THE HAIRY GIRAFFE… IN HONG KONG & MACAU
After three days in Hong Kong and Macau, it’s time to take stock. How did we experience this trip? What were our joys, disappointments, questions, doubts, and discoveries? This is obviously not an assessment of a country but of a journey. As we perceived it, individually, subjectively.
 We are François and Benjamin, Canadian and French giraffe hairstylists and travel enthusiasts. On this blog, discover our travels, tips, moods, and everything you need to become a giraffe hairstylist and embark on travelling the world. An honest blog with photos guaranteed 100% unfiltered and untouched. |
Benjamin’s Travel Reflections
Hong Kong appeared to me as a paradoxical city. It belongs to China but has a status that grants it great independence in many areas, including currency, immigration, and the political system. It concentrates wealth almost unparalleled in the world but shows little ostentation. It has more skyscrapers than New York, Sao Paulo, or Tokyo (9000 tall buildings, including 4000 exceeding 100 meters), but very few could claim architectural awards. Above all, it is one of the major hubs of global finance, yet it maintains a relatively subdued atmosphere.
Upon arriving in Hong Kong, I expected to find a city as vast and bustling as New York. Vast, the city certainly is. But I found it to be rather calm and serious, a city impatient and not smiling. Hong Kong lacks the originality and quirkiness of Tokyo. It lacks the popular and bustling vibe of New York. It lacks the cultural richness of Paris.
Hong Kong isn’t visited in the same way as these other metropolises. We observe it from a distance. Hong Kong is a city lived by its inhabitants, not by its tourists.
The two things that seduced me in my discovery of Hong Kong have nothing to do with the bustle of its streets or its atmosphere.
What I first loved were the views of the skyline and the forest of skyscrapers. From the waterfront or Victoria Peak, the city offers such an immense urban landscape that it’s impossible to take it all in at once. At night, from the top of Victoria Peak, I couldn’t help but think of the Dark Knight (partly filmed in Hong Kong). However, the sense of grandeur is much less when walking the streets, in all neighborhoods. You lose that feeling of an urban jungle that you experience in other metropolises.
What I liked next was the almost perfect complementarity with its neighbor Macau. Where Hong Kong is subdued, Macau is a city of casinos. Where Hong Kong constantly builds new buildings, erasing any traces of the past, Macau has managed to preserve a beautiful old town. Where Hong Kong is a city of work that somewhat ignores its tourists, Macau knows how to welcome its visitors, dedicating entire neighborhoods to them. Where Hong Kong demands speed in everything (don’t expect to take more than 30 seconds to order at a restaurant, risking reprimand from both the server and the next customer), Macau does everything possible to make you forget the time and keep you playing longer.
Taken together, Hong Kong and Macau form a remarkable urban duo. The last two European colonies in Asia (returned to China in 1997 and 1999 respectively) offer a unique experience. Not entirely Chinese, no longer very English or Portuguese, they are somewhat separate territories. They enjoy a degree of autonomy from China, resist Mandarin (preferring Cantonese), and have surprising peculiarities (both cities concentrate immense wealth and incredible development, life expectancy in Macau is among the highest on the planet, and Macau is the only place in China where casinos are allowed, making it the world’s top gambling destination with revenues 7 times higher than those of Las Vegas).
If Hong Kong seemed cold, ultimately unexciting, and impolite to me, it gains all its meaning in the contrast it offers with its neighbor Macao and in its gigantic urban panoramas. An ideal combo to observe the differences stemming from both colonial history and different sources of income, between finance and gambling. Enough to delight lovers of big cities.
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