Hong Kong - 2001
In May of 2001 I attended the WorldWideWeb consortium conference held that year in Hong Kong. It was an excellent experience (so was the conference :-) and while I was there I bought one of those wee throw-away cameras and grabbed the following pix...
Note: Click on any image to see a larger one. They're all about 800x600 pixels and only fairly small. roughly 80k.
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The streets of Hong Kong always seemed busy, but the drivers were amazingly cooperative and patient. I cant remember seeing a single incident of road-rage at any time. |
| I happend to head out for a walk through the main shopping area of Hong Kong central on Budha's birthday, which being a public holiday meant there was noone about. This same street the following day was swarming with people. Note the bamboo scaffolding (covered in green shade-cloth) on the front of the office block. |  |
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Here's another office block not far away from the above shot. If you click the image to view the larger version you'll see construction workers hanging precariously on the Bamboo passing lengths up to one-another as they assemble the Scaffolding. While I was standing in the street admiring their handiwork, a passer-by introduced himself as an Architect and explained how these bamboo scaffolds were assembled and that it is still the most common material for the purpose. |
| I think this is St Joseph's church. I lost the information booklet I grabbed when I was passing through so I cannae remember. What I do remember from it is that it was taken over by the Japanese during WWII as an officers club. |  |
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This view of the Business District of Hong Kong is from the top of Victoria Park right in central Hong Kong. |
| Despite the presence of all the enourmous and tightly packed sky-scrapers on the Northern side of the Island, a quick walk down to the opposite side from the Victoria Peak takes you through some great walking tracks and scenery like this. Amazing, and hard to believe youre on the same Island. |  |
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The Hong Kong exhibition centre where the W3C conference was held. The building shown here is the Grand hall (I think) an enourmous structure, were the dinner was held at the end of the conference. |
| The Shelley Street Mosque (Jamiathe Masjid) the oldest in HKK, was built originally in 1890 and rebuilt in 1905. Looks quite bizarre parked amongst 30-story plus housing buildings that surround it and ironically its situated on a street thats packed with western style pubs/bars and cafe's. (Budhism and Thaosim are the dominant religions in HKK) |  |
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Playgrounds like this one appear every few blocks in Hong Kong. They're used for everything from soccer to tai chi and busy around the clock (like the rest of the city). I found myself heading to them like you might to a green-belt/park in another city to read the daily papers. |