Hong Kong, We’re not in China Anymore
Only our second land border crossing of the trip: China to Hong Kong. Despite being a part of China, Hong Kong maintains separate border controls. It also has its own money, they drive on the opposite side of the road as the mainland, and English is widely spoken, after all it has only been thirteen years since the Brits left town.
Something we noticed right off the bat, private companies print money here. The Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, or HSBC, is a large bank we have been seeing all over, and they print money. The Standard Chartered Bank and the Bank of China also print money. We did find some government issued ten dollar bills, but that’s about it. We have never seen money with a corporate logo on it, Mike commented that it is like using Disney Dollars.
We had a lot of boring stuff to do like laundry, haircuts, a little shopping, and travel planning beyond India. We are happy to report that we have a ticket out of India to Cairo and another ticket on to Amman where our second visitor, Bridget, will be joining us for a week!
As a break from our homework, we did see some of the city. The second day we were there the sun came out so we took the opportunity to visit Victoria Peak. It is the highest point in Hong Kong and sadly has two malls on top. The views were nice and it’s amazing what can be squished between the water and the hills. I didn’t expect the hills to be so big. One evening we caught the nightly light show by the waterfront. It is set to music and a little cheesy, but it does use lasers.
To get even more stamps in our passports, we took a day trip to Macau. Macau was held by the Portuguese until 1999 and operates much like Hong Kong. These days it is famous for casinos and is the humid version of Las Vegas. The ferry only takes an hour and once there you feel like you have stepped into a little Europe. We saw the ruins of Sao Paulo Cathedral and the old fort. Shortly after arriving, we were dripping with sweat and headed for the Macau Museum. It was a nice little museum that featured the history of Macau, a mock city street and a time line of developments comparing European and Asian achievements AND it let us dry off a little. We thought it was unusually humid and when we looked it up it had been 95% that day! Before heading back, we had a cheap meal at one of the many casinos and had just enough Macau Patacas left to buy some duty free chocolate and Portuguese wine.
We also couldn’t resist passing up the chance to see movies in English. After a quick internet search, we found “the best theater in Asia”. We went one night just to check it out and saw Hot Tub Time Machine. Maybe because we haven’t seen any movies lately or maybe because of the 80s music or the fact that Heather likes John Cusack, but we thought it was hilarious. The theater was equipped with leather seats and you got assigned seats when you purchased your ticket, nice! We liked the place so much that we went back for opening night of Shrek Ever After.