Big Buddha from above

Big Buddha

Hong Kong not only boasts a few of the tallest skyscrapers in the world, they also have a giant Buddha statue, the Tian Tan Buddha, and are building an addition to the nearby Po Lin Monastery that will house the Grand Hall of Ten Thousand Buddhas scheduled to be completed this year.

Statues around Big Buddha

View of Big Buddha from the slopes of Lantau Peak

My motivation for visiting the Big Buddha was primarily to do another hike, this time to the Lantau Peak. Just like the Dragon's Back trail on Hong Kong island, the path on the ridge near the summit of Lantau Peak opens up to magnificent views over Lantau island as well as a good look at Big Buddha from afar.

View from the ridge just below Lantau Peak

The trouble with Chinese food

Chinese food stall

I used to think I had a good understanding of Chinese food. In fact, I even used to think I like Chinese food. What a mistake! After traveling through Bangkok's Chinatown, the Chinese influenced Malaysian Borneo and Hong Kong, the verdict is in: I hate Chinese food!

As I sort of knew, Chinese food is not really what they serve in Chinese restaurants in Europe where one might be led to believe that it's all about spring rolls and stir-fried vegetables with nice pieces of meat, fish or tofu, served with rice and jasmine tea. That's very far from real Chinese food. Real Chinese food consists of the most awful pieces of meat you can imagine, such as intestines, stomachs, whole pieces of chicken or beef or pork that include everything from skin, bones, fat, sinew and maybe a little meat as well. I know I'm a very picky eater and I'm not much a fan of meat but what the Chinese use in their food is way over the top for me.

Dim sum

I can survive a piece of chicken with skin and bones: I pick out any edible meat and I'm fine, as long as the chicken is well cooked. But I really can't stomach pieces of pork that look like a whole pig was just chopped up and stuffed into dim sums. No, I can't. I willed myself not to throw up while eating the dim sums with the awful pieces of pork.

Adding to my recent aversion to Chinese food was the misfortune of having stomach problems after eating at a Chinese place in Malaysia. During my four months of traveling in Asia, this was the only time I became sick due to food. Who knows, maybe Chinese restaurants really are as dirty as they say or the cooking utensils haven't been cleaned or whatever that made the food bad.

Vegetarian meal

I was so thankful when I visited a Buddhist monastery in Hong Kong that offered vegetarian food. I could finally eat what I do like about Chinese food: stir fried vegetables and egg rolls over rice. The restaurant even carried the sign "no meat allowed". It's funny that they have to put a sign like that, did they expect people to bring in their own meat? I guess you never know with the Chinese. Since I witnessed them smuggling their own liquor into a halal restaurant it shouldn't be surprising that they might bring their own meat to a vegetarian restaurant.

One thing is for sure: unless it's vegetarian, I'll avoid Chinese food in the future.

Characterizing Hong Kong

Golden Bauhinia Square

Hong Kong was British until mid-1997 when it was handed over to the People's Republic of China. After 15 years there are still many signs of British colonialism, evident in old buildings that are interspersed among the skyscrapers, churches and cemeteries, street names and neighborhoods. The city doesn't emit a typical Asian vibe, at least in the sense of how I have learned to associate Asian cities with crazy traffic, street food and general chaos. Hong Kong is much more international, reminiscent of European or American cities in terms of cleanliness, orderliness and the availability of any world brands of whatever one might desire to eat, buy, or experience.

Flag raising ceremony

Each morning there is a flag raising ceremony at the Golden Bauhinia Square. The statue representing the bauhinia, Hong Kong's official flower, was gifted to Hong Kong by the Central Government at the time of handover from the British. The flags of Hong Kong and the People's Republic of China are raised side by side each morning. On the first day of the month they do a more elaborate ceremony, so a bagpipe band performed after the flags were raised. The band members were dressed in Scottish uniforms but I'm guessing there was no way the Chinese band members could be talked into wearing kilts.

Bagpipe performance

Ten years after Hong Kong was handed over to the People's Republic of China, another gift from the Central Government ensued. This time it was a pair of pandas that are housed at Hong Kong's Ocean park.

Panda at Ocean park

Hong Kong's many public parks are alive with recreation seeking locals which is another typical characteristic of the city. So many people, even very old ones, walk, stretch, run, play tennis, or practice tai chi.

Women practicing tai chi in a public park

Regardless of whether Hong Kong is more British or more Chinese, if it had to be described by only one word, it would be shopping. The entire city is almost like one endless shopping mall and local people seem to be shopping all the time. Even businessmen on their lunch breaks carry Armani shopping bags. Do they go out for lunch and then on their way back hop into one of the malls to pick up a new suit? I wonder how often they do that, as in how many Armani suits does a businessman in Hong Kong need anyway?

On the Dragon's Back

The highest point of the Dragon's Back trail

The one thing I really wanted to do in Hong Kong was to hike the Dragon's Back trail. I know. Who comes to a city like Hong Kong to go hiking? If I wanted hiking, I could have just stayed home in the Alps. However, considering that almost 70% of the total area of Hong Kong is green countryside, it's less surprising to discover that there are many hiking trails up and around the hills.

View from the trail: Kowloon in the distance

My guidebook says that it takes five hours to hike the entire Dragon's Back trail. I started early to be sure to have enough time to finish before dark. At the start of the trail there are warning signs that the trail is very strenuous and should be attempted only by very fit individuals. When I completed the trail – which didn't seem very strenuous to me – in just over two hours, I thought I might have missed the correct path or taken a shortcut by mistake. But when I reviewed all the landmarks and compared my photos with those in the guidebook, I'm sure I did the trail in full. I wonder who estimated the time at five hours, probably someone who took many long breaks.

View from the trail: Stanley

The trail goes along a ridge that opens up to breathtaking views. The weather was perfect: it was partly cloudy, the visibility was good and it wasn't too hot. It's probably much more difficult to hike in the summer when the sun beats down.

Tai Long Wan beach

The end of the trail is on a beach which is probably very crowded in the summer, but was quite deserted now, only a couple of surfers tried their luck in the waves.

The parallel universes of Hong Kong

View of Hong Kong island from Kowloon

I always imagined Hong Kong as a mythical place that was created to be a backdrop for action movies starring the likes of Jackie Chan or epic novels such as James Clavell's Tai-Pan. Now that I'm here, I feel like I've entered that mythical world. It's so surreal it's hard to imagine it really exists.

View of Hong Kong island at night

I knew there would be skyscrapers, I just had no idea how high they really are. I knew the view across Victoria Harbour at night would be breathtaking, I just had no idea the buildings participate in a light show performance. I knew there would be vast shopping malls, I just had no idea that Armani shops could span over three floors or that a mall could be more than a kilometer long. I knew the internet would be fast, I just had no idea how super lightning fast.

Endless shopping malls, decorated for Chinese New Year

View from Victoria Peak

I knew the city would be crowded, but for some reason, it's not as crowded as I expected. That's probably because the city is sectioned into layers, like parallel universes, each with a unique purpose and a life of its own.

Underground passageway

There is the underground layer with the metro and the myriad of underground passageways so convoluted that a map is needed to be able to understand how to exit a metro station.

A public park

Then there is the street level with the buses and taxis and surprisingly few cars that is shared with pedestrians. It's clean, smoking and spitting is prohibited in public areas, there are sidewalks and traffic lights and friendly reminders which way to look before crossing the street. There are so many public parks and green areas, it's hard to believe how they fit them all in among the skyscrapers.

Friendly reminders to ensure safe crossing

And then there is the upper layer, consisting of escalators, overpasses and all weather walkways that wind through shopping malls and end up in fancy hotels or bank headquarters.

Entering the upper layer

The Apple store is on the upper layer

Upper layers for pedestrians and cars

An upper layer walkway may easily flow into a public park or a children's playground or a tai chi court.

Walkway continues into a public park

Since most of Hong Kong island is on a hill, they have the Travelator, an escalator that carries people uphill. It would be a fun free ride if only you didn't have to walk back.

The Travelator

Once I enter a layer, it's like I'm caught in it, living the life of that universe, going with the flow, following the signs at intersections to get me where I want to go. But getting out of a layer is an exciting adventure of finding my way out of the maze of passageways.

Shops advertise to each of the layers

Last, but not least, there is the Star ferry that has been carrying passengers across Victoria Harbour between Kowloon and Hong Kong island since 1880. They have renewed their fleet since then, but still, the boat I took was built in 1958, before I was born. It's like history is mixed in with the futuristic look and feel of the skyscrapers.

View of Kowloon from the Star ferry

Impressions of Malaysia

City mosque in Kota Kinabalu

Malaysia is an easy country to travel. “Easy to travel” usually translates into the fact that it is more touristy therefore also more expensive and there is more pressure to buy whatever is forced upon the tourists. My experience is that I was generally able to avoid the more touristy areas and focused more on remote parts which I explored using local transport. Yes, I had to pay for the tours I took, as they don’t allow you to climb Mount Kinabalu outside of a group and you can’t do a Kinabatangan river safari on your own. But the rest was easy and peaceful. My average cost per day if I exclude the tours is comparable to the costs in Thailand, Laos or Cambodia.

Hindi temple in Penang

What also makes it easy to travel in Malaysia is that they use the Latin alphabet which is always helpful in a foreign country. Even if I don’t understand the language, I can read signs such as the names of places or names of food items on street stalls. Almost everyone speaks at least a little English in Malaysia so it was easy to get around. Even young schoolgirls chatted me up in basic English. I spoke with a local woman who told me that she went to university in India. She said that although there are many good university programs in Malaysia, some people decide to study in India. According to her, India has the best medicine programs because they have so many dead bodies that no one claims it’s easy to practice medicine on them. I think this might be a myth although with India, you never know. Do they really pick up dead bodies by the side of the road to use them for studying medicine?

Another aspect of the more developed countries of southeast Asia such as Thailand and Malaysia as compared to the less developed Laos and Cambodia is the amount of hassle they give you when entering the country and their visa requirements. The less developed countries make you fill out elaborate forms and pay a fee. I wonder if they believe that there are millions of foreigners lining up to take residence in their countries. The more developed countries just stamp your passport and in you go, no questions asked.

Malaysia is a mixture of Indian, Chinese and Malay cultures and religions. I was so glad to have the option of Indian food although the Indian ethnic groups are more populous on peninsular Malaysia and less so on Borneo where it’s predominantly Chinese. It’s fun to watch the coexistence of the Muslim population which doesn’t drink alcohol or eat pork with the Chinese culture which is quite the opposite. But they seem to make it work. I’ve seen Chinese restaurants that display “serve no pork” signs to be able to cater to the Muslim population. And I noticed a group of Chinese tourists who went to a Malay restaurant where they ordered Cokes and spiked them up with liquor from a small bottle that they brought along.

Performance at a Chinese New Year Bazaar
(looks and feels just like Christmas)

Out of all the countries in southeast Asia that I visited so far I noticed quite a number of fat people in Malaysia as opposed to Thailand, Laos and Cambodia, where practically everyone, young and old alike, is either skinny or bordering on emaciated. It probably correlates to the standard of living which is higher in Malaysia and also to the number of fast food places that can be found everywhere in Malaysia, even in very small remote towns. I sometimes had difficulty finding fresh fruit which I had become accustomed to eating for lunch and which was always readily available in Thailand, Laos or Cambodia. In Malaysia, it’s much easier to find street stalls that sell baked goods, waffles or pancakes. The fast food is also quite cheap therefore it is accessible to the entire population. For example, in Cambodia and in Thailand, a meal in a fast food place would cost about three times as much as a meal from a street stall. In Malaysia, the cost is about the same. So even the poorest can eat a greasy burger and fries for the same price as a noodle or rice dish with meat and vegetables. It’s sad to note that a better standard of living goes hand in hand with less healthy eating choices.

Seafood galore

Seafood restaurant or aquarium?

It's impossible to avoid seafood in southeast Asia. Even in Laos, a landlocked country, food often includes fish sauce or dried shrimp. I'm not much of a seafood lover but out of necessity I have become accustomed to the taste. It still doesn’t mean I love seafood, it’s just that chances are that whatever food I order they will probably add something fishy to it. For example, the variation of nasi lemak, a traditional Malaysian dish, unexpectedly contained squid in addition to the mandatory dried anchovies.

I came across an amazing seafood restaurant in Kota Kinabalu that could easily pass as an aquarium. They keep live sea animals in tanks and they prepare them fresh when a guest orders. I asked for permission to take photographs, but then I sneaked away before they could ask me to order. Here are a few details:

Despite my unenthusiasm for seafood I was drawn by delicious smells that wafted from countless seafood grills while I was strolling through the night market. There is something inviting about fresh seafood that just made me stop and eat grilled tiger prawns. They were served with rice and a very spicy sauce. Fresh, tender, delicious. And unbelievably inexpensive.

Seafood grills at the night market