Hong Kong

As we are on our way to Turkey tomorrow, I reckoned today is as good a time as any to post some photos about our previous trip. Yeah, I am super slow like that. I have also not forgotten about my ‘Appreciate the Desert‘ challenge and I am taking it all in and writing it down, just not in blog format. Maybe one day I will post more about our time here, but for now I seriously cannot find the time and our actual lives are taking precedence over this little edited corner on the web – as it should. Life has been good though, crazy busy, but good.

So..Hong Kong:

Our main reason for visiting Hong Kong was to visit good friends of ours. That, and it seemed like a pretty interesting place to explore. It really felt like a once in a lifetime opportunity to have friends show us around (and to save on a week’s worth of hotel bills in the process – thanks guys!). Kevin & Lindsay have been living in HK for about two years and the last time we saw them was in Dubai earlier this year when they arranged a 24hour layover on their way to holiday in SA. It was such a fun day. We left Al Ain at 7am in the morning and only got back to our hotel at 2am the next day. We loved it & C and I learnt some pretty neat skills as new parents, namely how to do a bedtime routine in Mall of the Emirates and how to rock a baby to sleep while eating curry at our favourite Indian restaurant in Deira. Win-win.

Anyway, our trip to HK was pretty great. Here are the things that stood out to me:

// It is a very dynamic city. It is super busy and densely populated. I might be generalising here but overall people seem very career driven and work long days at a fairly fast pace.

// Spaces are t.i.n.y. We expected as much, but you can only really appreciate it when you see it for yourself. Our hosts’ two bedroom apartment is all and all a little bit smaller than our living room back in AA, which illustrates both how small HK spaces but also how massive the places are here!

// From what we could gather, most people in HK do not cook very often. Kitchens are..well..very small, and I think the long working hours & amazing street food contributes greatly to the take-away culture.

// The city has a lot to offer. I am sometimes really frustrated with the lack of options in our town. In HK we found everything from super impressive architecture, great views, a buzzing city centre, sculpted gardens, exhibitions, parks, playgrounds, hiking trails, beaches and beautiful nature spots. It has it all.

// The heat was not as bad as I imagined. I will admit that it took some convincing to get me to go on holiday to a place with 87% humidity when I was trying to escape summer in the desert, but it was actually quite manageable. We were outside pretty much the entire day, walking around and using public transport and I never felt uncomfortable. A fair amount of sweating, yes, but when you can wear sleeveless summer dress it’s really not so bad. Compared to covering my knees and shoulders every day it was bliss, actually.

// HK is super paranoid about hygiene. I am talking elevator buttons that gets sanitised every hour and people who wear masks when the have the flu. It is awesome. As a self-confessed germaphobe, I definitely appreciated this little fact. It is however still a big city and has the usual big city odours/smells, but things are overall were well kept and clean. People are also not allowed to eat on public transport. Again, awesome.

// It’s a tight squeeze. When you get on a bus you actually have to pick your baby up and collaps your stroller. There is no ‘pram parking’ on busses. I imagine this being quite tricky when using public transport alone with a baby / toddler or a baby + toddler..yikes.

// The glass-bottom cable car we took up to see the Tian Tan Buddha was one of the best experiences of my life. Truly beautiful.

Looking at the photographs I feel like there are so many stories that these pictures don’t tell. My favourite snaps where of little design elements and graphics that we saw while we walked around which I will hopefully post here soon. After 10days of walking around the city, I left inspired about design and just life in general. It just has that kind of energy.

The best part by far was however getting to spend time with our friends. To get a glimpse of what their life is like in a foreign country and to share new experiences with them.

It was a good trip.