Everyone car­ries an Octopus card in Hong Kong, because it’s used every­where. When you take the bus, you pay the fare by tap­ping your wal­let (with Octopus card in it) on the scan­ner; the fare may change depend­ing on whether you take it before or after cross­ing the har­bour. Subway fares aren’t flat-rate either, so short­er routes are cheap­er. The dis­tance you trav­el is tracked by scan­ning your card when you get on and again when you get off, and the appro­pri­ate amount is deduct­ed.

Even vend­ing machines, park­ing meters, con­ve­nience stores, and restau­rants have Octopus scan­ners used to pay for their ser­vices. It’s also used as an iden­ti­ty sys­tem, where stu­dents sign-in to class by tap­ping their cards on door scan­ners, or res­i­dents enter their apart­ment build­ings with­out need­ing a key.

The Chinese name for the card is “eight arrived pass”, because eight has spe­cial mean­ing in Chinese, espe­cial­ly when it comes to direc­tions. The English name comes from an octo­pus hav­ing eight ten­ta­cles, and the logo is an infin­i­ty sym­bol that’s also in the shape of an eight. So clever.

 

I had the chance to take part in some apart­ment hunt­ing, and saw two suites in a new sky rise. The small­er was $1.3 mil­lion CAD, the larg­er $1.8 mil­lion CAD. Which pret­ty much means that I could nev­er afford them, even if I won the lot­tery, but I still dream of liv­ing here one day. A cozy space with a nice view and mod­ern trim­mings. Mortgages go up to 30 years in Hong Kong. If you’re buy­ing a place that has­n’t been built yet, you get to design the lay­out of your con­do like a house.

Space is so expen­sive here that offices are often com­bined with bed­rooms, unlike Canada where there’s a sep­a­rate room for each (unless you’re a stu­dent). Furnishing a place would be much cheap­er though, since emp­ty areas get filled quick­ly. I imag­ine that it’s hard to be a pack rat when stor­age areas are at such a pre­mi­um.

 

I just hap­pened to be here dur­ing the Hong Kong Flower Show, a demon­stra­tion of var­i­ous flower cul­ti­va­tors and appre­ci­a­tion orga­ni­za­tions. Each group had their own lit­tle sec­tions to present their areas of spe­cial­iza­tion. It’s amaz­ing to see how cre­ative peo­ple can be with flow­ers; liv­ing things, no less.

Victoria Peak is the high­est moun­tain on Hong Kong Island, offer­ing an oth­er­wise unavail­able view of Hong Kong, includ­ing the Kowloon side. On clear days, you can see the hori­zon go on into the dis­tance.

 

To get to the peak, you can a tramway train, which is about a five minute ride. On the oth­er hand, wait­ing to get on the tram took me about 30 min­utes on a good day at a good time. The tram actu­al­ly has stops like a bus, because some peo­ple actu­al­ly live on the peak, though these are con­sid­ered lux­u­ry estates.

At night, the lights of Hong Kong’s famous sky­line start to turn on, and the view changes dra­mat­i­cal­ly. The sky­line is nor­mal­ly seen and pho­tographed from the Kowloon side, so this is a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive from usu­al Hong Kong pho­tographs.

 

There’s an entire lit­tle vil­lage at the peak, with lots of touristy areas sell­ing over­priced mem­o­ra­bil­ia.