On the Road Again! The Hong Kong, Kowloon & Macau Wanderings; Part 2

The distance from our jumping off point at the SM City parking lot in Iloilo to Hong Kong is approximately 1,570 kilometres or 5 to 5½ hours total by air.

Well, we got into Hong Kong International right on time flying with Philippine Airline’s flight 318; there must have been 4 or 5 international flights arriving at the about the same time. Going through Immigration was a pleasure, although there must have been over 900 to 1,000 people to be processed. The Hong Kong Immigration people have processing large numbers of people down to a science. It took no more than 10 or 15 minutes to get through the line up. AMAZING!

Then, we collected our luggage and headed to Customs – what a surprise that was. There was a desk for those who had something to declare and nothing else. If you had “nothing to declare” you simply walked right through without any problem and were on your way!  AMAZING²!

We headed to the meeting point to meet our “land arrangements’ representatives (of PHILLIPINNE AIRLINES) Prince Travel Ltd of Hong Kong – at post 13 in the arrivals hall. No one there…so we waited, 10 to 15 minutes. RAY of Prince Travel and says “Are you waiting for Prince Travel?” YES says I and the answer I get is: “Just wait” and off he went, coming back ten minutes later giving me a handful of Prince Travel stickers and saying OK you come. {You’re supposed to place a sticker on your chest and that, apparently  they are the keys to the kingdom…. Ray leads us off to another area of the terminal, disappears and comes back saying: “You go now, with this person.” That’s the last we saw of him. So off we go with: “this person” who takes us to the Airport Bus Terminal where our coach transfer to the City Hotels awaits. The problem is “this person” speaks no English, but having been a tour escort, myself, over 40 years ago I manage to decipher the hand signals and the gibberish and eventually ‘She Who Must be Obeyed’ and I are on a coach to the City of Kowloon – we hope!

So, here we are, no more than an hour after arrival, headed into Kowloon. The vistas are impressive with skyscrapers as far as the eye can see and construction absolutely everywhere…

We arrive in Kowloon, along the waterfront and the first stop that is made is at our Hotel’s front door – The Kowloon Hotel…I’m impressed by the looks of the place and within minutes we are in our room. Now, we splurged and got a superior room overlooking the Harbour. Many will say: :”Oh, no, no, no, that’s too much…” But, I was adamant that I wanted a view and boy did I get it. The Kowloon Hotel (4 stars and an excellent choice) is just behind the world famous Peninsula Hotel, a 5 Star Hotel, and next door to the Sheraton. The CNN Hong Kong Bureau is located, I think, in the Peninsula Hotel (but I’m not 100% sure. It could very well be next door in the Sheraton.) If you have any doubt about what I say, watch CNN Asia and see the background behind “the talking heads” and you will see that what I’m saying is correct…just wait a few moments and see…

By this time, we had been “in country” for no more than 3 hours and we went in search of SWMbO’s cousin Che-che who is working for a family in Hong Kong. Che-che had taken the afternoon off to be able to join us. We found her a few minutes later.

You have to excuse some of my photographic work, some photos may be a little blurry, that’s because, I’m getting old and I shake a little. When I’m doing the churches, I use a tripod to eliminate or at least minimize the problem…but I’m not always toting it with me…

The two photos above are of the stainless steel columns in the arrival lobby of the hotel and the reflections of the action in the street beside the arrival lobby.

Having found Che-che it was time to get some supper. So Che-che, the guide, led the way…

What did we have for supper? We ended up at Pho Saigon and had some noodle soup exactly like the one we used to enjoy in Toronto – it was unbelievably delish…Although I was craving a really good steak and potatoes (“eat you’re potatoes dear, they’re good for you”, as Mrs Brunet used to day to us.) That’s something in the ‘Philippine’ Provinces that is simply not available. Oh, sure SM City’s grocery store in Iloilo sells what is purported to be Australian Beef – but it is like eating the sole of your shoe…no matter how much you marinate it and barbeque it just right, it’s still like shoe leather…That’s why I was craving a good steak!  But, that will be for another time… On our way to supper and back, I was struck by the sheer numbers of people – the streets are literally teeming with people and vehicles. They have one of the best subway systems I have ever witnessed and the city buses and streetcars are something to behold.

The elected officials here, in HK, have certainly done their homework. They have a super efficient transportation system and despite the huge numbers of people the public spaces and the streets are absolutely spotlessly clean. That too goes for the public washrooms – everywhere you go there is someone cleaning and polishing, picking what litter there is and making sure everything is the way it should be – very impressive.

It is clearly impossible to even suggest saying that about the streets of Manila or even of tiny Iloilo, absolutely IMPOSSIBLE…There are no Nipas or Sari Sari stores built up to the curb of the streets, blocking the sidewalks and especially there are no Jeepneys, Trisikads or Tricycles to block and/or interfere with their people movers and what a blessing that is…Efficiency and cleanliness are the keywords in Hong Kong…It seems that the residents, all of them, take unusual pride in their city and its surroundings.

Check out these tourism numbers just to see and appreciate what an impressive job they do in Hong Kong and Macao.

• Toronto (population 5,500,000): over 21,000,000 people visited Toronto in 2010,
• Vancouver (population 2,400,000): almost 9,000,000 people visited Vancouver and Region in 2011,
• Los Angeles (population 9,900,000): 27,000,000 people visited LA in 2010,
• Philippines (the entire country – population 103,785,000): around 4,000,000 tourists visited the Philippines in 2010,
  • with 1,400,000 of the total tourist arrivals visiting Manila (population 11,855,000),
  • and 526,000 of total tourist arrivals in Philippines visiting Iloilo (population 424,000),
• Hong Kong: (population 7,198,000): 48,616,113 people visited Hong Kong in 2012,
• Macau (population 578,000): an additional 23,000,000 (in addition to Hong Kong visitors) people visited Macau in 2012.
  • Hong Kong & Macau, together accounted for a total of  71,613,000 tourist arrivals in 2012.

Here’s a brief summary:

City	Population	Tourist Arrivals	Ratio Tourists/Resident
Hong Kong & Macau	7,700,000	71,613,000	9.3 tourists per resident
Los Angeles	9,900,000	27,000,000	2.7 tourists per resident
Toronto	5,500,000	21,000,000	3.8 tourists per resident
Philippines	103,750,000	4,000,000	0.4 tourists per resident
Manila	11,855,000	1,400,000	0.1 tourists per resident
Iloilo	424,000	526,000	1.2 tourists per resident

In Philippines, you keep hearing from Municipal, Provincial and National Tourism Officials that tourism will be the major ‘industry’ in the country by 2016 and that the country will be greeting over 16,000,000 visitors that year! The Mayor of Iloilo and the Tourism officials in Region 6 all say the same – Iloilo will be one of the top three or four tourist destinations in the country by 2016. Well, based on what I have seen so far all I can say is: IN YOUR DREAMS! Maybe in 20 or 25 years from now but clearly not by 2016. You have too much to do and not enough time to do it in.

Tourists coming to Philippines now and in the future will not put up with:

• The constant brownouts we have to deal with every day/week…only yesterday (July 27^th) we had a 9 hour brownout…a friend of mine reported on his website this week (philippinesplus.com) that in Iloilo alone: “We’ve experienced 19 power outages this month  from July 6-July 21, 69 since the start of the year, some lasting over 12 hours.”
• The complete lack of potable water and the lack of water pressure in the water lines…(Hey! you can drink the tap water in Hong Kong or in any major European and North American Cities – but don’t try that in Iloilo or Manila, unless you want to get really, really sick…)
• The complete lack of cleanliness in all our cities and towns,
• The total insanity of drivers in the Philippines,
• The total and complete disregard of and lack of enforcement of the ‘Rules of the Road’,
• The complete and total lack of organized, efficient public transit systems,
• The near complete lack of tourist attractions and facilities – other than historic churches…
• The complete lack of properly developed tour and sightseeing packages,
•  Jeepneys, Trisikads and Tricycles that monopolize and block the free flow of traffic on the roads.

And by the way great slogans do not make for a successful and prosperous tourism industry!

The point is clearly made: TOURISM IS NOT NOW NOR WILL IT EVER BE A MAJOR INDUSTRY AND SOURCE OF GOOD PAYING JOBS IN PHILIPPINES UNLESS MAJOR AND SUBSTANTIVE TRANSFORMATIONAL CHANGES ARE MADE. WE ALL KNOW THAT’S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN ANYTIME SOON AND IN MOST CASES NOT IN  OUR LIFETIMES.

There will be more from our Hong Kong, Kowloon and Macau wanderings coming up in just a few days.

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