We went on a city tour of Hong Kong Island yesterday. Housing prices are astronomical here as you can imagine with so many people living in such a small space. Council flats cost about $300 US per month and have about 300 sq feet for two or three generations of a family. A condo with 6 windows - with a couple of thousand square feet costs 5 million US to buy. Only 6% of 7 billion people live in a stand alone house. When I told the tour guide about my house, he said I would be a billionaire if I had the same thing here.
We went to Aberdeen, which is an area on HK Island that used to be a fishing village. We had a ride around the harbour in a sampan. The harbour is quite busy and there do not seem to be any "rules of the road" as it were but traffic flowed smoothly and there were no idiots speeding around. If you want to have a place in the harbor to anchor the boat you are living on, it is $5000 US per year.
There were some very huge yachts here, not sure how much it costs for them.
We took the tunnel under the harbor to the island. It was opened in 1968 and took 4 years to build. Engineers from the UK and the Netherlands helped. Now there are 5 tunnels under the bay. There is a huge sign at the entrance to the tunnel stating there were 17842 traffic casualties last year - which is both injuries and deaths. I thought that was quite a low number considering how many people are here. there are very few motorcycles, and even fewer bicycles although the drivers are quite courteous. Traffic is fast and you better know where you are going. Renting a car is not recommended.
it's funny how you come to a new place and you aren't sure of the rules. Crossing the street is one that gave us a few problems. There are street lights with the green man walking or the red man stopped, but it varies whether you cross against the light or not. In general, you cross the street when it is safe, whether or not the light is with you. However, the bigger, wider streets, you wait for the green light. Sometimes some people will cross against the light while others wait. I'm not sure if it is against the law to jay walk, so when we were standing next to two policeman we didn't cross until the light was green.
There are police who walk about on the streets quite regularly. they are armed with a handgun and a collapsible baton. I didn't check for a taser or anything else as I was trying not to look too interested...just in case. i have seen them writing what I would assume are tickets for people on the street, so there must be some infractions that are ticketable. I have seen signs that the fine for littering is $5000 HKD ($715 CDN).
There are some strange things to eat here...many of which don't sound very appealing to me...I passed on this bread:
The bread sounds pretty gross. I've never liked bacon with my squid ink. Just saying.
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