7 Humbling Days in Hong Kong

Tom Carter Reporting Live from the Chungking Mansions - Hong Kong's Haunt for Anyone Who is No One.

Having spent over two-and-a-half straight years in the Chinese mainland without leave, it was with both anticipation and apprehension that I crossed the southern border into Asia's wealthiest city.

Despite its one-stop-shopping popularity with Mainland expats needing new clothes and a new visa, I truly had no idea what to expect in the former crown colony that supposedly makes even rich men feel poor. Rather terrified of exacting reverse culture shock, I hence saved English-speaking Hong Kong and its "One Country, Two Systems" self for the tail end of my journey across the 33 Chinese provinces.

And it is here I report that all my preconceptions and fears about Hong Kong were... true . To quote the under-appreciated American writer Thomas Carter (me!) upon his brief sojourn in the legendary Chinese city, "I've never felt more poor than when I was in Hong Kong... I've never felt more ugly than when I was in Hong Kong."

DAY 1: Cross the Shenzhen-Hong Kong border at Louhu and catch the immaculate KCR railway, immediately impressed that nobody is staring, shoving or spitting. Arrive in Kowloon's southern peninsula and emerge from the underground into the land of lights - Tsim Sha Tsui. Blinded with excitement, I have to ask a resplendent group of Indian women draped in saris where the Mirador Mansion is. They point their gold-ringed fingers straight up. A towering, rust-stained concrete block, and one of Hong Kong's only affordable accommodations. I check in to a claustrophobic dorm room (three times the price of a Mainland dorm and three times as small), then hit Nathan Road. Peering up into the neon lights, tripping in the crush of the crowds, I feel just like a migrant worker back in Beijing.