I'm in Mumbai - or as the locals still call it, Bombay...

I wrote the following back in Hong Kong, but the internet was too slow to post it. Anyway, I'm at a friend of a friend's place here and am having dinner with the family and their friends... don't want to be rude, got to go eat...

It's my last day in Hong Kong - I fly to Mumbai this evening via Bangkok and Columbo, Sri Lanka. Hong Kong is fabulous and it will once again be another culture shock heading back to the third world - however I suspect Mumbai will pretty cosmopolitan in parts.

We arrived in Hong Kong a few days ago in time for a late dinner and drinks in Lan Kwai Fang - this is where we were told we'd find kitchens open late and drinks pouring all night. Driving through central Hong Kong,directly in front of the cab I see a crowd spilling out of a street - what I thought was the end of some sporting event. Nope, that's Lan Kwai Fang, the cabbie directed me. LKF is a series of streets that are elbow to elbow by 11pm - the streets are blocked off but I'm not sure if that's for the crowd, or because of it. The streets are narrow and run uphill with tall skinny buildings lining them, not unlike San Fransisco. In LKF, everything is built up - there are bars, clubs and restaurants stacked on one another reaching to the 7th floors.

My first morning was spent waiting for one of the best dim sum meals in town - the restaurant was a football field-sized banquet hall. It was traditionial dim sum - ladies pushing carts shouting out their respective items. All kinds of dumplings and buns and noodle roll things. sweet tofu, and mango pudding. After our dim sum brunch I rolled myself through central Hong Kong - this alone is worth the flight from the US. Hong KOng's skyline, although compared with New York is on a different level. Every single building is something fantastic. The China Bank tower by I. M. Pei is one of the most recognizable, there's the HSBC building that is called the Robot builiding because you can see every bit and part working, and when you're looking up from inside the atrium it appears as if the building is hanging down, not rising up - it's very cool. After, we went up to Victoria Peak to take in the view from above. That night we met up with some other friends and had a traditional peking duck dinner: sea blubber and shark's fin soup among other dishes. (Sea blubber kind of tastes like a noodle/seaweed salad, and shark's fin soup is really great, a little like hot and sour soup).

New Years in Hong Kong was great. A view of the nighttime skyline was decided as a perfect way to start the evening, drinks at the top of the Pennisula Hotel sounded like the perfect spot - it ended up being better than we had imagined: the hotel was closed for walkins but when we said we had a reservation we were let in right away, there was a stage set up in the front where the band was already playing and the champagne was flowing. A few glasses later we took in the view from the top and then ran for the ferry over to Hong Kong island and sailed under the skyline. A great sushi and sake dinner and partying in LKF rounded out the night.

Feeling a little sinful the next morning, we took the ferry over to Macau - the soon-to-be Vegas of Asia, at present more like AC. Up until 10 years ago Macau was Portuguese territory so the old parts of town reminded me a lot of the old portuguese architecture of Salvador, even the same tiled sidewalks you find throughout Salvador and Rio.