Last two weeks I spent in Hong Kong.
First time I visited a country outside the Middle East. Finally broke the jinx.
Although I was too busy with work (Hence no blogs…) and could not visit the popular tourist spots, I did manage to do a lot of traveling across the islands.
Here are a few useless experiences :-)
The story starts from the airport…. The runway is parallel to seashore. As the plane lands, you can see the sea a few meters away. After entering the airport, another major surprise was awaiting. They had a underground metro train to transport passengers from runway to the immigration area!!
Next on the line was my first exposure to systems that “Trust” the people. Till now I had only read about them. I came out of airport to the bus station. I already had enough information with me about reaching to hotel. I entered the Bus. No conductor. People were dropping the exact fare amount into a box near to the driver. I could not stop from imagining what we would have done in India under such system?
Temperature was OK… about 17-18 deg. I dumped my luggage in hotel room and went roaming around the area.
Given that Hong Kong is a former British colony, I had expected that English would be a very common language. Nut instead I found that even after so many years people are not so good at English. Although English is one of the official languages, Cantonese is the common language in use.
Next I was exposed to the Life line of Hong Kong… local metro railway “MTR’. I can easily see it as a counterpart of local railway system in Mumbai. The scene at platform was no different except the fact that people were disciplined. Same rush of people in the morning and the evening in different directions.
The client office was in the central region where all other administrative offices were situated (just like our Fort – Churchgate Area in Mumbai). So every morning we used to become part of the river of people… train frequency was very good… with a gap of just two minutes. In spite of so many people traveling the stations are maintained very clean.
Apart from disciplined people, there was one more reason or that, eating was banned in the train or on the platform.
Another thing I noticed was that the city was very much disabled friendly. All the buildings had some or the other way allowed the disabled people to move around. All the steps were generally accompanied by either a lift or a slope. All the areas had different patterns engraved on the flour to guide the blind people. The patterns changed indicating different messages stop or where there was a turn. The pattern would change from strips to blocks and so on. These patterns are followed on most of the footpaths also. When it comes so signals, the traffic signals have two indicators one is the sign in red green and another is the audio signal for the blind.
I had also expected that we would face food problems. But nothing of that sort happened thanks to a sizable population from the subcontinent. After some days stay in hotel we moved into serviced apartments. This was a typical Chinese place. We could smell the food from the road. Roaming through the market we saw all those “famous” things about Chinese food…. Lizards, frogs and all other animals I don’t know about. We went into a shop that served the fishes. The fishes, crabs, lobsters were kept live in tanks. One could choose the fish and have the dish prepared.
I had entered in Hong Kong on a on arrival 14 day visa. The total stay accounted for 17 days. So in order to get the visa extended we had to visit Macau… erstwhile Portuguese colony. We entered Macau. Spent some time there and came back to Hong Kong. This act of immediate return made us a subject of interrogation. The immigration authorities suspecting us to be potential illegal immigrants had a brief interview of ours before stamping the visa again.
Not much shopping…. I found that there was not much difference in prices in India and Hong Kong for the standard branded electronics items. So I did not buy anything from there except some small gifts and an antique watch I could not resist buying. I just told my colleague that this watch can be face but still I m willing to take that risk.
On my return journey, While at Suvarnabhumi Airport of Bangkok, I thought of getting some Thai coins. I went to nearby exchange counters, and handed over a Ten HK Dollar note to the girl at the counter. I still remember the surprised and curious look on her face since all others were exchanging at least a hundred US dollars. Somehow she was even more surprised when I requested for “Coins only”.
Snap 2 5 35 am....
This was the last snap i took before i slept again....
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