sitting on the veranda of baba’s guesthouse in batu ferringi, penang, northwestern malaysia, overlooking the sea while sipping icecold …. water …. i finally found time to reflect what happened the last weeks – and is going to happen in the coming months. wasn’t it that i’ve been to hong kong just recently? well, apparently, hehe ….
i was of course very excited to visit asia’s ‘new york’, the city of which everybody comes back with so many stunning experiences. and indeed, i wouldn’t mind to go there another time … taking two days off and finding a positive number on my account, was then a good reason to charge my credit card once again, for two plane tickets, and a booking at hostelworld. furthermore, i met felix, a fellow student back from aarhus, which was another fine reason to get up at 4.00am in the morning, after only 1 ½ hour of sleep, and a relaxed and funny birthday night in singapore.
felix then picked me up at the airport (YOU FORGOT THE NAME TAG), and together we made it to my hostel. the term ‘hostel’ got a complete new meaning though. before leaving to hk, i heard a lot of stories, and internet ratings left enough room for a lot of interpretations. well, just imagine a 17 storey building which facade could need a bit more than just a new paintwork. a dodgy entrance area with vendors that try to sell all kinds of more or – rather - less useful stuff (and that OF COURSE have the best price, especially for YOU, my dear SIR). you then try to imagine an elevator for which you wait at least 5 minutes – because the house is like a small city inside, which small businesses on all levels, from tailors to key service and sales & ‘marketing’ enterprises – and hostels. it would probably take at least an hour to walk around the aisles that face the grungy courtyard, to check out the single activities on each storey. in all that concrete, people have their tiny apartments – and in all that, there are these hostels.
i’m not even sure if the bed i got was in the hostel i’ve booked before. however, one reception (basically, a table and two chairs in the middle of the corridor where elderly nice chinese ladies fulfilled all check-in and –out activities) fitted for a whole bunch of hostels (in my case: usa hostel, traveller’s hostel, garden hostel, city hostel, and hk hostel … apologies if i forgot one). long corridors from which new aisles go off to rooms of the size of shoeboxes. like my one, filled with one normal and one bunk bed, an air con that worked – or not – and a neon lamp. oh, the room of course had a door that could be hardly opened (same with the ones of the three 1.5sqm all-in-one ‘shower + basin + toilet’ – bathrooms). beside that, there was nothing but great limitedness. no window, of course. no common room (well, the floor of the corridor could be considered as a HUGE one). nothing - but actually, all i needed, for a bargain price of 7,50€ per night (it’s hk – and hk is expensive in that manner). and after a looong day in this bustling city, it even gave a quite relaxing (???) atmosphere. would stay there again, hehe!
one of the first things to do was the classic ‘let’s take the star ferry and then, the cable car up to the peak’ – thing. well, they build quite a skyline on hk island. finding buildings in hk with less than 6 stories is almost impossible. the city is packed with houses that direct their noses skywards. an amazing jungle of concrete, decorated with neon signs, air cons, and outside-laundry racks. like it or not, but thinking about the dimension of people living and working in all these blocks leaves you wondering. parts of kowloon (hk peninsula) house more than 200.000 people – per sqkm, on of the highest populated areas in the world.
hk island certainly has a wide range of stunning skyscrapers that turn into one ocean of lights after sundown. personally i must say that this gets boring after a while though. that might sound weird, but what is really enjoyable about hk is the (traditional) daily life (as far as you can spot it – remember my hostel? it isn’t really imaginable how much more is happening behind the facades of these blocks). markets you can stroll along for hours, temples that give insight in the great religious heritage, and – most beloved – street eateries, corner shops, and all kinds of family retailers. it is a wonderful contrast to the modern hk, a place where something interesting happens in the moment you look at it.
hk in its variety is a must-see destination as it is full of strong impressions that leave you behind with go-for-more memories.
there is the enormous taoism won-tai-sin temple, that i visited on a sunday. it was packed with 1000s of people that worshiped their gods with millions of joss sticks that turned the air into one big cloud of incense. watching their rituals of getting into a state of trance, was simply amazing, and my camera had one of their busiest jobs ever.
foodstalls offer all kinds of food, so if you are fancy to try roasted bats, hk is the place to go. markets are full of fresh fish (SMELLY!!!), butchers follow their routine job right on the spot (fresh pig snout, someone?), elderly ladies bind chains of dried tangerine and orange skin, others sell all sorts of fruits, nuts, or spices you can imagine. it’s a busy colorful world you can experience for hours without getting bored.
unfortunately, time was scarce, as i also went to macao. being an old portuguese colony, macao’s inner city hosts some very beautiful mediterranean churches and facades. small alleys are busy with food stalls and antique stores, and seeing ethnical chinese people everywhere is confusing and interesting at the same time. macao is of course also home to some of the largest casinos in the world, and has – according to some sources – already overtaken las vegas in gaming turnover. while the casino areas are definitely not as stunning, twinkling and loony as las vegas must be, it still feels crazy to imagine how many people might sit in these complexes and lose money that would be so much better invested – tickets for a new travel destination for example, hehe.
one of these complexes is the venetian. check the webpage to find out more about this weird world of hotel, casino, shopping , and entertainment. but to give you some crazy ideas about it: they have a 11.000sqm poker room, 21 restaurants, a gondola canal (like in venice, SURPRISE) that once goes around the 3rd floor (including gondola rides and an artificial blue sky that almost feels real). the whole complex is tremendously huge, standing in the middle of nowhere, and framed by ‘original’ venetian architecture like a venetian tower. it is a twisted and peverse idea that became reality, and though it is stunning, it is horrible!
felix and me also made it to china, better said to shenzhen – a weird place as well. a place that was developed almost from scratch. 30.000 people lived there in 1979 – 6.5 million do today, and including all legal (and illegal workers), shenzhen has a total population of over 12 million people. you might be able to imagine how this looks like. in fact, that’s not how it does on first sight. it’s modern, yes, with many skyscrapers that want to be state-of-the-art, but miss the last touch of extravagance. there is no real structure, just huge streets, blocks, streets again, houses. in between and all of a sudden comes, for example, a small arab community, then again modern architecture. shenzhen felt like a place that had no time to catch its breath while it developed. a city that looks half way to being perfect.
moreover, it was so quite, and not at all busy as you would expect from city with 12 million people. felix and me were always wondering where all these people are. but the view, while having a beer in a sky restaurant (which felt weird, and kind of like sitting on the tv tower at alexanderplatz in 1985), gave kind of an idea about the dimension of the city … HUGE!
it was not the crazy china experience as i hoped for, but that was somehow expected as it is too close to hong kong. however, we got a kind of taste for more of china.
overall, it was a quite exhausting, but very wonderful, awe-inspiring, amazing trip that was enjoyable in every moment, with stories and memories for a life time. photos need a little bit more time, as days and nights are quite busy …. as mentioned at the beginning: i’m already on the next trip …..
