Almost two weeks and several thousand miles have passed since we left Hong Kong. I had promised to post some deeper dives into that magical city and its delightful blend of cosmopolitan panache with traditional Asian culture. Since Hong Kong assaults the human senses in a most appealing harmony, I meant to describe the experience in individual sensory reflections. Alas, unforeseen events and more timely impressions pushed that plan to the "pending" pile somewhere in the back of my convoluted mind.
Now we are in the Java Sea. At the risk of offering too little too late, I upload successive truncated posts to wrap up my Hong Kong report in one swell foop. I don't want to leave a job undone or a promise undelivered. Also, while in Malaysia I got my laptop to a WiFi establishment and uploaded a few photos -- a task that I cannot accomplish when underway. So this seems a good time to minimize the prose in favor of visual stimuli.
Our plunge into the deeper experience of Hong Kong begins with an auditory assault. Aboard a shuttle bus in Kowloon we eavesdrop on simultaneous conversations conducted in different languages. We hear French and German for sure, either Madarin or Cantonese, English with an Australian accent, and an elusive fifth language similar to but different from German. Perhaps it is a Slavish tongue. Wherever we go in Hong Kong similar mixes of languages and dialects provide background music to our explorations, a constant reminder of the international appeal of this city.
Other sounds punctuate our travels about Hong Kong. Traffic noise, hustle and bustle, birds, and bargaining. Active people living active lives. One feels ever so much alive just mingling with this crowd.
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