No ticket needed for the MTR in Shenzhen.. instead, it works with tokens. The picture above (courtesy of Xianlin) shows how the system works. You can find our latest coverage of Hong Kong’s MTR system here.

Noooooo !!!!! It is not possible ! it is not real ! They speak Cantonese and it is the taste of singapore fried noodles. Yes !!!!! it is possible and it is real ! In Amsterdam, you can find some Chinese restaurants in the China Town do the real Chinese food not the fake like in other European cities. These guys came and lived in Holland with their parents and now they have their second generation there like other Asia immigrants. Most of them do not speak Mandarin very well. Thanks to my 4-month experience in Hong Kong, I can understand almost what they talked about and made the order in Cantonese but to communicate it is another story… Anyway I almost felt I was in Hong Kong again. But when I paid 10.50 euros for this Singapore fried noodles, I realized how much I miss the real Hong Kong…

It is now summertime and time for the Hong Kong blog to get a new facelift.. with cool new features added :). Here at hkvibes.com we would like to go beyond pictures and include music and movies, because Hong Kong is also all about music and movies. We would also like to make user contribution easier by promoting guest posts (i.e. posts written by readers), add a forum and (why not?) a wiki. The idea behind all this is that the smallest contribution of anyone can benefit to everyone. For example, a question many people ask before going to Hong Kong is about the cost of life: maintaining a page with the price of current goods (examples of rental fees, price of water, of transportation etc.) can give a fair idea of what the life in Hong Kong can look like. And this is exactly what we’re all about!

During July and August, we will keep on publishing posts, perhaps no longer one post a day, but at least one post a week, and we will focus on enhancing the blog so as to be able to present the brand new hkvibes.com in September for a new year to start!

Comments on this post are very welcome and we would be delighted to see new ideas being suggested :D.

To all our readers: enjoy the summer!

Located in Sheung Wan, Cleverly Street is a wall named street. There you can find forex shops to convert your money in HKD or the other way round. It’s a kind of fierce and direct competition between sellers: don’t hesitate to ask for rates at all the shops in the street and then choose the best one. I found that the rates there were quite good: at a time where 1 EUR = 12.2 HKD on financial markets (i.e. in March 2008), I found rates like 1 EUR = 11.4 HKD at one shop, then another rate around 1 EUR = 11.6 HKD and I ended in a shop where, after negotiation, they accepted the rate of 1 EUR = 12 HKD, i.e. 0.2 HKD below the official forex rate, which is a real tight spread. So if you have currency to exchange, forget about the airport, forget about the busy streets of Causeway Bay or even Mong Kok and come here to Cleverly Street where rates are much better.
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This picture was taken more than one year ago in Beijing. With the arrival of the Olympic Games, Chinese people are learning English. For example, all taxi drivers in the town already know basic words and sentences so as to better communicate with foreign passengers. Although the lessons are rather short (seems to be less than 1 hour a week), progress is made and the drivers will be ready on time. Some Beijing inhabitants spontaneously start learning English as well.

(The picture is courtesy of Wikipedia). Mark Six is a lottery style game quite popular in Hong Kong where you have to guess the 6 lucky numbers out of 49. In each draw, 7 numbers are randomly selected (including the extra number). The first prize (i.e. the 6 lucky numbers) is guaranteed to be at least HKD 5 millions. Hong Kong people like to play money, either in Mah Jong, in Mark Six or by betting on horses at Happy Valley.

.. this is the question. I fell upon this shop in Shanghai and apparently I’m not the only one to have spotted this shop! Well they reversed the crocodile and split down the word in a more pronouncable way. But can it be considered as a brand apart? If you know about this shop, please leave some more hints in the comments!

The beginning of the century saw a multitude of breitling watches, closely followed by swiss army watches. Only then we did not know that this is the beginning of designer watches. Today we have all sorts, from casio watches to others, from wall clocks to pocket watches.

Three (Cantonese: “saam“) : this number is often associated with life and longevity because of a phonetic similarity with the word “life“.

Eight (Cantonese: “baat“) : this number is associated with fortune since its pronunciation sounds like “bringing in wealth“. No wonder why the Olympic Games will start on August the 8th 2008 !!

Nine (Cantonese: “gau“) : this number is associated with long lasting relationships because of the phonetic similarity with “long lasting“.

So these three numbers are considered as lucky numbers. But there’s another number which is usually associated with bad luck: it’s the number Four (Cantonese: “say“) because of a similarity with the word “death“. For example, in most of the buildings in Hong Kong you won’t find the floors which number ends with a 4: in the elevator you’ll only see 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15 and so on. In my building I was living on the 36th floor, which in fact was the 32th because of these missing numbers.

Quite interestingly, the number four is also associated with the death in Japanese (the pronunciation being “shi“) and is therefore considered as a bad luck number too!

This week’s meal is Japanese but can also be found in Hong Kong under the name of “bah tsao yu yuan” which literally means “octopussy balls“. The picture above shows the Japanese presentation style as you can find in food courts for example; but you can also find octopussy balls in the street (more “HK-style”) in shops likes this one, where the food is usually cheaper and can be eaten while walking along the busy streets of Mong Kok.

Contrary to Paris’ MTR, in Hong Kong the whole platform is protected by glass and automated doors (ok it’s also available on Paris’ 14th line, but in Hong Kong it’s just everywhere like that :). On this picture you don’t see a lot of people and it is misleading: like everywhere else, the MTR is crowded in the morning and in the evening, but during the day it’s ok. The picture below shows a little bit more about the inside of Hong Kong’s MTR. It’s quite handy and well organized. And above all, it’s clean and luminous.