Thoughts on Hong Kong 2

One thing I didn't expect to find in Hong Kong was a beach. So I was surprised to see Repulse Bay, the first day during our bus tour. As beaches go it was looks like a really nice one. I especially like all the trees, since the only trees I associate with a beach are palm trees. I'm sure they've been planted there on purpose, either for asthetic reasons or to keep the sand for eroding. Either way it must be a very enjoyable place in the summer, probably crowded with locals and tourists. If I had another free day I'd love to go back and just spend a few hours strolling along the shore. I never did get to see the Buddha statues that were mentioned at lunch. Later on I read in the paper at our hotel that Repulse Bay is nicknamed "Repulsive Bay" due to all the tour buses that park there and keep their engines idling while tourists go look at the beach.

There were also articles about student groups protesting about pollution and raising the clean air standards. Before going to Hong Kong I had heard that it was a very polluted city, but after a few days in the city, I don't notice much pollution. Or at least nothing worse than a lot of big cities in the states. It certainly seemed cleaner than NYC or even Philadelphia. Maybe in the summer it's worse because of the heat, but for the most part the sky was always blue and the air quality seemed clean. In the downtown area around our hotel there were some funky smells from the fish markets, but even that didn't really bother me. The gardens throughout the city probably help with the pollution. I also noticed that some people wear face masks. At first I thought this must be because of the pollution, because that's the image you see of people in the most polluted areas in China. Then after seeing the warning signs about Avian Flu, I thought that the masks must be worn by people who are trying to avoid getting sick. The reality of that was kind of frightening, especially after reading in the paper the day before we left, that a 27 year old mainland girl just died from Avian Flu . Back home in the states after not hearing about it for awhile, you tend to stop thinking about it and conclude that it's no longer a problem. But that obviously isn't the case. Later on, after making a few more observations, I noticed that it's mainly those who are sick who wear the masks. I saw signs in the MTR stations depicting a masked person and asking passengers to "mind their cough manners". There was also a masked woman on a train one day that was obviously sick with a cold, sniffling and sneezing and sitting apart from the other passengers. She looked awful, I felt bad for her. Although it seems like a considerate practice to keep your germs to yourself, I also wondered if the masks make those who are sick feel kind of like pariahs, since they make the people who wear them stand out in a crowd.