tern cultural encroachment.The city proper is one of the most densely populated areas in the world with an average of 6300/km2 and in some places it's climbs to 50,000. The sidewalks in most places are barely three or four people wide. The most striking aspect of HK was undoubtedly the architecture; instead of building wide and sprawling offices that resemble elongated cubes for example in New York, the skyscrapers in Hong Kong look like if you were to hold up a 12-inch ruler and put some windows in it. They're so tall and so immense that at places it's impossible to see any clear sky except directly up and it often becomes overwhelming and claustrophobic.
Ethan and I only spent a day in the city (Ethan spent two because he couldn't get back to the mainland with an expired visa, which is a story in itself) and tried to do as much as possible as quickly as possible. The first night we were there we visited a night market which was really just a tourist excursion where prices were expensive and had the same mass-marketed clothes, CDs, and electronics that were available everywhere else in the country but for five or six times more than you'd pay on the mainland. In the Lonely Planet it mentioned how good the food was at the night market, so Ethan and I stopped in at an Indian and Nepalese fast food joint. We ended up getting some samosas (sp?) and chicken fingers which looked and tasted like they had just come out of a TV dinner freezer box. The total was 50 Hong Kong dollars for five samosas and ten chicken fingers. We attempted to pay in RMB and then in Macao patacas, but each time the Indian woman running the store tried to convert it into Hong Kong dollars and take a percentage. We eventually paid in HK$ and angrily left.
The following day we visited a few Buddhist monasteries and walked around the city some more before hitting the metro and making our way over to the Shenzhen-HK border. Ethan had come to China with a visa that allowed him two entries to the mainland. The first was used when he first arrived in Beijing and the second when we visited Hong Kong a few days earlier to see an expat synagogue. Being a resident of China, I am able to use the super fast Chinese resident line at customs and enter and reenter as many times as I want. Ethan on the other hand was promptly stopped while trying to get back onto the mainland with out any entrances on his visa. I wasn't able to see exactly what was happening, but after waiting for an hour outside the customs area I concluded he didn't make it.
Ethan explained to me that he had come quite close the third or fourth try when a customs worker didn't notice that there were no entries left, but a guard had spotted him and made him leave. Now by myself, I went to Guangzhou via the super fast soft-seat train from Shenzhen and checked into the Guangzhou youth hostel, which was absolutely nothing like a hostel at all. I got a double room with the expectation that Ethan might still make it, but it would be another day before we would meet up again.
