There’s a book called “The Paradox of Choice”. I think Hong Kong exemplifies that. If you’re a shopper, you will go nuts in a place like Hong Kong. There is an insane amount of shopping available to the cheap junk (see Temple Street) to incredibly lavish and expensive items. There were so many high end stores that I saw that I’d never heard of. I can’t see how all these stores can service so many people, but when you simply look around at the *average* car in Hong Kong (oh, a BMW or so), perhaps it begins to make sense. Well, I spent all day Sunday with my colleague and friend Jonathan who is a Hong Kong native just exploring around the city. I wanted to buy a new cell phone. One that worked in Hong Kong and mainland China and one that could do advanced (for me) features like email and Bluetooth. Well, Hong Kong is the place to buy cell phones in China.

We went to a market area called Mong Kok which is one of the most crowded areas I’ve been to yet (only the bus station in Guilin over Chinese New Year) beats it. There were hoardes of people everywhere, overruning the streets like ants swarming over spilled honey at a picnic. The stores are nearly as voluminous. I’m not joking when I say we probably visited 30 or 40 stores just dedicated to cell phones. Granted, most of them were small, but still. How many cell phones can you pack into one place? (That reminds me, I still need to add a post on cell phones in Asia…quite fascinating)

The crowded streets of the Mong Kok area:

Here’s a pretty cool video of the crowded streets of Mong Kok. Listen for the ubiquitous rattling sound. This is the walk/don’t walk signs; it’ll drive you crazy after a while.   Jonathan is in the dark gray jacket walking in front of me.

I quickly settled on a model I liked, but we ended up looking at so many stores trying to find the best price and maybe even a better model. For me, believe it or not, I would have been happy to just buy after the 5th store, but Jonathan wanted the best deal and I was happy to tag along just for the ride. But, towards the end, I had to put a stop to it. How much looking around and choice is worthwhile? Not much, in my opinion. Americans pride ourselves on freedom of choice, but there comes a point where too many choices can make rattle your psyche. So, I just decided, “the thinnest cell phone possible, it has to work in China and Hong Kong. Email is nice, Bluetooth is nice. That’s it.”

OK, back to the streets of Hong Kong, we also stopped in a typical Cantonese restaurant for lunch. Excellent food (much better than the pricey Thai food for dinner) consisting of a curried pork and delicious noodles with barbecued beef. We also had delightful tea drinks with coconut milk.

Food for sale on the streets of Hong Kong:

We also zipped around on the subway and the bus. I also ended up buying an “Octopus Card” which is the mass transit card for Hong Kong. It’s a debit card that gives you access to the subway, the busses, and the ferry. Hong Kong has an excellent mass transit system. The traffic, at least what I’ve seen of it, isn’t that bad at all. Over on Hong Kong island, we visited famous areas like “Times Square”, which is very similar to the Times Square in New York – tons of people with tremendous billboards and lights everywhere.

On the crowded Hong Kong subway: