I don't think we could ever truely be happy in a place that doesn't take its food seriously. And there are few places that are as passionate about food as Hong Kong. There is a good reason that you don't see many Icelandic or Bulgarian restaurants around, and that Cantonese food is know the world over. There must be more restaurants per capita in Hong Kong than anywhere else in the world. And they all seem to be busy from early in the morning(so I've heard)to late at night(so I've seen). While normally we'd be way into sampling all the international cuisines on offer, instead we decided to focus only on Cantonese cuisine. After a mostly vegetarian existance for two months in India it feel great, but also a bit strange and even primitive to be tearing pork off the bone and pulling the heads, fins, and tails off of sea creatures to get at all the protein inside. The food is cheap and the menus are huge, so it fun to do as the locals and order way too much food so as to sample more of the goodness.
Food, however, isn't the only reason we came. We also came because we are both big fans of Won Kar Wai's atmospheric movies that take place in 1960's Hong Kong. Unfortunately a lot of the old is gone here, replaced by the ultra modern. We're staying at the notorious Chungking Mansions, a 17 story apartment complex that has been divided into dozens of seedy guesthouses. The rooms are incredibly small, but cheap. The shower in our bathroom can clean both you and the toilet at the same time. The lobby is filled with legal and not so legal businesses run mostly run Indians and Africans. Wong Kar Wai filmed part of Chungking Express here in the lobby when one of the characters needed a fake passport.
Yesterday I took the tram up to the top of Victoria Peak. It was incredible to look down on one of the largest, most densely populated cities in the world. Imagine if there was a two thousand foot mountain right smack dab in the middle of Central Park in Manhattan. This is what what the view would be like. I can think of no where else in the world where a mountain rises up so steeply from such a large city.
Tomorrow morning we fly to Japan, our last stop, where we will visit Yo's family.
-Shawn