Coming down from Victoria Peak and across the harbor, we returned to the port for the Hong Kong laser/light show with about thirty minutes to kill. If I had to guess, and of course I don’t, but if I had to, I would say that we had maybe a thousand or so people around to watch the show. We got what turned out to be good seats on a little walkway overlooking the harbor and waited for the show to start.
The light show started and it was, let’s just say not overwhelming. The music was loud – mostly classical music – and the pre-show announcements were in English, Mandarin and Cantonese. (I’m sort of guessing on that, but I think it may be correct.) The show consisted of the music, with lights around certain buildings in the Hong Kong skyline pulsating in time with the music. While this was going on, other buildings across the harbor were shooting green lasers or white lights into the sky. With the haze over Hong Kong, every time I saw the white lights shoot into the sky, I half-expected to see a Batman logo in the middle of it. The show lasted around fifteen minutes and there was a grand finale, which wasn’t particularly grand, and that was that. If you are in Hong Kong and have fifteen minutes to kill at 8:00, you should see the show. You definitely shouldn’t come to Hong Kong for the light show, though.
At night, we went to a local food market for dinner. There was nothing spectacular about the food. Our guide made fun of me because I wanted fried chicken pieces and bean cheese, so I had a stir-fried shrimp dish. It was good, but I think I’d have preferred the bean cheese. Anyway, one thing I found amusing was that Chinese girls in red uniforms were working the crowd getting them to try San Miguel beer. I spent the entire summer drinking San Miguel beer in Madrid (it’s a Spanish beer), but evidently they are marketing it heavily in Hong Kong at the moment so I was able to take a break from the Chinese beer for an evening and relive my summer in Spain.
That was it for the first day in Hong Kong. I still had no idea what I wanted to do the next day, but I did play on Facebook and my websites for a while because it was the first time since I arrived in China that I had access to any of them.
The next day, I walked around the financial district because I wanted to see what it looked like in comparison to western financial districts. It looked pretty much the same. People in suits, lots of fast-food restaurants for businessmen on the go, skyscrapers that refused to let in the sun, younger women in suits with inappropriately short skirts, taxis, taxis and more taxis. It looked like New York or Boston or London or . . .. I went to Starbucks for some tea and saw a couple of job interviews taking place. I guess that makes sense since space is at a premium in Hong Kong and not everybody has an office to him/herself in which to interview people. It reminded me of interviewing for a job in Washington, DC back in the 90s. Anyway, my view of Hong Kong’s financial district was “same ol’.” (Note: The photo isn't from the financial district. I just like it.)
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