Hong Kong was the most expensive and most luxurious place I have ever seen in my life. I like to think I have expensive tastes back home but I felt like a peasant there. The food, the shops, everything in the downtown area is higher class than I certainly ever see in my life. The entire area revolves around if you can buy a $3,000 outfit as if it was nothing more than a can of coke. (In one of the photos you can see a $20 piece of Sushi.)
It was shocking, absolutely shocking to see the number of designer shops all around me and seemingly in every building. Even my hostel bed was costing me $60 a night making it the most expensive places I had visited in my now 9 months of travel. I usually love to walk around and fake that I could have the money to be in a certain area but not here. So I made my time here short.
My main goal was to fly out to Osaka from here so I only booked 2 nights in Hong Kong and stayed in the downtown area. I know now that there is more to see and do but with a limited budget and limited time I squeezed in as much as possible.
My first day I walked along the Hollywood boardwalk with the other tourists, that night I stayed there and watched the famous light show as the buildings across the water put on a light show. This light show does not live up to the hype… They say it’s the worlds largest but make no claims to the best. You think that all of the buildings will start flashing and dancing at any moment. But really it’s only the 2-3 that ‘do’ anything. The whole rest of the skyline just has its normal lights on at night. It was cool and I would make sure you do it once, but nothing amazing by any means.
The second day I was super lucky that the International Dragon Boat races were going on. I was China for the real dragon boat races but totally missed them by location. This was just an amazing stoke of luck and they offered free beer! Only in Hong Kong can your event have so much money to offer everyone free beer. The international part of it meant that all the teams were foreigners or expats so I fit right in rather well and tried to act normal. It was pretty fun to watch and was my first time ever seeing a real dragon boat and race. I had no idea the boats were entirely made of Styrofoam!
I wish I could spend a good week in town and visit all the other parts of the city but it’s just so expensive. Maybe next time eh?
