally smitten with Hong Kong. I'm here visiting my friend Sally Harpole and it's taken me about a nano second to adapt. It's an easily manageable place. Okay, I'm staying in a very cosmopolitan area - the Midlevel, just down the hill a bit from Victoria Peak and it's quite posh. Sally's got an incredible view of Victoria Harbor and the city puts on a huge laser light show at night. The buildings twinkle and change colors and lasers highlight individual towers. Move over Las Vegas. They must use more electricity than any other city. It's just too bad that there's a smoggy haze over the place. They say it blows in from the mainland…

     I've been here since Friday. I flew out on Halloween (really just a little after midnight on the first) and lost a day getting here.

     Sally's apt. is part of a complex of 4 towers. They offer all kinds of sports - swimming, tennis, a gym, a bar and a place for me to goof off on the computer.         

     Yesterday I toured the area between Hong Kong and Mainland China, appropriately called "the land between." I saw old walled villages and temples, abandoned housing from the British, a fishing village, and too many new housing developments, the most obnoxious being "The Beverly Hills" which took over an entire green hillside. It was all quite a change from life here on the hill on Hong Kong island (except for the Beverly Hills developments). Housing is at a shortage and they are building up a storm.

     Today I went on an architectural walk in the Center area of Hong Kong. Amazing new buildings. It's the financial center and you can feel it. So much of the old is being torn down for new building. There's construction going on everywhere.

     Tomorrow Sally and I fly to Hanoi. She'll tour four days with me and then go home. I'll stay and tour four more days and then return to Hong Kong for a few more days. Stay tuned for my Vietnamese adventures. I'm going upstairs for dinner and the light show.  Cheerio!

 

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