HONG KONG, BABY!

We've just arrived at our next destination- HONG KONG!!! After all the bacterial infections and watching people pee and poop all over the place I told Tim I needed something totally different if he wanted to keep traveling and not go home right away, so we chose Hong Kong. I can't believe how different it is from anywhere else we've been to on this trip. HK is so clean, so busy, stuff is easy to find, people obey traffic laws and use the crosswalks (I've missed the green man!). That said, it's also way more expensive than East Africa, Egypt, Jordan, and India so we're limiting ourselves to 10 days. Just enough time to fall in love with Hong Kong, before all the bad stuff gets annoying.

Arriving late at night was pretty cool, as I was able to check out the skyscrapers' lights reflecting on the water as we traveled by express train from the airport to Kowloon. From there we actually queued up for a taxi- we lined up inside a hallway with glass doors on either side and a man in front directing us to the correct door beyond which was a taxi! It was so weird to be calmly standing in line, no one pressed up against you and no one cutting in front. It was also weird to drive through the town at midnight and see how clean the alleyways were by Egyptian and Indian standards and, this is important, no one. was. peeing. or. pooping. anywhere. srsly.

This morning we wandered a bit in search of a cheap breakfast (alas, I get the feeling we'll be doing a lot of searching for good, cheap food) and it was so nice! You could actually walk on the sidewalks! No stalls or piles of garbage to walk over, no huge holes or mysterious puddles to watch out for, no poops from various animals to be careful of. I mean, you have no idea how awesome it is to just walk on the sidewalk and not have to walk in the gutter/street dodging cars, bikes, and motorbikes (OK- some of you do, of course). Oh, it was so nice to be able to look about you at the tall buildings, storefronts, windows full of fatty cooked ribs and ducks with crispy skins or windows full of beautiful jade and diamond jewelry (sometimes next to each other), and signs. There's garbage bins everywhere! And people use them!

Oh, I think I'm going to like it here. :-)