Hong Kong Sunday Evening

Hi All,

I’m typing this off-line, since we don’t have a wireless connection in our room. Later I’ll go down in the lobby and send it to you all.

Well, we did a lot of exploring today. First of all, although Hong Kong is more city than I have ever lived in before (that’s putting it mildly) and although I’d say 90-95% of the people you see on the street are Asian, and although we hardly heard any English spoken at all in overheard conversations all day, I think I will end up being very comfortable here. First of all, its beautiful - everything,  the buildings, the mountains, the people.  Second of all, people are polite and helpful. Its not Texas friendly, but people aren’t rude either. There was a little of the “squish together in a line and push” syndrome that I’ve heard about but it wasn’t that bad. And although they’re all talking some other language to each other, it seems like almost everyone knows English so communicating isn‘t a problem. We were sitting outside the Hong Kong Art Museum looking at our map and a man started kind of looking over our shoulder at the map as well. I started to make conversation with him and turned out he was from Korea. He knew a little English but not much. It was his first time in Hong Kong. That’s the thing - there are lots of tourists here. Just because they’re Asian doesn’t seem to mean that they live here. And certainly, very, very few of the few Caucasians we saw were actually Americans. I heard British English, German, Italian and I think Russian today, and only once or twice did I hear someone speaking American English.

We explored public transportation today. We took the MTR (the subway) over to Kowloon and ate Dim Sum at a fancy hotel. It was okay - frankly I liked the Dim Sum we had in San Francisco better. Then, we took a ferry back across the bay to the area known as Central. We wandered through Central and took a tram up to Victoria Peak. It was spectacular! We followed a path all around the peak (around 1.5 miles) and took lots of pictures of the city below. The only drawback was that neither of us were really wearing the right shoes for extensive hiking. We took the tram back down and then took a taxi to the other side of Hong Kong Island, to Stanley and Repulse Bay. This is one of  the areas that we might live in. Its more residential, it overlooks the South China Sea. I was reassured that it wouldn’t be difficult at all to get into the city from there. We took the bus back to our hotel and that was easy too.

The driving on the left side of the road thing is weird. Its going to take me awhile to get used to it. As I said to Lee - all I have to do is make one mistake….besides the roads are filled with taxis and buses and they’re narrow and winding to boot.

We  had “afternoon tea” in Stanley overlooking the bay. That’s a nice habit that I could get used to quickly….

Now we back at the hotel. Our window overlooks Victoria Park and right now the park is brimming with young ladies all gathered together talking, eating and having fun. Sundays are the maid’s day off and they’re enjoying themselves. Looking down on them from the 18^th floor is a hoot. They look like thousands of colorful birds, milling about.

Tomorrow we go on an official tour of the city, with our 3M guide. I think its good that we’re getting two days to get a real feel for the place before we start looking at apartments. Right now I’m a little torn between  the thought of being right there in the city and being a little farther away but in an area with more greenery and the ocean to boot.  I’ll let you know further impressions tomorrow.

Love, Lynn.