Hong Kong in 40 hours

Those past few months have just flown by so quickly. December was overall a good month. Work was just ok until the last week when I got a wonderful trip to HKG with a great crew and an awesome lay-over. We all got along great and hung out together. I had not been with such a group of flight attendants who wanted to do things together in a long time. I guess it was to be expected since I had not been there in more than 7 years and others had never been there, so we were all excited. Joanne, one of my crew members, is from Hong Kong and speaks cantonese so it was definitely a big plus to have her with us, bargaining at the market and ordering food.

Hong Kong and Kowloon are amazing, mixing the future with the past. The architecture is breathtaking. Skyscrapers old and new stand next to each other and form this very interesting patchwork with large avenues and small one way street. Signs hang everywhere; above the sidewalk, above the street, between building; it is a neon wonderland. It is very difficult to describe how I felt being there. It is so different from what I know. I obviously stand out a lot in a crowd and contrary to many places that I have visited where I blend in a little, here I totally feel like an outsider.

The language baffles me although thankfully most signs are also in English. Again contrary to latin based languages that I can identify with, the calligraphy and the spoken form are completely foreign. There is no way to guess anything which definitely intensify the "being alone in another world" feeling. I wondered if Chinese people feel the same way when they moved to America.