Dan and Kelly met me at the airport Sunday night with big grins and "Adam Coozer" welcome signs. The airport is on a small island called Chek Lap Kok, just off of Lantau island, where Dan and Kelly reside. (Regarding Chek Lap Kok, I found a lot of places have "Kok" in the name, which made me blush and giggle like a schoolgirl until I learned that "Kok" is Chinese for "bay").
I should mention here that Hong Kong isn't just isn't a self-contained city, but a country with over 250 islands (most just large, uninhabited rocks, but some big, populated ones) and areas that are extended from China's mainland. Obviously, Hong Kong is a country, but in my mind's eye I had always envisioned Hong Kong as a small downtown and midtown NYC-style city. That's true of Hong Island Island (particularly Central and surrounding areas), which I'll get to in the next post. That said, HK isn't huge. Per Wikipedia, HK is 426 square miles. Rhode Island is 1,545.
Anyway, from Chep Lap Kok we took a 20-minute bus ride to Discovery Bay (alas, just "Bay" and not "Kok"). Discovery Bay is largely an ex-pat community on the eastern part of Lantau with newly built apartment complexes for young, foreign businessmen and their families. Just northeast is Hong Kong Disneyland, which was made to target families from China but - considering the average Chinese income vs. Hong Kong - seems to have better luck drawing in the Discovery Bay crowd.
One of my guidebooks is uncharacteristically harsh (but not wholly inaccurate) in its description of Discovery Bay: "The atmosphere is nightmarish, a too-perfect copy of idealized middle-American suburbia, with happy blonde families zipping about in golf carts, and very few Chinese faces." To be fair to those zipping around, private cars aren't allowed in Discovery Bay, but golf carts can be rented or purchased. Then again, it does cost somewhere around a million Hong Kong dollars ($130,000-$150,000) to secure one. So, yeah, as is the case in the US, if you see someone zipping around in a golf cart, you should throw a brick at them.
Discovery Bay is neat, though. While the atmosphere brings to mind Ft. Lauderdale, the residents are NOT American, but a mix of British, Indian, German, Middle Eastern, French, and others whose accents I couldn't place. The local video rental store has sections for three different regional codes and a dozen different languages. Also great about Discovery Bay is the proximity to the ferry that carries most Lantau residents to Hong Kong Island, as well as a bus terminal useful for exploring the rest of the sizable island.
As you would imagine, Discovery Bay has a large town center with convenient stores (7-Eleven is omnipresent in Hong Kong), a large supermarket, a surprisingly good wine store, and Westernized restaurants. We ate at a Thai place on the water, which was traditional enough to have papaya salad on the menu but Westernized in that its spiciness didn't make my eyeballs explode.
A free shuttle van took us to their apartment building, where we drank wine and chatted. I pretended to not be jet-lagged until I finally passed out cold on the couch and slept like the dead.
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