Life in Hong Kong

[Colby]

Hi everyone,

I'm a new member (an Aussie living overseas) and I thought I would tell you a little bit about Hong Kong...

Hong Kong is made up of lots of different islands linked by bridges... the main islands are: Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, New Territories, Sai Kun Peninsula and Lantau Island, the outlying islands are: Tsing Yi, Soko Islands, Cheung Chau, Lamma Island, Tap Mun Chau and Po Toi Island.

We live in the New Territories on the Hong Kong Gold Coast (yes, the Gold Coast)... it was designed on the Gold Coast of Australia back 11 years ago. There is the Hong Kong Gold Coast Hotel, that has a promenade and a beach. Then there is Phase I which is high rise apartments with a small park area for kiddies. The next part is the Shopping Centre that similar to Caville Avenue on the Gold Coast... and has market stalls with people selling their wares (jewellery, drawings, niknaks etc) as well as restaurants. As part of the shopping centre there is also a Yacht and Country Club that has a marina where a lot of people live on luxury boats. Next is Phase II (which is where we live) that has high rise apartments but also what they call beach houses (but they are not on the beach).

We live in a beach house that has 8 apartments - I hate the idea of living in a high rise apartment (YUK). In our complex we have a club house that has a gym, squash courts, children's play room and they also manage the pool (it's the biggest pool in Hong Kong). There are a couple of female and male sauna's and They also have tennis courts here too.

There is also lots of trees and grassed areas for the kids and they have done a great job creating playgrounds with lots of swings and equipment to climbe all over. We have security guards everywhere and every couple of hours from about 10pm, a security guard checks right through our apartment block (not in our homes just the stairwell and each floor foyer).

It's an interesting place to live... very different from living in apartments in Australia and it's a big change from what we're use to... living in a house, with a back and front yard.

Feel free to ask me any questions... I'm happy to answer all :)

[emstar]

I have a few questions if you don't mind:

Do you like it over there, or would you prefer to be back in Australia??
Is it a friendly place to live??

Are you over there long term or temporarily??

[Pam]

Hi Colby,

Yesterday I booked a holiday using our Qantas FF points. We are allowed 3 stop overs. We chose Hong Kong as one of the places to go too :D We decided on 4 days in Hong Kong, 7 days in London and 8 days in Los Angeles. We were forced to make the booking for March 2006, but we can change that using some more points as we want to go July 2006 (too cold in March) So I am sure I'll have lots of questions to ask you in the future about Hong Kong! As you can imagine we are really excited even tho it's such a long way away. We have never been to Hong Kong :D You might be able to recommend places that we must see ..tho we only have 4 days! And maybe you could give me suggestions re accommodation. Something nice :)

[Colby]

More than happy to answer any questions or recommend places to visit etc...

Emma,

We're here for a long time 20+ years if Nick's (fiance) job will have him :) We both would pick Australia to live any day but we knew for a couple of years that our life would be overseas... Nick is a pilot and had been with Ansett so when Ansett fell over the only real option for a career for him was to head OS (as did many, many pilots). He's now flying for DragonAir (national airline for Hong Kong) and 70% of their pilots are Australian.

Are the people friendly??? I think like anywhere that you have good and bad... the difficult thing for me to overcome is the fact that people double their prices because we're a "gwarlo" (westerner) and we have to negoitate a lot to get better prices.

Do I like it??? I don't mind living here, I actually adapt well to new places as long as I like where I live. My home is my sancturary (typical Cancerian) so as long as I feel comfortable in my home and I have my babies (cats) then I'm pretty happy. I love being with Nick and we have a great time together (after having a long distant relationship for 4 years - me in Melbourne, him in Perth; me in Melbourne, him in Darwin; me in Darwin, him in Brunei and me in Darwin, him in Hong Kong).

Pam,

I have lots of places for you to see in Hong Kong so please let me know when you are definitely coming... now at the moment we are in Spring and it's generally 28-32 degrees every day (extremely hot) and unbelievably humid (80%-90% humidity) so July could be just as hot... I can tell you after spending July here this year :)

When you come to HK we'll (Nick and I) will have to meet up with you for a few drinks :) We can be very social and we've already met up with a couple I met on wedding forum. They came to HK as part of their honeymoon. I've also made a good friend who moved to HK a couple of month after me and we met on the same wedding forum. So we're more than happy to show you some HK nightlife :)

[Pam]

Thanks Colby, That sound great :D We'll chat more when it gets closer to the time :)

We have some friends in England, that we met on holidays in Thailand years ago, and have kept in contact. They came out to Australia and stayed with us, and we had a ball showing them around. I've just heard back from them and they are really excited we are finally coming over to see them, and are already planning a good time for us. They certainly arn't used to long distance travel - they commented that Scotland would be difficult (Edinburgh is 5 hours drive away) .. that's nothing to us!