The first thing I noticed on arrival in Hong Kong was the very obvious British influence: driving on the left, double-decker busses, street names in Englsh (and Chinese). However, this may be superficial. Our taxi driver didn't speak English and didn't recognise the name of the street in English. It wasn't just a case of different accents; streets seem to have two names, sometimes the names are translated, sometimes transliterated, but I was surprised that a taxi driver didn't know both.
The second "first impression" was the mountains! Everywhere you look from the hotel room on the 22nd floor you see green hills. Of course not all the hills are green nowadays. We took the funicular up one of them last night -- Victoria Peak. The view from the top was spectacular. The over-priced souvenir shops too. We dined in an American-style shrimp restaurant on the Peak -- our first time to eat anything close to western fast food in over a month. Very tasty indeed.
The second "first impression" was the mountains! Everywhere you look from the hotel room on the 22nd floor you see green hills. Of course not all the hills are green nowadays. We took the funicular up one of them last night -- Victoria Peak. The view from the top was spectacular. The over-priced souvenir shops too. We dined in an American-style shrimp restaurant on the Peak -- our first time to eat anything close to western fast food in over a month. Very tasty indeed.
