Hong Kong
Our first day in Hong Kong was primarily arrival and trekking about to Stanley Market, a western tourist trap for seconds of brand name clothing. Decent deals were had, but nothing to “write home” about.
The second day was our trip to Shen Zhen and then our third day was in Hong Kong where we were to meet up at the Golden Computing Center to get a demo unit of a particular device we’d seen at the MP3 factory in China. Prior to going there, our partner took us to lunch for Dim Sum at a restaurant overlooking Hong Kong harbor - what an incredible view (this was on the Kowloon side, so we were looking straight out at “Hong Kong” (as in the pictures and postcards we all see). As we were driving to the restaurant, my wife had seen the Hard Rock Cafe, so in keeping with my attempt to buy HRC memorabilia in our travels, I picked up my HRC cap to add to the collection.
Our trading partner had made contact with the rep at the GCC showroom, but after wandering around for about 45 min, the guy at the show room never showed up. At least we got to see the famous Golden Computing Center - so busy you can barely walk through it, but I will say that for the items I was interested in, the prices didn’t seem to be any better than eBay!
After all this trekking around (again, horrible traffic), our partner took us to dinner with his wife and two adorable daughters (11 and 5). The unique portion of this experience was that we traveled out to the New Territories (in between Hong Kong and China) and went to select our live fish from the fish market prior to taking the bags of fish to the restaurant which then prepared them for us to our specifications. Once again, we were at a “local” restaurant, with no Anglos anywhere to be seen. What a tremendous gift it was to see true life on that side of the world, without having to be westernized by the cuisine.
When we got back, I recorded a podcast, which you can find on The Media Swamp.