Shopping in Asia Trilogy: Live, Eat, Shop in Hong Kong

Shopping in Asia Trilogy: Live, Eat, Shop in Hong Kong

I ran away from Kuala Lumpur’s and Singapore’s shopping arena like a contagious disease because I contracted it BIG time during my entire time Hong Kong, a seven-day being a hedonist in a place where people seemed to live, eat and shop.

Can’t blame them. You’d do the same if you lived in one of the densest areas on earth, cramped into box-like apartments and couldn’t drive cars as the streets were highly congested. You happened to live in a place famous for its cuisine, Cantonese. Thus you ate. You also lived at the very center of the world’s freest economy which welcomed imported products with a wide open arm, imposing no taxes in addition to serving as the main link between China suppliers and worldwide customers, thus enjoyed low prices for all Chinese bling-bling and international brand products.

Hong Kong boasts having the lowest prices on earth for electronics. While this claim remains to be verified and confirmed by people who have shopped in Hong Kong, it seemed to me that local and foreigners alike indeed “ate” and “dressed” their gadgets, eager to bite into the massive, cheap gadget pie. If not, I had no other way to describe the shopping frenzy that besieged Kowloon and Hong Kong island, my hellish heaven and heavenly hell.

I stayed at Chungking Mansion, Hong Kong’s “ghetto” and a major wholesale for made-in-China electronic devices, mobile phones, aka FAKEs. Indian constantly greeted me day in, day out. “Madam, do you want to buy a phone? Do you want a camera? Do you want to buy something?” Outside the mansion, along with Nathan Road and surrounding streets, there were hundreds of specialized shops selling cameras, mobile phones, computers in addition to the many clothing stores together with numerous stalls selling everything made in—where-else—China.

Falling prey to the tagline “cheapest price on earth,” I spent most of my days all over Kowloon and Hong Kong island locating electronic, photography, travel gear stores, checking out gadgets and comparing prices. The list of items was endless: pocket cameras, camera flashes, camera accessories, tablets, computer accessories, iPhone accessories (and I didn’t even own an iPhone), travel backpacks, travel pants, camping gears, clothes, souvenirs, etc.

I wondered how these stores were making any money if they sold the same things with relatively same prices. There must be buyers, a lot of them nonetheless. If not, these stores wouldn’t remain in business. Still unlike clothes which we needed to have variety, wearing different things on different days, in different seasons, how much variety one necessary for a phone or a camera? Perhaps, Hong Kongers used Blackberries to wait on their bosses, iPhones for their families and friends, Nokia for their other boyfriends/girlfriends. But that wasn’t enough. They ate Samsung Galaxy for breakfast, topped with a Canon Powershot power bar, ordered a Nikon Coolpix for lunch, followed by a Sony for dessert and finished their days with iPad 2 for dinner and a cup of Lumix.

My eyes got tired after seeing hundreds of the same tablets, cameras, thousands of bags. My brain turned numb for having to digest the products’ specifications: 4,5,6,10 megapixels; 4x, 5x, 10x optical zoom; 8GB, 16GB, 32 GB hard drive; Bluetooth, wifi, 3G enabled; 512MB, 1GB memory; 5”, 7”, 10.1” screen; Canon Speedlite 430EX II, 580EX II, Canon’s alternative Metz, Nissin, Yongnuo.

My head spun trying to estimate and convert the different currencies: Hong Kong dollars which were the items’ prices, US dollars which were the prices I found online, and the Czech crowns to ultimate decide if the prices fell within my ability to pay. Not able to remember all the details, I kept a note on my phone storing the name of the time, the store, the price and main spec. I got so caught up in this shopping frenzy that sometimes I lost my sense of direction. I stopped seeing streets and landmarks. Instead, I saw glitters, flashes, colors, shapes, and followed them on an auto-pilot.

I got so involved with Hong Kong’s shopping epidemic that I became completely disorganized in planning everything else. As a result, when I had the opportunity to sleep on a beach and then another beach, I took it wholeheartedly (read Sleep at the beach: Good night Hong Kong and Sleep at the beach: Goodbye Hong Kong)  to rid off these shopping bacteria and to preserve my sanity.

I got ill this quickly after only 7-days culture immersion because just before Hong Kong, I spent a month in China, one giant street market and the world’s ultimate stuff supplier.

I am totally shopped out. My brain was one big bling-bling, taken over by electronic zombies. Get me out of here!

Photo credit: travelcasts.com, discoverhongkong.com