People on top of people on top of people...

"A city, far from being a cluster of buildings, is actually a sequence of spaces enclosed and defined by buildings."

- I.M. Pei

 After a busy week with my mom, Lindsey and I were once again off for a whirlwind weekend to Hong Kong.  Hong Kong was a British colony from 1842 to 1997.  It is now under the one country two governments system with China.  Lindsey and I decided we can count it as a separate country from China though in our countries visited total because you need a passport to travel between the two and there is a different currency.

 We left right after school finished Friday evening and after a 3.5 hour flight we arrived at our hotel at 3:00 AM.  The next morning we got up bright and early and were able to meet up with my friend Niklas! Niklas and I had studied together in Copenhagen and he happened to be traveling in Hong Kong last weekend as well! It was actually exactly 5 years and 1 day since we had said goodbye in Copenhagen!

The first thing we did was go to the top of Victoria's Peak to get a view of the harbor.

The views were stunning.  When we had looked at the weather prior to our trip, it was forecasted to rain the whole weekend.  Luckily we had had beautiful weather!

After taking the peak tram down the mountain we went on a walking tour.  The tour took us to the goldfish market, flower market, and bird market.  

The birds and the goldfish are important in Chinese culture to bring feng shui to people's homes. 

 After visiting the traditional markets, we got to the most interesting part of the tour.  This tour was to educate visitors on Hong Kong's housing crisis.  The government owns all the land in Hong Kong and so gets a large portion of its tax revenue from property taxes.  This means rent is extremely high meaning most minimum wage workers cannot afford housing.  To combat this landlords have gone to extreme measures breaking up already small apartments into "coffin apartments."  These rooms are sometimes so tiny that people cannot even fully stretch out their legs.  Coffin Apartments If you click on the link you can see some photos of the apartments I am talking about.

 These photos were taking at an apartment building called Montane Mansion.  I cannot even imagine how many people live in this one building.  To make this crisis an even bigger issue, in most countries people who cannot afford to live in the city are able to move and find a place that they can afford.  However even though Hong Kong is technically a part of China the people of Hong Kong only hold a specific Hong Kong passport.  They can't move anywhere without it being immigration, which means they must have money or be a skilled worker.  I am so glad we went on this walking tour and were able to see and learn more about Hong Kong than the usual tourist sights.

After our full day walking around the city we decided to see the city lights from a traditional Chinese junk boat cruising the harbor.

At 8:00PM every evening there is a light show choreographed to music.  It was very fun to see it from the boat!

Our final stop of the evening was the Hong Kong avenue of stars, like Hollywood's Walk of Fame.  We didn't recognize many people but of course knew these two!

Lindsey and I travel in the same way, never stopping until we have seen everything on our list.  This unfortunately means we sometimes don't take a lot of time to eat delicious food.  We were lucky enough to get some dim sum right before the restaurant closed for the evening.

Hong Kong is a very interesting city and I am so glad we were able to visit.