I am in Hong Kong at the moment on a business trip, and did not find enough time to post on my blog yet. Over the past days I had some excellent business meetings here for Spill Group Asia, and I have lots of new ideas about how to build up our business in this city as well. Also I set up the holding company for Spill Group, and that is moving forward quickly as well.
What I noticed about Hong Kong is how expensive it is compared to Shanghai. A decent meal in an non-Chinese restaurant is problably twice as expensive, and a 5-minute ride from the Airport Express to my hotel set me back more than a 30-minute ride would in Shanghai. But I always enjoy this city, it’s lively and has a great mixture of European and southern Chinese culture (especially Soho, where I tend to spend most my nights).
A nice thing is how quickly you can be out of the city and in real nature. I was talking to Marcel Ekkel, and he told me that many of the expats here do not realize that. Just take the MTR a few stops on HK Island, walk for 10 minutes and you are in the middle of a beautiful scenery. Mountains, lakes, and dense vegetation. HK has many trails, so you won’t get lost easily (at least not on HK Island, the New Territories are different).
This is something I definitively miss in my current hometown: Shanghai is a great city to do business, have good food, go out and live a pretty decent life, but there is just no nature. Even after driving for one or two hours you are still surrounded by houses, factories and roads. This gets on my nerves sometimes, and that’s why it’s good to travel a bit every now and then!