Hong Kong

Wan Chai Market song

Growing up, this city always felt special in the sense that East meets West culture beautifully. With James Bond and favorite martial artists Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee popularizing it further, alongside it's cinema library having a spectacular amount of action and horror movies, I simply needed to discover this for myself at one point.

As I came out of a familiar metro/subway system, the skyscrapers are a totally different world from Vietnam, and they mesmerized me. The famous spot where you can see the buildings the best is when you look at Victoria Harbor, while a ferry boat drives by.

Hong Kong is also a special economic zone and expensive, while having a different political and social structure from mainland China. As I ate the delicious dim sums and discovered the nightlife, I also checked out Big Buddha and the monastery, but as far as religious sites throughout this vacation goes, the 10.000 Buddha temple in the north excited me the most, as along the route towards it, hundreds of statues each with original faces kept me impressed.

A view that rivals Victoria Harbor is when you ride the 120+ year old tram to go to the top and see the beautiful skyline. Hong Kong is thus worth experiencing for it's buildings, it's food, the night life and it's unique culture.

Additionally I did a daytrip towards the other special zone called Macau, of which it's revenue is said to be 7 times more than Las Vegas. Both are casino areas and over the top, but I preferred walking The Strip.

Still, seeing a live Grand Prix tournament take place, while I checked and wandered through old Portuguese buildings and the ridiculous casino resorts make it all stack up for a day well invested.

On the ferry towards Macau I also befriended my first Bhutanese acquintance named Norbu, another interesting country for me to visit in the future.