I’m on Hong Kong Island, an area called Sai Ying Pun. It’s a bit west of the center and downtown, but high-risers are everywhere. In my case it is more residential high-risers than office glass towers.

But it’s dense nonetheless, after fall they need to fit those seven million onto the island, somehow.

Sai Ying Pun seems to be some kind of market area. Nearly all the shops on a stretch of about 500 meters sell exactly the same… dried fish, dried mushrooms, dried fruit and dried whatever-you-may -wanna-call-it, as I have not seen most of the stuff ever before.

There are dog penises, sea cucumbers, and apparently, the area is an epicenter for the shark fin trade.

It’s sold nicely packaged in plastic or in glas cans, or free in old cardboard boxes, or – why not? – nicely laid out on a plastic foil on the street. Yes, the street, not the sidewalk. Right next to driving cars and their emissions.

I have no idea what most of it is. And why they all sell the exact same stuff, like in one big conglomerate.

Every day they deliver huge quantities of merchandise, and you can see people sitting in the back of the shops, bend over the stuff, sorting and classifying it.

But, you can also see some of the traders sitting in their dried merchandise to take a rest. Yes, in it.

All of them have a cat sitting nearby or on top of it, surveying everything – and maybe chasing rodents away?

Anyway, I was up very early, and after an initial visit to Starbucks for their free wifi, I did everything quite quickly: I bought a mobile phone chip and got an Octopus Card for public transport.

Then I started to gather information about the Chinese Visa process. I feel this will keep me busy for the next days. Info on the net is as abundant as it is varied….

I also took a stroll around the ferry docks, and downtown, with the high risers and the shopping district…

Louis Vuitton, Apple, Hermes and their buddies are calling me… NOT! I have no money, no space in my suitcase and no intuition to buy anything…. This part of the city looks like a big shopping mall.

But then there are the tiny streets with (relatively) old houses, and sometimes even old pavement and stairs to be found. I guess there is not much left of ‘old‘ Hong Kong, but at least not all here is one big polished mall of concrete and glass.

I had a very spicy noodle soup in one of the small restaurants. The reason why I have no picture is that I poured most of it over my leg when re-arranging my backpack. What remained was good, but made me sweat like I haven’t ever before, not even in Mexico.

In the afternoon, the jet-lag hit me, and a little period on my bed to surf the net led to a long sleep, from 3 to 9 o’clock.

In time to go out for a beer at night!