im a hong kongien

For any of you how have actually spoken to me before, you will have noticed i have the structure of communicating very much representing a grass hopper flying madly from a combine harvester.

in this blog, you will see that format distilled into its purer essence

I've been told that people don't like Hong Kong often on their first visit, but i already feel like i AM a Hong Kongien... there's something about the cities heart beat that resonates within me. and all the cheap food around.

Well, Hong Kongien? that might be a slight exaggeration you may think seeming as i can only read one of the languages here, have survival skills mounting to 'there are cops everywhere, I'll be fine" and "ohh! HK$10 a dish! delicious!", but somehow I've managed to last the 4 days.

Wednesday we woke up (at around 5 am...) and discovered the first reason i would catch the Asia bug. They have a sauna in this building. after I had truly had my fill of warmth and the most delicious scrambled eggs for breakfast, we decided to head over to kaloon and see the Hong Kong history museum so that we would have a little context on this 'country'/province of china.

turns out i was correct and knew nothing about Hong Kong.

oh, and it has very very interesting rocks, but I won't bored you here with them, ill corner each and everyone of you and show you a power point presentation about them... the rock part was only a small intro into the 8 gallery museum, but I managed to spend about 45 minutes in it. but seriously, the geological history is very interesting.

so before modern times, Hong Kong was settled by 3 ethnic groups: hakka, punti and the holko/tanka.

The Punti (translation: origional locality) where the first settlers in Hong Kong, and performed such industries and salt farming and incense farming. I won't write to much more exept to say that to defend them selves from pirates they build walled villages to defend them selves in, and I'll be doing a walk tomorrow through the new territories with dad that passes through several of these villages.

the Holko/Tanka people i believe are the most interesting. they are called 'boat people' not because they used boats a lot, or did a lot of fishing. but because they literally lived there entire lives on boats, only every coming ashore to build new boats/repair boats. and so they have developed a rather interesting marriage ritual where the pride and groom meet on there wedding night by being rowed towards each other on 'dragon boats' rowed solely by the brides female relatives. currently, the Holko/Tanka people instead perform a dragon dance through the streets in brightly coloured.

yesterday me and dad went out to the new territories of Hong Kong- and saw some of the old walled villages that the ethnic inhabitants of Hong Kong used to live in, and people still do. It was quite a contrast to the intense activity of down town Hong Kong (see the pictures) yet ironically in some of the falling apart brick garages we past, i saw some really really nice cars... I'm not quite sure what to make of that seeming as its Kong Kong and driving a car must be hell. after wandering through the edges of the new territories we caught a half hour train back to the kawloon and were back in Hong Kong.

well, we leave in half an hour for Beijing, soooo you'll all have to live with my limited blogging. hopefully ill be more dedicated in Beijing!

oh, and the food!! I've eaten to much here its ridiculous! we where at the equivalent of DJ's yesterday at a sushi train place, and between me and dad we probably had around 16 dishes and 3 servings of miso soup (we had dinner with a friend of dad's) and the whole thing was only AU$25 a head! by far the most expensive meal we had dad (the cheapest being HK$31 for me and dad together). and it goes without saying, its all delicious!