JuanXris

..but I did spend my gradeschool years there… & visit fairly regularly. It’s a long country – look for specific information in more localized sections, like the region or the city.

Generally, a clean, efficient, personable little version of the southern cone, with people more passionate about literature than many, lots of per-capita web servers, so so food, outstanding seafood & wines, and a landscape to beat the band, from the saharan Atacama desert all the way down to the ice-peaks of Torres Del Paine…

When I was 8, in the 60’s, my mother took me to live in Mallorca, at my grandfather’s house in Alcudia… We didn’t last long there, I had to go to school in a language I did not understand (Mallorqui) and the shortcut from grandfather’s house, through the woods, took me accross an abandoned Roman amphitheater (no kidding)…

For me this will always be a magical place, but I fear what it might have become…

Hong Kong has a lot of natural beauty, not to mention being an important historical center – if you’re a lover of HK film, it’s hard not to feel that a blood-bath is about to erupt at times….

The food is incredible – but buyer beware – there is a lot of stuff catering to xenophobic colonialists, and this is not where HK’s better qualities shine… Eat in markets, watch for large groups of locals flowing in & out of small doorways, and you will typically find amazing interior food-courts teeming with delicious local food…

HK has, possibly, the most superlatives of any city in the world, but its true beauty lies in the social fabric that through sheer abandonment by authorities is warm and decent, or so it was when I was there.

I expect that Chinese rule has not changed this too much, because the city was dense and recondite, and so the daily lives of its inhabitants completely outside the radar or interest of officialdom. But it is precisely this quality that makes it a beautiful place to visit – HK has a spiritually restorative quality in that the feeling of the people there is inherently decent, even warm, absent the firm hand of “the man”…