Waiting Around Hong Kong

So I’m waiting for my ship to come in, sipping a European beer pierside on Victoria Harbor (because you can’t drink the water in China, right?). There was a steady sea breeze pushing the boats in and out of view behind the land being reclaimed to my left but the late October air was dry and warm and smelled like salt, fish and carbon dioxide.Turns out I was joining a national pastime or something; look at all these nice places to wait around. This man with the rickshaw was waiting around the top of Victoria Peak.

A cab driver was waiting near the Jumbo Sea Palace in Aberdeen on Hong Kong’s southern side. This girl chattered on the phone waiting for her bus near Stanley Market, also on the south side, just minutes down the coast from Repulse Bay. That’s where Ian Fleming watched the sunset from the now-demolished Repulse Bay Hotel and described it as the setting of his most exciting feelings of foreign intrigue. Can’t beat that—wait your heart out.