Hong Kong
City of dreams...




This page is dedicated to one of
my favourite cities.




I've been to Hong Kong four times now, and I still like it very much. As I already said, it is one of the most dynamic cities I've ever been to. There are lots of beautiful places to see and lots of places to do things. This city is só full of live, it just lives 24 hours a day!
Last time I've been there was this year's summer, to see the handover. At day you couldn't really notice that there was something big going on. Everything was the same as ever, people going to work, people shopping etc. The only thing that was different was that the the offices and banks were closed. When the evening fell, however, everything became different. It seemed like all Hong Kong citizens (and tourist of course!) had come to Victoria Harbour, Kowloon, the place where it all happened.
The day of the handover, August 30 (going on July 1), me and my family had just arrived and we were too late to see the fireworks that would preceed the handover. When we walked around though, we saw thousands and thousands of people coming from the Harbour-side. Policemen had to keep it all in control. After some more strolling around and taking pictures with policemen we decided to go home (we were tired okay?!). When we were back home, we put on the televison and almost every channel showed a live report of the handover.
The next day, however, normal life continued again. It was a pretty strange sight, after experiencing the chaos of the night before. That evening (July 1) everything was the same again, though. This time we left early to see the fireworks and we would meet my cousin there. Everywhere there were policemen and they had put barricades on the roads. The fireworks would start at 9.15pm and we were already there at 8pm, early enough we thought. But no, when we arrived there, it was like half Hong Kong had already come there! And we couldn't find our cousin because of the chaos. We still tried to find him, so we couldn't get very close to the waterside. When it was finally 9.15pm it was so very crowded, we could hardly breathe! But then came the dissapointment...there were some very little fireworks that even stopped after two or three of them! Then there were another 15 minutes of totally nothing. Then a lot of people became angry and they went away, almost dragging us along. It was quite a horrifying scene, some people even fell and were almost sqeeuzed till death, so we got a bit scared. We wanted to go too, since there wasn't anything to see, but my father thought it was best if we would wait some longer to avoid the big mass that had just left. Fortunately we were still there, because at 9.45pm there were real fireworks! And the crowd was less big ( still very big though) so it was much more enjoyable. The fireworks were really great. After, I think, half an hour the fireworks had ended and we walked back to take the bus home.
Although the big crowd was scary sometimes, I'm glad we went there, 'cause it was truely an experience I couldn't have missed!

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