We love Hong Kong

An incomplete version of this post went up last night by accident; this is a full version. Access to this blog, which is supported by Google, was blocked in China, so we'll be catching up over the next couple of days. As I write, we're on the way to Japan.


John: We do. It's an exciting, interesting city, one that feels like a combination of some of the most interesting parts of San Francisco, New York, and London, while of course being very much itself at the same time. It's both modern, with skyscrapers and a fantastic metro system, and also sort of quant in spots--the crewmen on the Star Ferry, which goes between the mainland and Hong Kong island, wear what look like British sailor suits, circa 1930. It's a very international place, with many expatriates living and working here; it was easy to feel at home pretty quickly.

Maeve and Aidan  on the top deck of the ship with Hong Kong Island behind them. As is usual with a  new port, we arrived in Hong Kong first thing in the morning; it's always exciting to wake up arriving in a new city.

It will not surprise any reader of this blog that we have spent a fair amount of time at children's parks and the zoo. We're now experts in Asian zoos, and can report that the Hong Kong zoo is not all that elaborate compared to the Singapore Zoo, and it's smaller than the Saigon Zoo as well. But it's free, centrally located, and very pleasant, with lots of monkeys. And also a raccoon, which here is an exotic animal, but of course is a pest around our garbage cans.

Maeve got tired of walking at the Hong Kong Zoo.

Our biggest excursion was to Hong Kong Disneyland. Yes, there is a Hong Kong Disneyland:

Aidan with the Hong Kong Disneyland castle.

And it's kind of like every other Disneyland, though smaller than the ones in the US. There is a castle, depicted above, a Space Mountain, a jungle boat ride, a small world ride, and so on. It also has some of the features I've tended to suppress from memories of visits to the Disney parks in the US, like big crowds and long lines for everything (Maeve fell asleep in my arms as we were waiting to get on a Buzz Lightyear ride.) After being at the Buddhist amusement park in Saigon a few days ago, Disneyland looked newly strange, I think, and it's a puzzle to me why people in Hong Kong would be interested in visiting such an artificial version of America.

In the evening, Vicki and I went out to a great Japanese restaurant to celebrate my birthday. That was good, grown-up fun.