Welcome to the melting pot

When Hong Kong refers to itself as “Asia’s World City” it means the well-ordered worldliness of big banks, fine hotels and a philharmonic. The local tourism board would probably prefer that you didn’t think of the worldliness of Nepalese sex workers, Bangladeshi hash dealers and Nigerian men trading used PCs by the container load.
» Read more at time.com

Take this little excerpt from the Time Magazine as a starter to the description of our hostel in Hong Kong, the Maple Leaf Guest House in the world-(in)famous Chung King Mansions complex. (It’s a good thing not all people @Home are fluent in English 😉 .)

While it might sound scary, it’s not that bad. Sure, you see some strange characters here and you get “helpful” offers all the time, but aside that it’s quite nice and interesting here. But we let the images speak for themselves (if they seem small to you, just click on them and yes, I ignored all my skills for taking great photos).

The first one is from Wikipedia, a nice start.

But don’t worry, that’s not our front. Here, lemme show you where our room is from the outside view.
Now, regarding the entry, there’s a main one.

But we usually take the side entrance, which is the alley you see on the right.

Let’s follow Steffen, as he makes his way through the various shops (for example, the very first one offers sex toys among other things).
Finally, the elevators. One goes for the even floors, the other to odd floors. They are not very clever (who’s this traveling salesman anyway?) and sometimes have to be reminded to open or close the doors. On the screens you can play Big Brother with the people in the elevators.
It’s late, so this post will be continued tomorrow. Hopefully we survive long enough to do that….. if not, we didn’t manage to fight off the vermin army long enough… or you will find Steffen (The Junkie) “working” for a C8H10N4O2 dealer (dunno what the Chinese call it who offer this) and me on some foreign slave market…..

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