category archive: Hong Kong, January 2007

Please note that the articles are in chronological order. For all other categories, the latest article is at the top of the list. But due to the 'trip reporting' nature, the sort order has been reversed for the travel categories.

Here I come again on my own

Tuesday, 23 Jan 2007 | Journal

The first international trip (not counting my brief visit to Cambodia) will finally happen this week. For the last few months I have been concentrating most of my efforts on Thailand, but I knew there was never a big chance I could land something here. So I decided the first trip is going to be to Hong Kong.

Now I’ve been to Hong Kong a few times already, so why did I decide to go here? Well, I need to start somewhere. I figured since I know my way around the city it would make a good start. I found a few events worth visiting and to top it all off, I am going to go visit my friend Andrea who recently had a cute little baby boy.

The idea is as follows. I will visit some events on Thursday and Friday, have Saturday and Sunday to go see Andrea and hang around town and then on Monday and Tuesday I perhaps might have some follow-up meetings AND might have some meetings with people I’m being introduced to via-via. If not, I either fly back earlier or visit the Project Management Institute for an introduction to their certification program.

Here is are the events I’m considering to visit:

• Thursday: New Years Party at the Dutch Business Association
• Thursday: “Shaken, Not Stirred”, the UK Chamber of Commerce business mixer
• Friday: Kick-Off Breakfast Meeting by the American Chamber of Commerce, although I’m not sure I will be allowed in as it states ‘all members’ are welcome, but says nothing about non-members.
• Friday: Monthly luncheon by the Belgian Chamber of Commerce
• Friday: Australia Day Lunch (by the New Zealand Chamber of Commerce … no silly, the Australian Chamber of Commerce of course!)
• Friday: A visit to a factory in Shenzhen, organized by the UK Chamber of Commerce

Now, I won’t be able to attend all of them. The Thursday events happen at the same time, so I’ll have to make a decision or (if nearby) move venues to cover both. I’ll probably connect better with Dutch people but the British obviously have a larger group and stronger hold in Hong Kong, what do you think? The two lunch events on Friday also overlap, but the Australia one is really expensive so I’m not sure I will want to go there. The factory visit is a whole day, while perhaps interesting I don’t think it would do me a whole lof of good so I’ll probably pass.

My ticket is not booked yet. I am either flying Cathay Pacific or Orient Thai. I’m going back to the travel agent in the morning to confirm which one, if it turns out to be Orient Thai I will have to hussle as that flight at 6pm tomorrow night. If Cathay, I will fly the next morning. I also haven’t decided on which hotel just yet, but also narrowing that down.

I am not quite as prepared as I feel I should be. But it’s time I get started on this thing, so I’m just going to go. I can always come back some other time.

Wake up and go

Wednesday, 24 Jan 2007 | Journal

When I woke up this morning I called Orient Thai and it turned out I was still able to book with Orient Thai and since that ticket was half the price (I’m paying 130 euro return) of flying with Cathay Pacific, it was a quick decision. So I made the reservation, took a shower, packed my bag, had some lunch and made my way to the airport. I’m excited to be back in Hong Kong, but I miss Gigi. On my two previous trips to Hong Kong, I flew with Dragon Airlines and to this day I remember the Chinese angel¹ that woke me up on each of those flights. She will forever be in my heart, beautiful and gracious Gigi. Who knows, maybe I will see her on the street tomorrow in Hong Kong.

The new Bangkok Suvarnabhumi Airport (suvarnabhumi means ‘golden land’) was not entirely new to me, as I’ve picked up people there. But I had never been airside. From the day it opened, people were complaining about too little public area seats² and too little toilets. The last couple of days there has been a lot to do about the runway showing cracks after only a few months of service. The Bangkok Post today reported this was because ‘the builders were tired’ … thats right, a multi billion dollar airport, but the guys who were pooring the asfalt for arguably the most important part of the airport, they were tired. What can I say: This is Thailand. Anyway, the airport is exactly what I thought it would be, a big shopping mall with gates. So I thought the sign was very fitting — “Welcome to Suvarnabhumi Airport, thank you for shopping here”.

Orient Thai was as I remembered. I had to go and pick up my ticket downtown at the “One-two-Go Tower”, so I’m walking around looking for a tall building with the airlines’ logo on it. But I couldn’t find it. The ‘tower’ turned out to be 3 floors high. Right. Anyway, I got an exit seat, departure and arrival on time and an Oishi bento box for dinner, so I’m not complaining. The guy behind me was less fortunate, he had ordered vegetarian food but that somehow didn’t make it into the plane. So the guy was a little sad and asked the stewardess what happened and if or not they did indeed offer vegetarian meals. Her reply was “yes, we do, but we’re a budget airline”, as if being a budget airlines excuses messing up like that. Staff is not very friendly, but whatever. It’s a bus.³

I’m staying at the Metropark Kowloon. When I staid in Hong Kong last year, the coolest day I had was when I visited the Mongkok area on the Kowloon side of Hong Kong. So, while most of the events I’m visiting are on Hong Kong island, I decided to book a room here. It’s a short walk from a subway station, so it shouldn’t be too hard to get around. I’m paying 60 euro per night, which does not include breakfast but does include free broadband internet in my room. The experience so far has been mixed, I was picked up at the airport (included in the price) and the staff was very friendly in the hotel. But it looks a little run down. Wait and see tomorrow how things work out.

Tomorrow during the day I will tool around Kowloon for a bit and in the night go to my first event.

Oh, it’s COLD here! 16C/61F at night!

I LOVE THIS CITY!

Friday, 26 Jan 2007 | Journal

I forget how much I love this city. When I arrived and was taken from the airport to the hotel (got a new room by the way, everything is fine now although the hotel is a little too run down to be worth the 4 stars it claims) I was reminded of how much I liked this city. But when I went to Hong Kong Island (I’m staying in Kowloon) to attend an event in Lan Kwai Fong last night I was reminded of how breathtaking, stunning and amazing this city is.

During the day I tooled around Mong Kok, like I said I would. I love this area, because nobody speaks English here and there are hardly any farang (the Cantonese word for it is “gwai-lo”, which means ‘white dragon’) around here. You really feel like you’re in China. I just walked around the market and streets and relaxed for a bit. There was this little cart selling some liquid, I had no idea what it was but tried it … some kind of tea with ginger or something. Quite good. Slurp, gulp, gone. Although the Chinese old lady next to me was a lot quicker in drinking it than me. Oh well.

At night I went from my hotel using the subway and got to Central in about 10 minutes, perfectly acceptable. Upon exiting the station there I was immediately surrounded by huge shiny skyscrapers that were framed by the darkness that was falling upon Hong Kong (how poetic, eh?) and made my way through a few alleys. It was amazing how I remembered many things, “wait I think Tsui Wah is around the corner here” … and low and behold, there was that cute little 24 hour eatery. And “I’m early, I’ll go have a coffee. I think there was a Starbucks aroun… ah, there it is!” … Ofcourse I am not claiming to ‘know’ Hong Kong, but it is a nice feeling. The same happens to me in London and also when I arrived in Bangkok, not quite knowing the ins and outs of the city but feeling like you have some sense of where you are. I guess it happens after you’ve been to a city a few times.

Lan Kwai Fong was as I remembered: bustling with crowds going for after-work drink or a quick bite. And when I left the networking event I attended there, I had some food at Tsui Wah and walked around for a bit. It is in the sloped parts of Hong Kong and so has all these cute little streets waving their way up the mountain. Kinda like a mountain village, but streets lined with hi-so bars instead of farmers’ houses. This area really is a far cry from Mongkok, this is the area where the white collar workers go out and you’re truely surrounded by people from all over the world. A stroll on the waterfront ended my night and after that I went back to the hotel. A great day. I love this city. Oh wait, did I already say that?

They sure love their big cars here

What is this love afair that Hong Kongers have with Mercedes S-class cars? It is ridiculous! For those of you who don’t know, that is the most expensive model Mercedes has. And they are EVERYWHERE in this city. Even here in Mongkok. There is the occasional really old but perfectly maintained model, which I think is very stylish. Also a lot of those battleship S-class models from the early 90’s. But most of them are brand new, shiny, glimmering and driven around by a chauffeur. Unreal.

There are so many of them, it almost feels like it’s nothing special anymore. There might actually be more of these Mercedes’ than there are taxis. But I could be mistaken.

But here is a nice inside scoop. Hong Kong, I was told, is the capital of appearances-is-all-that-matters. Some of the people driving this big car actually have an apartment that is smaller than their car. Nobody comes to their apartment, so who cares what it looks like, right? But people see my car, so it has to look expensive! I think the scale tipped a little bit too far into the ridiculous on this subject, here in Hong Kong.

Lots of people

Sunday, 28 Jan 2007 | Journal

One of the things that is hard to miss about Hong Kong is the unreal number of people that walk the streets here. Less people live in this city than live in Bangkok, but there seem to be a lot more people on the street. That, I think, is because the city is built on a smaller surface area than Bangkok. And also, most of the city is built on the slopes of hills which makes much of the surface unusable. Cram the same amount of people on a smaller surface and you get a busier surface. Simple!

Yesterday I went to Causeway Bay, the shopping district of Hong Kong. Now, Hong Kongers (yes, that is actually how you officially refer to them) love to shop and so there are malls everywhere in this city. But this is the main shopping area. Getting there is easiest with the subway, but taking the doubledecker tram is always the most fun in Hong Kong. And the cheapest way too. And although chilly, there were an unreal number of people there. Every little street was jam-packed with people going in and out of little shops and buying their wares, as you can see on the photo (go to the site to see the photo) it really is a never ending stream of people. One of the busiest spots is a certain crossing, of which I made a video [MPEG-4, 8.85MB] for your enjoyment.

After just aimlessly walking around and (fruitlessly) trying to find anything more interesting than mainstream westernized shops, I decided to go have some food. Just as I had decided, I turned into a street lined with little restaurants and other type of food joints. A shiny and clean looking noodle shop would have been a very understandable choice. But I opted for a tiny little place called ‘Traditional Noodle’ (well, that was the only english I could find on the storefront, so for me that is the name!) and was seated at a table with a slurping Chinese lady. While I was there, people were coming and going all the time and the 10 or so tables constantly packed with only Chinese. I was the only gwai-lo and a sight for many. I ordered some Yunnan noodle with pork and some fried fish on the side. I couldn’t do what most of them were doing, the slurping thing. But I had my own way and had a great meal!

After dinner I walked around for a bit more, got some snacks here and there (some to take home) and made my way home using the subway. A little early perhaps, but it was getting chilly and I didn’t want to get sick.

Note: There seems to be some problem in the combination of not sufficiently configured web servers and the Safari web browser. If you’re getting gibberish after clicking the video link above, try right-clicking and saving the file to your harddisk first. The video is worth the hassle if you ask me. I’ll try to fix this on my new server. Sorry about the inconvenience.

What went inside

Wednesday, 31 Jan 2007 | Journal

Most of the Chinese food people around the world eat has its roots in Cantonese cuisine, simply because most of the Chinese we see in the west are actually from Hong Kong and surrounding Guangdong province. The food served in Chinese restaurants in the Netherlands however, is far from Cantonese. It is a mix of Cantonese and Indonesian¹ cuisine, altered to the not-so-adventurous taste of Dutchmen in the late 1950’s, when Chinese restaurants first started popping up. But in both Rotterdam and Amsterdam, there is quite a large Chinese community and so I got a slightly more authentic Chinese food eating at restaurants on the Zeedijk. Oh those days of eating at New King, how I wish … wait, I’m in Hong Kong! How authentic do you want it?

Here are some of the things I put in my mouth the last week:

• 
  I’m always in the mood for sushi.
  Sushi: Lets start off with absolutely not authentic Hong Kong food! The most expensive breakfast I had was sushi from a conveyer belt sushi place in Mongkok, just down the street from my hotel. It was a good sushi place and especially the nigiri unagi was delicious (hi B&S!) … I also had horse meat sushi and delicious scallop sashimi.
  
  
• Deep Fried Tofu: At one of the networking events I attended, I spoke to a gentleman who had recently been to a 600 year old tofu restaurant in Japan. To me, tofu spells the same as b-o-r-i-n-g and so when I saw this as a signature dish on the menu of a restaurant I just had to try it. It was interesting, served with fried garlic and made for a nice snack. But not really all that amazing. I guess I’ll visit that restaurant when I go to Japan.
  
  
• Kanom: Thai refer to a lot of things as ‘kanom’, among them cookies and bread and dessert and what not. I visited a store and got a collection of different things, but was not impressed with it.
  
  
• 
  Sip, slurp, gulp.
  Tea on the go: Something I had previously never noticed were the countless tea stalls all around the Mongkok area. Just running down the street, Chinese stop and gulp down a cup of tea. I had nothing but a suspicion of it being tea, but I figured I would try. There were different kinds, I had something that had a gingery taste to it.
  
  
• Duck: That is what a lot of westerners think about when thinking about Chinese food. And since I’m a big fan of duck, I ate lots of it. And I’ve had it in various degrees of yumminess, from tasteless and still on the bone at Can-Teen till delicious in little finger snacks at a mixer.
  
  
• Dim Sum: Did you know there are over 2000 (nobody actually knows how much) different dim sum recipes. It is eaten for breakfast or lunch and especially big on Sunday, when the family will get together for dim sum. I love it. And just now (I’m at the airport), I had sum for breakfast at the airport.
  
  
• Suckling Pork: Really delicious was the crispy suckling pork skin I had, although undoubtedly not the lightest of dishes I consumed (the skin was lined with fat) it was very flavoursome and certainly worth a try if you have the chance.
  
  
• 
  I ate this! Weird, huh?
  Preserved Egg: By far the most adventurous of dishes I have had, is the preserved egg. Also known as the thousand year old egg. It is an egg that is kept for several weeks and which then develops into a weird transparent looking outside with a deep green goo on the inside. There is a slight rotten smell to it. It is eaten with sugar and ginger. Next time, I will try a tea egg.
  
  
• Sticky Meat: When I passed a store I had visited on a previous trip and recognized the meats they sold inside, I went to indulge again. They sell some kind of meat lollipops, well thats what it looks like when you stick a stick (?) in a large coin shaped piece of meat.
  
  

Cantonese cuisine is based on balancing opposites in both taste and texture. Crispy with soft, sour with sweet, etc. There is never one of the two that has the upper hand, including specific flavors. So when comparing Cantonese to Thai cuisine, one thought immediately springs to mind and that is the lack of spicyness. I can’t wait to be order some naam tok this afternoon!

Comparing Hong Kong to Bangkok

After having been in Bangkok for so long, it was all the more interesting to be in Hong Kong from a western point of view. While some people claim all asian cities are the same (with the exception of Singapore), I really disagree with that view. I’ve gotten used to being in Bangkok, so here are a few things I noticed when I was in Hong Kong.

• People in Hong Kong are rude. And that is not a nice thing to experience when you’re used to the soft and gentle nature of the Thai. People seemingly don’t care about anything, service in restaurants can get quite bad and nobody seems to smile in that city. It was strange, coming from the land of smiles.
  
  
• Hong Kong is a true melting pot. There are people from all over the world and the city seemingly has been succesful in mixing cultural aspects from both the east and the west. In Bangkok, anybody who is not Thai is more an outsider and certainly not part of the system.
  
  
• Bangkok is warmer. And I don’t mean this in the temperature sense. It is really easy to connect with people in Thailand, even Thai people. While perhaps they are not the deepest of friendships, they are very nice. From what I’ve seen so far I think it would be really difficult to meet people in Hong Kong, although I guess the highly active expat societies will certainly help in that sense.
  
  
• Expat embracement. We all know (right?) Hong Kong was until recently ofcourse a British colony. It is also seen as the gateway to China. As a result, there are people from all over the world and they are there to stay. It seems expat life has settled more into society than it has in Thailand. People relocate here and stay for countless years, while people tend to leave Bangkok after a few years.
  
  
• Cars are newer. And I don’t just mean the Mercedes driving elite. All cars are newer and to find an old truck with thick black clouds of exhaust fumes is quite a task, while they can not be missed in Bangkok.
  
  
• People have more money. Cars are an example of it, but in general it is pretty obvious that this is a much wealthier city than Bangkok is. While there are big groups of people slaving away for meager wages in Hong Kong too, there is a much larger middle class and higher class.
  
  
• No chaos in traffic. It is such a relief to see cars just steadily flowing around the streets and not having to worry (or just having been lucky) about getting stuck in traffic somewhere.
  
  
• Things are more organized. Not just traffic, but everything seems more organized and better taken care off than in Thailand. Which I guess you can do in a more affluent city.

As a final note, I want to state my amazement at the incredible percentage of people wearing glasses. My own non-scientific and hardly credible research (it consisted on guestimating based on a sample group of about 20 people I passed) says that at least 50-60% of Hong Kongers wear glasses. I think I have read somewhere that this has something to do with the MSG food additive, but I don’t know for sure.

Evaluating the trip

So did I succeed in what I set out to do in Hong Kong?

Well, my main goal for this and most following trips will be to build a network in Asia. So it pretty much comes down to collecting business cards. I did collect those, so yes, I was succesful.

I feel I rushed into this trip. I mentioned that last week and I still feel this to be the case. Perhaps I’ll write up sometime what exactly is the idea of a scouting trip such as this one, but having a weekend in the middle of it certainly is not one of them. It was wasted time and I won’t be doing that again. Ofcourse I kept myself busy, but thats not why I was there. Also, I had too little items on my calendar even on the business days. I did meet some people individually outside the events I attended, but I would have liked to be a little busier.¹

Another lesson learned is that I should also take a look at the conference calendar of a city before flying somewhere. I was considering visiting the PMI office in Hong Kong, but when I opened the South China Morning Post on Friday morning I saw that they were in fact holding a conference. I did not visit the conference, but did attend one of their functions and met a few interesting people there.

In the end, I feel moderately happy with the results from a business perspective.

From a personal perspective, as I’ve said before, it was amazing to be back in Hong Kong and it made me realize how much I love this city.

Design differences

Sunday, 11 Feb 2007 | Off-topic

We all know I am a big Starbucks fan. I’m not a fan because they sell the best coffee on the face of this earth. I’m a fan for several reasons, which mostly have to do with the concept and execution that makes for the Starbucks experience. The reason why I like Starbucks has actually changed over time. Anyway, thats not what I wanted to write about.

When I was in Hong Kong and ordered a coffee, I noticed one of the overhead signs about how you can customize your drink by using different kinds of milk, syrups, etc. Pretty much every Starbucks has this sign, but why I noticed it was because the design was completely different from the one I’m so used to seeing here in Bangkok. So I whipped out my camera and took a snapshot and yesterday did the same here in Bangkok.

The difference is very interesting. While some of the icons are similar or even the same, I feel the overall design of the icons as well as the layout of the page reflects the general attitude of the two cities. Hong Kong much more structured and business-like, Bangkok cute and relaxed. The message at the top just underlines all that.

Yeah, I know. I notice weird things. And then bother you, my esteemed and valued reader, with this non-sense. But you know what, there are at least 3 people who I pretty much know will click through to compare those images. I wonder what it will be like in Singapore!