Hong Kong is different than the U.S. and I find that hilarious.

If you know anything about me it's that I enjoy criticizing anything that is different that what I think is normal. So while most tourists are looking at tourist attractions and historical landmarks, I am on the look out for cultural differences that I find amusing. While I will be 36 this year, I still have the maturity of at 13 year old when it comes to cultural differences. So I'd like to take this post to point out some of the things I have observed so far. My goal has been to find at least one thing a day but I am getting sensory overload with immaturity.

Seasoning

Before we even arrived in Hong Kong William and i were faced with a decision on the plane that I for one had never encountered. Apparently when you are part of the upper crust of society you get choices all the way down to how you season your food.


Two kinds of pepper? Rock or Sea salt? This decision was much too overwhelming for me so I proceeded to eat my food unseasoned. William on the other hand was brave and made a decision I believe to go with White Pepper.

Bling

This little number caught my eye as we were walking around town. I cannot possibly imagine the person that would wear this. Maybe some wealthy pig farmer, or Mrs Piggy?

If your having trouble making out the image, it's a mother pig with 8 piglets feeding off of her. Some Chinese women found it amusing that I took a picture of this so I can only assume that they find it as ridiculous as I did.


Construction Methods
If you have sat near me over the past year or so you may have learned that I love construction and observing construction methods. The construction of the Comcast building has been a complete distraction and I will routinly stop working if the crain is hositing something up the side of the building.

While here there is one thing that I find completely bizarre and the more I see it the more I am beside myself.

Like New York, Hong Kong is a vertical city with may tall buildings. Many of the buildings are deteriorating due to age so there are quite a few buildings with scaffolding around them. The thing that is amazing is the scaffolding is made entirely of bamboo. Bamboo while strong, is flexible and is rarely straight. What is even more appalling is that the bamboo is held together by a handful of those plastic strings that are typically around a bundle of newspapers or the printer paper boxes in our office.


This is one example of scaffolding. This building is about 10 stories high, but there some buildings that are twice this size with the same scaffolding method.

This scaffolding is on the building next to our hotel. This picture was taken from the 27th floor just to give you perspective. I can't imagine the size of the balls on the guys that have to climb up on scaffolding in Hong Kong but I imagine the sheer weight of them makes the bamboo bounce like a diving board.

The Escalator
When I type the escalator in bold face like I did above it makes it sound like a thrill ride. That is exactly what it felt like when we took the escalator down to the subway on Tuesday afternoon. This quite frankly was the tallest, longest escalator I had ever been on.

This escalator was easily 3-4 stories tall. William admitted that he was a little nervous on this escalator since he doesn't like heights but I'm proud to say he was brave and didn't ask to hold my hand.

Funny Signs
One reason I was really excited to come to Hong Kong was to observe signs and funny names and so far I've found quite a few.

William gets credit for spotting this on in the Subway station.

No commentary really necessary here. You will be disappointed to know that this is a bakery. I didn't think to check the shape of the pastries.

This burger joint was on the Avenue of the Stars.

I imagine you want to stay away from Stale Burger.


This was another sign I found while walking along the Avenue of the Stars. While some of these restrictions make sense, I cant imagine how this sign has progressed over time since it seems to have quite a few restrictions.

The one I find hilarious on this list is the kite restriction. I'm just trying to imagine the meeting that was held when planning this sign as well as the people being chased away for kite flying. While in our society we tell people to Go Fly a Kite as another way of telling them to piss off, in Hong Kong flying a kite really pisses people off. It really is the opposite side of the world here. This image is a little hard to read so here is what you can't do at the Avenue of the Stars:

• No bikes - makes sense
• No dogs - makes sense
• No playing of remote controlled model car - Apparently one is not allowed. I wonder if you have two.
• No hawking - makes sense. I didn't realize that the international symbol for hawking is a guy carrying two buckets on a pole. I'm learning everyday.
• No graffiti - Sorry Rocco, but your art isn't acceptable here either. Apparently the spray paint cans are different here in Hong Kong. While in the US, spray paint comes out in a steady stream, in Hong Kong it exits the can in a wispy gas like fashion. Must make it hard to write your name.
• No kite flying - already commented
• No Skateboarding - whats funny here is that the picture has a Rollerblade on top of a skateboard. Apparently the kids in Hong Kong ride a little different. I'm wondering if Sean can shed some light onto the HK skating style.
• No lying on benches - this makes sense but the pic looks more like the person is posing for a picture.
  
• No damage of plants - also makes sense but if I didn't read either language I might think I wasn't allowed to give people flowers.
  
• No fishing - this was the one rule I saw being broken on the Avenue of the Stars. Since I am not a citizen of China I didn't feel like it had the authority to make a citizens arrest but I did give them a dirty look.
  

This Ones for Paul
I'm really not sure of the premise for this place but I can envision at least wo funny scenarios.

One is that Jawas have figured out a way to travel to Hong Kong through time and distant galaxies to either form a club or go clubbing. The thought of Jawas dancing to techno music is really pretty hilarious to me. The second scenario is that this is a club for rabid Star Wars fans who really really like Jawas. While this scenario is a little scary, its still hilarious to me. Either way, I know this picture is intriguing to Paul.

Day 2 Thoughts
Overall we have had a good time so far. As William said, we had a really good meeting with the client today. They took us to a nice Chinese restaurant where I am proud to say I sampled almost everything on the table. I really didn't have much choice since our main contact at Hong Kong tourism board was putting food on my plate and asking me if I want to try it in the same motion. William was brave and tried to use chop sticks but that lasted about 5 seconds when he dropped his first attempt at picking up food. I didn't even try since I didn't practice prior to our trip.

Jet lag really hit me hard today and I slept from 6pm - 10pm and probably would still be sleeping if Asif hadn't woken me up for dinner. McDonalds has become the American Embassy for us in Hong Kong. While I love McDonalds, 3 meals in 2 days can't be good for my body. I think I'll joint William at the bakery tomorrow and pick up some fresh fruit. We haven't seen William since our meeting so I can only assume that the jet lag caught up with him too.

Working

It all started with a rainy Wednesday morning in Hong Kong. The time was early, the sleep very little, the body is still adjusting to the time change. It was a mere drizzle, but the skies looked omnious and you could just tell there was going to be more rain this morning. Like I said, it was early and I was on my own. I still made my way to what is becoming our breakfast hot spot, McDonalds, although on the way back I noticed a little bakery on the way and made a mental note to give it a try on Thursday morning for breakfast.

Back in my room I enjoyed my sausage, egg and cheese biscuit and this morning found the coffee to be tolerable, god I wish there was a Starbucks near our hotel. Time to go get Ray and Asif to start our adventure to find the offices of the Hong Kong Tourism Board for our day of SEO training. Guess where they want to go and get breakfast for themselves?

As we head outside the rain is coming down even harder and we find an umbrella vendor. Ray wants to haggle the price, but it is raining out and we are getting wet, I don't think we have a strong position to negotiate, so we each pay our $19.80 HKD for an umbrella and our on our way.
Another sausage, egg and cheese biscuit for me and this time the coffee actually taste kind of good, I think I am just giving in at this point with coffee.

Our trusted tour guide Asif has already mapped out our walk to the office, so after our fast food breakfast we are on our way. Walking past the bakery again I wish I would have stopped there instead of a second MickyDees breakfast. We continue on our journey in what is now a down pour. Asif is a good guide and has us headed in the right direction through the many street vendors and morning foot traffic. Wait, what is that I sense? Could it be? Yes it is, a Starbucks. The day is starting to look a little brighter. I get my large (venti) coffee and feel better about the day already.

We make it to the HKTB office building and are immediately identified by Julie Lam (our e-Crusade contact for the account) as the guys from AA|RF, not that is was that difficult to spot us in a sea of Chinese business men and women entering the building.

We get up stairs and meet our HKTB client and find out about 20 people will be attending the training. Ray gets a little nervous, not much, but this was more than we were expecting. The room isn't that big and is already quite warm, I hope somebody finds the air conditioning before this gets started. Some technical issues are encountered with the presentation, but they are quickly overcome.

9:30 and the room begins to fill up, introductions are made, business cards exchanged, small talk ensues. Angela (our HKTB client) brings the room to order and we are set to begin. Ray spends the next 4 hours talking SEO, specifically search engine market share, keyword research, linking and Web 2.0 tactics. The audience is engaged the entire time and ask some good questions, but I am more interested in the view out the window as I noticed the rain has stopped and the sun is beginning to come out. Is this because I was able to find a Starbucks and enjoy a decent cup of coffee? I think there was some sort of connection.

Time for lunch. The client wants to take us out for Chinese, imagine that, we came all the way to Hong Kong and on our 2nd day hear we are finally going to get some Chinese food. The lunch is good, the food delicious, and the conversation lively.

Back to the office for some more training, this time Asif is going to walk us through the technical aspects of SEO. There are considerably less people in the room for this session. We talk redirects, more redirects, Flash/AJAX and URL structures, Asif has the audience on the edge of their seats. I think more so they can dash out of the room at the first opportunity, than because they are wanting to listen to more explanations about why their current site is not good from a technical perspective for SEO. The audience does have some good questions to follow up to Asif's presentation though, so I believe they did find value in his words of wisdom on the Do's and Don'ts of technical SEO.

Our hosts thank us for a fine day of training, claim they learned a lot, appreciate that we travelled so far and long to meet with them and send us on our way asking that we spend as much as we can while we are in Hong Kong. They are the tourism board and this is their key metric for success, so we are not surprised by this request.

Now the sun is shining, the skies are clear, there is a smile on our faces for a job well done and we start our walk back to the hotel. It is an uneventful journey back to the hotel, so I won't bother you with the details except for the street vendors selling the last of their fresh fish which are looking at us as we walk on by.

All and all a good day for the team. A job well done by Ray and Asif. Sorry to ramble on for so long, but I am finding this blogging thing to be kind of fun.

Why is this man smiling?

I am about to open myself up to quite a bit of ridicule and obscene comments, but I can make fun of myself and it would disappoint Ray if I didn't share this picture he took while I was getting measured for a suit.

As close as he got, I didn't have to tell him to leave plenty of room down there.

Seeking out the sites

Since Asif arrived a day before us he had a chance to explore the city a bit and became our tour guide for the afternoon. He decided to take us out of the "fish market" (the section of town our hotel is in) and to the more central part of Hong Kong where he spent most of Monday.

On the map we went from the Fortress Hill stop to Admirality, switched to the red line and got off at Tsim Sha Tsui.

From there we headed toward the water and decided to check out the Avenue of the Stars. This is kind of like our Walk of Fame in Hollywood, but much shorter and filled with a lot of people you and I have never heard of. On the way there we ended up on this observation deck that looked out over the harbor to the other side of Hong Kong. It was very hazy as you can see below, so the pictures are not that great.

Looking out across the harbor

Again looking across the harbor

A panoramic view around the observation deck

After the observation deck we moved on to the Avenue of the Stars.


Some of the stars you may recognize.


And who knew that we had our very own celebrity right in SEO? Little did we realize that our very own Raymond Rosti was big in China.

Ray gets recognized by his fans

Ray dealing with another autograph seeker

When we return make sure you get Ray to give you his autograph, it may be worth something in the States someday.

Asif Joins Us

At about 1pm our time today there was a knock at my hotel room door and guess who it was, not that the title of the post doesn't give this away, but our friend from Pakistan Asif. Asif transferred from the hotel he was staying at the Metropark Hotel in Kowloon to our hotel the Newtown Inn in North Point. For those interested in seeing where this is on the subway map for Hong Kong, click here, look in the lower right hand corner.

In case you forgot what he looks like here is a picture.

Now the adventures can begin.

Starbucks

If you have been reading any of this blog up until now you will know the importance that Starbucks plays in my daily life. I was becoming a bit distraught after our morning walk around the area of our hotel did not turn up a single one. My luck did change in the early afternoon when we went to the more tourist focused section of Hong Kong and we found our first Starbucks.

Ray and Asif walking into Starbucks

It wasn't too long after we found this first one that we spotted a second one.

Starbucks along the Avenue of the Stars

And then we found a third and fouth and fifth, before long I became at ease with Hong Kong and discovered that the Starbucks was almost as pervasive as 7-11.

Next time I travel I will be sure to use the handy store locater at www.starbucks.com.

We Made It

Well, we made it to Hong Kong without international incident and had a rather easy time of going through immigration and finding our luggage immediately, no hicccups, yaaawwn. We got to our hotel about midnight after a $400 cab ride, those are Hong Kong $ (exchange rate is about 7.7HKD=1USD), from the airport. It looks like we are right in the center of nothing as far as I can tell.

The rooms are nice, although not that big and the bed is like a foot off the floor.





























It is Tuesday morning and we went in the search of breakfast. Walking right out of our hotel front door this is the first thing we see on our travels, looking left then looking right.




















We head to the right, exciting choice I know, not sure what we are looking for as long as it appears to be edible and breakfast like in nature. Ideally, and many of you may already know this, but I would hope their is a Starbucks near the hotel.

About half way down the block this is the first sight of food we find after the clothing vendors:
















Not what we were looking for to start the day. I really didn't want my first meal here to look back at me. So we kept walking and lo and behold we found the international sign for good food, the golden arches. Now, I know what many of you are thinking, you are in Hong Kong and went to McDonald's for breakfast? We walked around for a while looking for some baked goods or authentic Chinese breakfast food, but just didn't find it, so we settled.

After our breakfast we continued to explore the neighborhood. To be honest we didn't see too much, much of what we saw just reminded me of walking through Chinatown in any major city in the US.

This is looking down one of the main streets near the hotel, not that exciting.












Even in the early morning the fish market was rather busy, and not just one of them, all of them seemed to have people in front of them buying fresh fish.










Something Ray and I both found a bit odd is that there is a 7-11 about every half block around our hotel. This is the only KFC we saw, which means we won't starve between that and the nearby McDonald's.









Next up for today now that we have had breakfast is trying to find Asif. We know he is in town and staying in Metropark, but have no clue where that is in relation to where we are, North Point. Also, we don't have his cell phone number, so hopefully he wakes up soon and gets on IM so that we can coordinate a meeting. We also need to find out where we are supposed to be meeting up with the e-Crusade and HKTB folks on Wednesday morning. We didn't see a single cab near the hotel so we are going to try and figure out the subway system this afternoon.