It was my first taste of the Far East and I had just turned eighteen. At nights I would sit in the Pierre Restaurant on the top floor of the Mandarin Oriental looking at the Central District at night, a view which I will never forget. In the afternoon wandering through Kowloon, being horrified in the markets while watching living animals being chopped up, going to the enormous department stores where everything was Made in Europe, walking around Victoria Peak towering above even the highest buildings, being trapped in the hotel as a typhoon pounded the city, watching an old Chinese woman having a heart attack in the middle of a busy street in Wan Chai and no one bothering to help her, I wanted to cry but the mass of people just pushed me along. I know that Hong Kong has moved on from that year but my mind is still there in that moment.
