Short & Sweet
This is a translation of a German post. View original or Never translate German
We'll only have a very short post today to keep our Hong Kong review from falling out of context.
Meanwhile, we have arrived in Seoul and moved into our hostel in Itaewon — but more about that later.
Hong Kong — Review
Hong Kong is a megacity in every sense: on every street crowds are bustling around, neon light is oozing from every corner and in between the countless blocks of high-rise condos you will find more or less everything you can imagine in such a city.
From large shopping districts full of world-famous brands, you are usually just a small side street away from tiny local shops selling fruit, meat, jewellery, foot massages and more. Due to the chronic lack of space a small island(-ish) state brings with it, everything here is quite squeezed and grown vertically — which often makes for all the more interesting space usages and brings us to eat our meals in impossibly small alleys.
Life is pulsating around the clock — but at the same time we also find huge, secluded green areas with temples and parks in the New Territories or on Lantau, where the crowds subside and you'll see much less people around.
This makes Hong Kong look more like a very small country that has both the big city and wild nature than a regular city-state.
In any case, Hong Kong has its very own, interesting character — and for that reason I'd like to stop by again at some point.
The sword of Damocles dangling over Hong Kong is the 50-year limited special status treaty as a largely autonomous administrative zone of China — what happens when these contracts expire, nobody knows for sure — but especially the students of Hong Kong fear for democracy and freedom of speech.
Only one day before our arrival, there were once again student protests that were broken up by Chinese police units using tear gas — and we also talked to Vickie about the topic and saw her University's "Democracy Wall".
For those who want to read more about the bigger protests of 2014, I recommend the following article:
How Tear Gas Attacks Ignited HK Democracy Protests — bloomberg.com
And as always, the two things you should not do in Hong Kong: Calling hot pots DIY soup. Jacky'll laugh at you — Sorry! Also, you shouldn't expect that because of Hong Kong's colonial past English is spoken everywhere — but the younger generation does mostly speak good English.