The roads in Hong Kong are windy, steep, and bring on vertigo if I look over the giant cliffs, past the 6.5 million dollar homes to the sea. I never experienced sea sickness from riding in a car, until today. Despite my latent fear of heights, I brave The Peak, the old tram car line that carries families with cameras up the steepest hill I’ve ever seen in a city. SF has nothing on HK.
At one point, only Whitey was allowed on The Peak. Now it’s a lookout over HK Island in the direction of Victoria Harbor, which you get to by shopping your way through more of what Hong Kong does best: Made In China goods for sale in crunchy plastic bags, electronics stores called M.E.N.U. (I can’t make sense of that name), Madame Tussaud’s Wax Figures “Museum” (is that supposed to be Sheryl Crow or Madonna in the poster?) and The Bubba Gump Shrimp Company.
I love the mainland Chinese girls waiting in line to get their shrimp on, doing a whole new take on the peace sign picture. The entire palm turned outward, like “gimme a high five” directly next to their nose to their face. Cool.
Back to the homes perched on the hills. They have all the charm of the apartments in Little Armenia, Los Angeles: concrete poured in the 1960s, prison-style irongates on the windows. But you open the door and there’s a driver, gardener, nannies, cooks, Audis and Bentleys in the garage. Pricey areas look like the Adriatic Coast, and other residential areas are more like Soviet projects slapped between two rock formations. Who puts a skyscraper over a cove and jutting out of a giant rock? Hong Kongers, that’s who.
In Central today, a shirtless guy with stacks of eggs 6 rows deep on his shoulder passes me and insists, “Thank you! Thank you!” I learn in Canto that Thank You is the same as Excuse Me. He was basically saying, “Thanks lady for not knocking over my eggs which would cost me my job, you slow moving Westerner.”
Westerners look very similar here. The finance guy cruising in the BMW convertible, his wife taking the Maserati to the mall. She parks it between two Ferraris, next to a purple Porsche, and a yellow Lamborghini.The next row over is filled with Mercedes. I haven’t seen this much car whoring since Atlanta, Miami or LA. People in NY just don’t bring their cars out like this.
After a kickass dinner at Kasbah, where for a moment I actually forget what city I’m in, we walk through Lan Kwai Fong, which since the 1980s has been the ex pat area. California was the first Western joint, and has since closed, Disco Disco (first uber gay bar) has also closed. It “used to be cooler” dismiss my friends. I believe them.
Although HK has no bridge and tunnel crowd, or the equivalent to Jersey Girls, Lan Kwai Fong reminds me of a steeper Bleecker Street in the West Village. Like Bleecker Street, Lan Kwai Fong has loads of college girls, and a really nice Indian guy buying them drinks all night long, who won’t get laid that night.
Now to knock sand from Shek O Beach out of my shoes, and get some sleep. Going sailing in the harbor early tomorrow. My first time sailing, ever. Wish I brought my topsiders.
