I made it in to HK last night with the bus. (Some co-workers asked – you are going there again? Well, yes. What’s the matter with going back several times to a place with history and culture and lots of people?). Last night marked the opening of the Shanghai World Expo that will run through October with a ceremony that the newspaper reports rivalled the Beijing Olympic Games’ opening ceremony. It’s seen as Shanghai’s bid to re-stablish itself as a world city; they expect 7o million visitors. The first picture is from Google’s Hong Kong home page.
The three sharply dressed Asian girls are from a billboard in the subway: the people on the bus are on Yee Wo Avenue where this weekend’s hotel is (the Marriott Courtyard was full!); that’s the mirrored ceiling in the hotel lobby I used to take an impromptu picture, and there’s a map of the Hong Kong trams.
This weekend’s mission is to ride on a tram. Hong Kong Tramways is a tram system in Hong Kong and one of the earliest forms of public transport in Hong Kong. It is notable for being one of the three tramways in the world that have regular operation of double-decker trams—the others being Blackpool tramway, in England and the Alexandria Tram system in Egypt—and is the only system that runs exclusively using double-decker trams.
