News from Hong Kong

Hi everybody, some fast update from this internet cafe' here in Macau, an indipendent island (which in the past was a portugal colony) next to Hong Kong...outside it's raining and since I don't have an umbrella I'm spending time here hoping that later the weather will be better...

Anyway, after a bad sleep the first night, I started moving around Hong Kong and seeing all the major touristic attractions! in the first few days I saw almost all Hong Kong Island, in particular 3-4 different local market and Stanley, a nice place where to buy chinese artcraft....things are are cheap but I think that prices could be even lower if I wasn't in a touristic area! I bought different tipical chinese stuff but I feel that I could save money if I was in Italy!!!! Anyway, at least this "Made in China" stamp this time is real! And also, an interesting point is that differences between prices are so minimal that dealing is not so exciting anymore...for example, choosing a different size of a coffee in Starbucks change the price from 2 euro to 2.20....but there is still the problem that sometimes I see prices similar to Europe, thus I don't understand how local people can live with them (like a beer in a club, which cost around 5 euro!).
Talking about clubs, I still cannot forget my second night: looking for a good place where to go, I was looking around Kowlook area (where my hostelS are) and then I found a nice one with live music: inside, there were planty of women, really a lot and most of them really pretty! Now, I went at the bar to order a drink and I started talking with one of those amazing girl...at the end, she was quite nice with me explaining that in this place girls were payed (her included) just to stay there and make the customers happy (just about talking and dancing, this wasn't a night club!).....I have heard before that some club pay girls to entertainment their customers but I never seen a real situation like that night: after this small conversation, I set down in a corner on the club and I started looking the people; the average was 40-years ugly and fat men dancing with amazing 25-30 years old girls, each of them so happy to have conquered such beautiful women, but no one of them knew the real situation...or maybe they knew but they were there only to have fun as well!!!

After Hawaii, I never found a good weatehr condition anymore: in Australia it was normal since over there now is Winter, but I didn't imagine that here in Asia I was going to find everyday cloudy and raining days....for this reason, a nice beach as Resolve bay (here in HK) doesn't look so great in those days ('cause the bad hurricane around us, last week in Taiwan, today in east China!)

Exploring Honk Kong searching for food also showed me a nice Chinese version of McDonald! This chain restaurant are pretty cheap and inside you can eat all the major asian food as noodle, pork,etc.. Anyway, the best food that I've tried is thanks to Michelle, a Hong kong friend (but with French passport!) met in England, still at Royal Holloway! With her and some of their great friends I've visit really Hong kong/Chinese things, most of them hard or impossible to see for normal tourist: maybe except from play the card game "Uno" with 4-5 of them, all the things we have done were really good and such great experience for me! For the first time I tried "Dim Sha", a tipical chinese food that I've never heard in any chinese restaurant present in Europe, who knows why? Another kind of food that I've tried with Michelle is the hot pot cousine: basically you have a big pot in the centre of the table and you just order all the ingredients you want (beef, pork, vegetables, tipical chinese stuff,etc..) and then you just cook for yourself...similar to the japanese version but I appreciate much more this one!

Anyway, an overall of the city is not really positive: I don't recommend to come here except if is not more than 3 days ( a week is really too much for Hong Kong): the city is estetically ugly, you can just see huge buildings everywhere, many of them in bad condition (let's don't talk about my two hostels, both in the same building, of of the most dangerous or the area..), pollution in the air absolutely high and canals really dirty (someday the sea looks brown!).

The only good things are the temple of Po Lin, an amazing place outside the busy Hong kong (there is a buddha statue huge, really huge, I will post a photo), and the fact that almost everybody speak english (HK was a british colony untill 1997, now it's a part of China, but there are too many differences, I don't know how long they can still be part of it!)