Kuala Lumpur and Hong Kong – Dizzying heights and stark contrasts

Having left the peace and serenity of Borneo and the Celebes Sea behind me, I had two more stops in South East Asia before my return to the western world, Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, and Hong Kong. As it turned out they both served as buffers to my return, with a mix of east and west that proved deeply interesting.

Kuala Lumpur was first, with a two day stop-over from Borneo. I’d spent a night and part of the day in KL on my way into the country, but these two days were meant to give me a bit more time to explore the city and get a better feeling for it. I’d been told to expect good things, however the weather turned to shit pretty much as soon as I arrived and I left the city feeling somewhat unconvinced as to its appeal.

The first thing that really struck me about KL when I first got there was how much more muslim it felt on the surface than I ever thought it would. Between the omni present, and at times truly beautiful, mosques, clothes, food, muslim businesses and others, the fact that Malaysia is a muslim country was more than evident within minutes of arriving in the country. I realise that it sounds a little stupid, but the fact is I just didn’t expect it to feel like that on the surface, I didn’t expect it to be so obvious. I’ve never been to the Middle East but I guess to me KL, and Malaysia to an extent, gave me the impression of being very similar to a Middle Eastern country in its appearance, or what I understand and know of Middle Eastern countries through the media and other sources of information.

Walking around town on my return from Borneo I then realised just how westernised KL also was, in stark contrast to its strong muslim appearance. Skyscrapers, giant shopping malls, shopping streets, banks and western style shops were all omni present in the centre of the city, only broken up by mostly rundown habitation and smaller side streets with local shops, food stalls and restaurants. I walked around town for a few hours before the rain put a sudden end to my explorations, and throughout I felt like I was walking around a western city, just one that happened to be more overly asian and muslim than normal. Parts of it reminded me a lot of certain East London neighbourhoods, especially Ilford and East Ham, just a lot more modernised with the skyscrapers looming overhead.

There were other areas I wanted to explore but didn’t get a chance too, including the market which looked promising. Instead I ended up stranded in the Petronas twin towers, a symbol of the city and a definite confirmation of its westernised standing. While the towers are definitely impressive from the outside, inside it’s nothing new – just floors after floors of shops and restaurants, in the most standardised western fashion.

The Petronas towers and other skyscrapers form the bulk of KL’s skyline, alongside a few more traditional buildings like some of the bigger mosques, and while they are impressive it’s hard not to feel like there is something slightly amiss in the whole picture. Malaysia has obviously embraced certain elements of western lifestyle and society en masse but in turn this means that finding elements of more traditional Malay life seems to be more difficult than it is in other parts of South East Asia.

The place were I was staying was right behind a giant shopping mall and entertainment complex, with the original title of Times Square, and I realised on my last day there that this back street, with its run down buildings and small restaurants, was actually a lot more ‘real’ and ‘traditional’ in feeling than most of the city I saw during the day. At first I just assumed it was a back street like most in any big city, with nothing particularly captivating. As was the case with my hunt for traditional Malay food, I only realised just how much ‘real’ Malay life there was in my direct surroudings just before I had to leave.

Ultimately I didn’t have as much time as I had elsewhere to really get a good feeling for KL and visit it properly, but in the two days I was there it left me feeling somewhat disappointed and surprised at just how westernised a city it was. Reading guide books and other tourist information, it’s obvious that there is plenty to do and see there, however trying to tread the not so touristic path I found a lot less than in other parts of the continent. The push towards westernisation which I experienced quite strongly in Saigon was echoed even stronger in KL. Where Saigon was still run down and overly Asian in many respects, KL was a lot more modern and overly Western with pockets of traditional Malay life hidden within its smaller back and side streets.

I left KL for Hong Kong, my last stop in Asia and a place I was looking forward to visiting for one main reason: food. My Dim Sum fascination and appetite aside I was also curious as to what Hong Kong would hold. I’d been told before hand that it was a lot like Tokyo and would probably be less interesting than KL. Considering how disappointing the latter was, I was hoping HK would fare better. And I wasn’t wrong.

Even before landing, as we hovered over the HK territories, I was gripped. Everywhere I looked on the islands we were flying over I saw buildings, roads and constructions that looked straight out of Sim City, towering into the sky and with a look to it that was unlike anything else I’d ever seen from a plane. It’s hard to explain, but I realised once on the ground that the sheer size and height of most of the buildings on the island give the place a truly unique feeling when you look at it from above. Sim City is the one thing that jumped into my mind straight away. The way a city looks in the game, viewed from above with a certain angle, was exactly how HK and its surroudings looked to me from the plane.

I only had a day and a bit in HK and I was set to make the most of it no matter how tired I was from having to wake at 3am to catch my early flight. The bus ride into town served as a warning as to what would follow, but with a twist. As I mentioned, the sheer height and scale of the buildings was overwhelming, and that was just from the city’s outskirts. It seems that even the suburbs in HK are built vertically, minimising (or maximising depending on how you look at it) space. It was a very surreal feeling, driving through the outskirts but seeing these giant skyscrapers stretch on the side of the road, in between giant bridges, boats and tankers.

In contrast to this, the ride from the airport also reminded me of the south of France, and the ride I used to take from Aix en Provence into Marseilles. The HK territories, as I realised later that day, is a cluster of islands which is actually a lot bigger than you might first think. The airport is located on one of the other main islands, and as I rode towards Kowloon and HK island the surroundings felt strangely reminiscent of Marseille’s outskirts, with rolling hills, vegetation and the sun pounding on a motorway that weaves its way through the hills and into town with the sea on the side. It was really surreal, and the last thing I expected to be reminded of whilst making my way into HK, but it was hard to ignore. It made me realise just how much memories are linked to images, as they are to sounds and smells. All of sudden I was transported back to my youth simply because of a landscape that was reminiscent of where I grew up in. As with the way smell brings back memories, it was a weird but comforting feeling.

Pulling into Kowloon, I was brought back to the hectic reality of Hong Kong. All of a sudden the clean and dizzying heights of the suburbs were replaced by fascinating, rundown buildings, not as tall as the newer ones but still impressively packed together and vying for the little space available on the stretch of land that forms Kowloon. I never did find out exactly the story behind it, but on first impression it felt like huge parts of Kowloon were composed of old, rundown buildings that must have once been a lot more pristine but were now looking quite dilapidated with faded colors and all sorts of contraptions and signs hanging off them. I later realised that from the outskirts of Kowloon towards the bay and HK island itself, it seemed as if the buildings got newer and better. But it’s the outskirts that seem to house the majority of the population, inside rundown building blocks that are as much a struggle for space as anything I saw in Tokyo.

And this is where some of the similarities between the cities started, but also where they stopped. Much like Tokyo, Hong Kong is all about space. As such everything is done vertically, with shops, hostels and so on all located from the ground up. Once inside these buildings, space is also primordial. The hostel I stayed in was a perfect example of this, with about 10 rooms somehow created out of the space of what must have been one or two flats. The result was rooms in which you could barely, if you were lucky, stretch yourself and where you could touch opposite walls simultaneously by putting your arms out flat. While Tokyo definitely changes your perspective, understanding and management of private space, HK seemed to take that even further, and I would be interested to see what it’s like to live there and how it compares. From a tourist’s point of view, it seemed that HK offered a lot less space than Tokyo.

Space and height were the only real similarities I saw between the two cities. The rest didn’t convince me that, as some people put it, ‘Hong Kong is just like Tokyo’, a comparison that seems too broad and easy to make. There are other similarities on the surface but once you look a little deeper they don’t hold up that much. HK, and especially Kowloon, does have a hustle and bustle similar to Tokyo, but it’s primarily Chinese and so it feels a lot more hectic and messy than Tokyo ever did, just as Beijing did.

Hong Kong island and its world famous sky line actually ended up making me think of New York, a place I hadn’t yet properly visited, more than Tokyo. While Tokyo does have its share of skyscrapers and the likes, walking its streets never felt like it did on HK island, where the buildings are a lot more cramped and stacked than in Tokyo. I can see why so many people would draw parallels between the cities, but personally I felt like they were two totally different experiences, experiences that did hold similarities but nothing like what I’d been told. Even the shopping felt a lot more different, especially as in HK you can haggle and people tend to be a lot more forceful in trying to entice you than in Tokyo, where they just overload you sonically and visually but keep a distance which does not necessarily exist in South East Asia.

Once I’d walked around the downtown area of HK island I decided to get to the top of Victoria Peak which is another of the island’s most famous attractions, along with the skyline and boat ride across the bay. And as with most of the more tourist attractions in HK, Victoria Peak didn’t disappoint with incredible views of the island, Kowloon and beyond, as well as the stunning contrast of the mountain’s quiet and lush forest.

Once you’ve soaked in and snapped the wonderful views, you can walk away from the tourist centre at the top of the peak and into the peak’s forest. Within minutes the hustle and bustle of the city has totally disappeared and you find yourself surrounded by lush green vegetation, the soothing sounds of tweeting birds and other wildlife and in between leaves and trees, glimpses of the skyscrapers, boats and the bay. It was slightly surreal, and even though I didn’t get a chance to check it properly, the other half of HK island seems to be a lot more like this, with the old fishing village of Aberdeen and plenty of nature occupying most of it.

Back into the city I spent some more time in both Kowloon and HK island until I could barely stand from exhaustion and lack of sleep. In that time though I saw more glimpses of Hong Kong life, each as fascinating as the next: the night market in Kowloon and its rows of cheap ware, fake goods and haggling, the illumination of HK’s skyline at night and the overly cheesy music and comment that accompanies it, and HK’s own Soho area, with its mix of cool bars and clubs split by uphill side streets full of traditional restaurants, stalls and flats.

By the time I had to leave the next day I was well and truly sold on HK, and really wished I’d had more time to fully explore the city as well as the rest of the territories which includes a host of what look like really interesting areas, including a buddhist village, the suburbs, the quieter half of Hong Kong island and more.

With little knowledge of it, it’s easy to think of HK as just the skyline that you grow accustomed to seeing on TV and in movies, but the reality is that there is a lot more to it than just that. Beyond the pure tourist attraction of the place, in my short time there what became really obvious is just how Chinese the place actually is. And that was another reason behind my feeling that there is a huge difference between HK and Tokyo.

Considering that the territories were handed back to the Chinese government over 10 years ago, I’m assuming that in that time the city has reverted to a much more Chinese way, though it is still totally western in look and feel. The remnants of the British’s rule are everywhere to see but listening to people in the streets and in restaurants and looking around it really didn’t feel that much like an old British colony. I’m not quite sure if it was that different when the British ruled, but one thing is for sure: just as Beijing offered a glimpse into gaping contrasts between its communist past and capitalist future, Hong Kong offered a glimpse into a contrast between its western and capitalist ‘outside’ and its rough, hectic and very Chinese ‘inside’. And they were both fascinating and more than enough reasons to go back and experience it some more.