I’m 72 hours into the "Hong Kong Expereince" now.  Here’s a quick description of first impressions of the nightlife.

As I walked around the popular Lan Kwai Fong area, the first thing that came to my mind was, "This is what it look like if Bourbon Street was in Times Square."  Just bars and people an dbars and more people everywhere.  And adding to the effect is the fact that the area is on a pretty substantial hill.  The hill is so steep, actually, that there’s an outside scalator that carries people up about 4-5 blocks.

People literally spill out of the bars into the street. I suppose, in fairness, that one reason there are so many bars is that most of them are pretty small.   But it makes for a scene where lounges, meat markets, rock bars, English pubs, wine bars and Irish pubs all live next door to each other.

You do see everyone from everywhere – locals, tourists, expats, street vendors, taxi drivers, buses, security – really the whole gamut.  And some of the most luxrious lounges have the added kitch factor of being next to a broken down dilapidated building.

There’s another area called Wan Chai, which appears to be more suited to those people looking for dinner, drinks and a date all in one price of admission.  In fact, one bar proudly advertised, "Welcome Navy." We walked around and saw a few bars that looked interesting, but also noticed an uusually high number of Hong Kong women in skirts walking around by themselves.   Which probably wouldn’t mean anything if there weren’t 40 strip clubs in the district.  I don’t mean to be judgemental, but that scene was likely catering to a slighlty different group of people.

In the end, our best option in Lan Kwai Fong was to find a nice lounge and observe most of the chaos from a window ledge seat.  After seeing millions of people during the day, millions of people at night are best enjoyed from a slight distance…