Hong Kong used to be an open port to China for trade. Ever since the China takeover in ’97, China has opened up for trade again, leav­ing Hong Kong as a mid­dle­man. Businesses have gen­er­al­ly all stopped trad­ing through Hong Kong, since it costs more to go through such a mid­dle­man. As a result, the Hong Kong econ­o­my has col­lapsed, and is now heav­i­ly depen­dent on tourism and infor­ma­tion trad­ing. That explains why I see so many com­mer­cials on vis­it­ing Hong Kong back home.

The shop­ping is great, due to the large tourism indus­try. Everything is tax free, and is gen­er­al­ly cheap­er than the equiv­a­lent from back home. I was able to find a red turtle­neck for $30 that would have cost me $60 (not includ­ing tax) in Canada. The stitch­ing is rough­ly the same qual­i­ty, and there was an imme­di­ate two-hour 50% off sale on any­thing red, so I got it for $15 instead. I also bought a Seiko Criteria Kinetic Auto Relay watch, which pow­ers itself on the move­ment of the wear­er. The auto relay func­tion auto­mat­i­cal­ly sets the date/time, which is use­ful for when the watch is tak­en off and runs out of pow­er, so that the date/time don’t need to be set again. It’s only been five days and I’ve already spent more than I thought I would the entire trip. Going into debt has nev­er been this much fun.