A taxi ride and a two hour flight brought me back to Hong Kong, an island that is geographically a short distant from the Mainland of China, but culturally, economically and socially a world apart.

When the government regained the cluster of islands from the British in the late nineties, they agreed to maintain for fifty years the social and economic freedoms that created the fabric of the thriving colony terming the policy ‘one country, two systems’. What remains to be seen is whether Hong Kong will become more like China or China more like Hong Kong in the interim.

Deja vu set in as the refreshingly sophisticated airport greeted me and quickly loaded me onto a bus that acted like an over-sized taxi and dropped me at the doorstep of my hotel.

The town is a nexus of East and West. Chinese dominate European styled streets and bamboo scaffolding engulfs signs written in English. Both cuisines perpetuate and most people speak at least a little of each tongue.

The downtown of Hong Kong resides on a waterfront and stares at an extension of the city that has crept into Kowloon, a neighboring island. I suspect as the landlocked space constrained financial district continues to grow, Kowloon will increasingly mirror its grandeur. However, in the meantime the urban town is home to thousands of high-end shops and restaurants that provide facades to the bottom two floors of a mixed batch of modern chic buildings that rub shoulders with an older variety that appears ready for renovation. A stones throw from a ten dollar massage parlor, the Peninsula Hotel wears Bentleys and Lamborghini’s in its small driveway like an actress wears diamond earrings and a crystal necklace, highlighting the excessive opulence of the ruling elite that built this colony or at least have decided to come to visit.