I’ve always been fascinated by Wong Kar Wai movies, especially Chungking Express and Fallen Angels, so I decided that the first leg of my Asia trip would be a week in Hong Kong. I’ve recently been in the Middle East, but never in the Far East yet, I managed to get some cheap plane tickets, a lonely planet guide, and off I went with actually no planning at all.
After 14h hours of flight, I arrived at HKIA in the early morning, and then I realized that maybe I should have booked a hotel room before touching down. Apparently there was some kind of international fair going on and all decent hotels rooms were booked. I did managed to book something, but it was a suite in the YMCA Salisbury Hotel, way more than my budget permitted but a comfortable way to get back on my feet after the jet lag ( and sure beats sleeping on a bench somewhere ). Afterward, I got to experience the gloomy guesthouse that reminded me more of the Wong Kar Wai films mentioned earlier.
I’ve rarely see a city that was so “in your face” than Hong Kong, I’m used to metropolis, I visited a lot of them, I live in one of them, but even so, the visual/auditory stimulation was sometimes too much for me.