Above It All

I've been perplexed by Shatin. There's a gorgeous park that runs along the riverside, one of the best museums I've ever explored, and malls loaded with international brands. The food within the malls ranges from Starbucks to Italian and it is a splurge to eat it.

There had to be more and I felt frustrated that I didn't see it. But when I was on the bus to another town, I saw something that looked like a market and yesterday I headed in that direction.

It is much smaller than the one in Tai Po, but the chickens sold in Shatin are the freshest I've ever seen, as in cages of live poultry, and the fish flopped about on counters. I went up to the last floor, looking for cooked food. Instead I found a network of streets above the almost empty thoroughfares on the ground.

Open-air sky bridges link massive apartment buildings and shopping malls of the humblest kind. The bridges are lined with restaurants that aren't fancy but are probably good--I plan to find out in the next two weeks. The bridges rest above parks with towering trees, schoolyards, and traffic. They catch the breeze and are really delightful to walk on.

It's another facet of a place I'm slowly getting to know. Now if I could only find a clean hotel for business people of moderate means in the town center...The monkey I met on the trail last night is making me rethink the pleasures of a rural residence.