Hong Kong for the first time.

Three weekends ago Greg and I had the chance to bus over to Hong Kong to visit my former roommate Alicia from MTA. She is living there now with her father who is working for the Canadian embassy. Hong Kong is only about an hour bus ride away, but it takes much longer to get there because you have to go through customs.
Even though it’s an hour away it feels like you’re a world away. There are a lot more English speakers than here. So many that you could live there without having to learn any Mandarin or Cantonese. Its main areas are more densely populated in comparison to Shenzhen and you can tell immediately that they have a large upper class. The stores are mostly large name brands. It reminded me of the New York City in some areas. What really caught our eye was the abundance of high quality cars. Every 5th or 6th car might have been a Honda or a Toyota (but top of the line ones). The rest were BMW, Mercedes, Ferrari, Porche or anything else you can image. We also noticed that they drive a little better, but I figure it’s because they have nicer cars over there that they don’t want to injure. We traveled mostly by subway while we were there. Saturday was spent walking around window shopping and buying a few things that we can’t find in Shenzhen. Hong Kong has a lot more Western groceries than us, so we found some Campbell’s tomato soup, cereal, and cookies that were mushy (as appose to hard as a rock). Greg was also very happy to find a place that served poutine!
Our Sunday was actually spent at the beach with Alicia and some of her friends who had camped over night there. The beach was at the far end of the island where it was less populated and more mountainy ... but Greg thinks it’s more mountainous. We had to take a small boat to get there and were surprised to arrive at a small beach with almost no one in the water. The sand was beautiful with almost no rocks and the water was comparable to home when it’s at its warmest. It was very quiet and peaceful for the bustling island of Hong Kong. We were only able to spend a few hours there before we had to make our long trek back to Shenzhen. We will definitely be going back again. It really was a great weekend and it’s awesome that we have a place to stay when we go.