JasonC SBB

I'm in Shenzhen China for a business trip. It'a about 1.5 hours North across the border from Hong Kong. I'm here once or twice a year, and what a difference a year makes.

Suddenly there are lots of very large LED displays. They sure love em here.:



Some of them are very attractive and eye catching



There was one installation along both banks of a river - they looked like comets accelerating and racing. Pretty cool. No vids though, I saw it from my taxi.

One of the weird things I saw was a bunch of bicycles parked on the side of the road with very bright police-type LED lights like this. I guess they are sidewalk vendors hawking wares:

TerranWELDER

I love it, they should do something like Noisy boy in Real Steel.

JasonC SBB

I fly into Hong Kong to come here.
IMO HK has the prettiest skyline in the world - beats NYC, Chicago, etc.

At night the buildings have these up-pointing megawatt lamps a la Luxor in Vegas:



I once had a meeting in a boardroom with a glass wall with the above view ( in the daytime), and they sat me across from the view. I found it incredibly distracting.


On New Year's the buildings have synchronized fireworks:

jared8783

iTrader: (2)

i like the waterfall one

NA6C-Guy

iTrader: (1)

More proof that China is leaving the US in the dust. I agree with the best skyline. Not fortunate enough to have seen it in person, but going by images, all of the ones I have seen blow away all others. Id love to make a long vacation there one day.

Scrappy Jack

iTrader: (2)

Jason - Thanks very much for sharing. It's always interesting to hear first hand impressions of Westerners in China (including Hong Kong).

How would you consider HK as a "tourist destination?" Would you feel comfortable travelling there with a spouse or significant other for a holiday (taking the usual precautions necessary in any big city you've never been to before)?

More like "catching up." At one point, a few hundred years ago, China and India (the two most populous nations on the planet) produced about 70% of the world's economic output. By the 1950s, the USA was producing about 40% of world GDP... while home to less than 5% of the world's population.

It's a long-term global rebalancing. That doesn't need to mean China becomes a world empire and the USA becomes a shattered ruin of its former glory.

JasonC SBB

HK is pretty safe, I've been going there since the mid 90s. I don't even know of any bad neighborhoods one might mistakenly get into, when going to destinations tourists may want to go to.

HK is very interesting, it reminds me of L.A. in Bladerunner (minus the hottie replicants running around in see-through raincoats). It's a mix of dirt cheap bazaars and grimy looking neighborhoods, and ultra-high end hotels and clubs. HK has the highest concentration of millionaires per square mile. Panameras and Astons abound even though there's nowhere to drive fast, and upper middle class that don't buy cars buy $5k watches.

HK is tops in economic freedom (very low corporate taxes) and thus they have lots of multinational companies and a large expat community. I think until today they have no tariffs on imports. Other than housing, the cost of living can be very low, and salaries high for skilled corporate slaves or businessmen.

Lots of people compare Singapore with HK because they are both dense cities with lots of Chinese, but they're quite different. Singapore is much cleaner and more antiseptic, and the median income is much higher - higher than the USA in fact. Google the article "Disneyland with a Death Penalty" by Bruce Sterling LOL. Some people call it "Asia for Dummies" or "Asia for Beginners", because it's very "safe" and everyone speaks English ("Singlish" for the accent). You can't chew gum outside or surf ****, but prostitutes are legal lol.

If visiting Asia I highly recommend visiting the awesome temples in Cambodia, the beach resorts and food in Thailand (and the crazy sex shows lol), and the scuba diving in the Philippines. The latter has the most hustlers but I can hook you up with a dive operator who'll take care of you starting when your plane lands. Japan is cool too but pretty expensive, and far from the others.