Hong Kong is the most modern city I’ve ever visited. Free Internet kiosks in all the MTRs, not a piece of chewed gum on the floor and scraps of paper blowing about. People politely line up to board the train, which comes every 2 to 3 minutes! That would be great if New York was like this, all clean and polite. There are outdoor escalators ready to whisk you away to an uphill destination. I’m thinking that it might just be possible to walk the whole of central Hong Kong without setting foot on the ground by making use of the elevated pedestrian breezeways that connect one building to the next.

Hong Kong is actually made up of many islands and a peninsula from the mainland. All the skyscrapers of Kowloon and Hong Kong Island are in an area on the mainland peninsula stand off against each other across the Victoria Harbor and that is were I stayed. If it Kowloon and Hong Kong were in competition, Hong Kong would win, but Kowloon has most other cities in the whole world beat. At a distance, they both are equal bustling modern metropolises, but on most of Hong Kong Island the modern eclipses the traditional, and the opposite is true for Kowloon.

A fish food smell pervades through out Kowloon, it permeates everything. After a couple of day of the persistent smell, it has come to epitomize the contrast of the modern and the traditional here. Fish merchants gut the organs of live fish at the base of the gleaming skyscrapers. Alongside the tea sets are individually wrapped antibacterial wipes. Sooth Sayers and Fortune Tellers text during their breaks on their iPhones. It makes for a fascinating time of observation as I make my way to my Hong Kong hotel, which is a completely different world.