PHOTOGRAPHY Nafi Niang / Devika. G INSPIRATION A vibrant city TEXTS Nafi Niang

A sky high architecture typeThe architecture style is definitely one of the main signature of this incredible city. I remember admiring those high towers on my way from the airport to the hotel. And it certainly gave me a first good impression about Hong Kong. I am clearly a city girl and have always been amazed by dynamic and urban places such as New York or Dubai. Living in Belgium for less than one year, it was a new experience for me to get used to a much more intimate city such as Brussels and it has its charms.

But for me, there is no place like those cities always crowded with lights everywhere, shops opened 24hours a day, people walking around at any moment of the day and most significantly sky high buildings. And Honk Kong has it all!

What is really splendid about that city is that you can clearly see the influence from Eastern architecture with those skycrapers mixed with more traditional and heritage value architectural houses.

Eating in Hong Kong has been an amazing experience, especially for an asian & fusion food lover like me. From the first day of our journey, I was looking for an opportunity to eat one of my favourite dishes in the world, the simple yet tasty Dim Sum: steamed dumpling with shrimps or vegetables, YUMMY!Freshly arrived at our hotel, I met with some of my MBAmates for a quick visit in town to the IFC Mall, obviously a must-see in Hong Kong. The mall was very impressive with plenty of shops, boutiques, a movie theater, several restaurants and that was perfect as it was lunch time and we were pretty much hungry. We rapidly found a nice place to eat and as soon as we sat I looked at the menu with excitement before I realize there was no Dim Sum offered. I was surprised and asked to the waitress why such a basic asian meal was not offered in their restaurant and she told me that each island has its own food specialty and that Kowloon Island was the place to be to have some Dim Sums. This is how I ended up eating as my official first meal in Hong- kong, a non-Dim Sum food.

Food, Food & Food

Until I found paradise! I was desperate to plan a visit to Kowloon in order to finally have a taste of local Dim Sum when I found a place around the corner of our hotel, a small local restaurant with one specialty: Dim Sum!

I found that place while having a quick tour around the hotel area and was happy to officially have my first Dim Sum order. I can assure you that this restaurant, even if the owner was not an english speaker and the menu was incomprehensible (as it was in mandarin), had me as a frequent customer during all week. The McDonalds in the other part of the street as well, but that is another story!

Dim Sum hunting!

An incontestable business dynamicFrom Monday until the next Saturday, the major part of our journey began! Indeed, we had a busy schedule offering us the opportunity to visit several local companies in order to have a better understanding of the business environment in Hong Kong.I did appreciate the variety of the companies we visited coming from different sectors and industries. Even if, I was expecting a visit to a luxury company as this industry has undisputably a major place in the local economy. I would have loved to have a presentation from one luxury brand about the reasons why they consider Hong Kong as the place to be to commercialize their products, what was their strategy and plan for future

expansion? wether or not the proximity with Mainland China was one main reason to be implemented in Hong Kong and so forth... And that, not only because I am from that industry but also as I mentioned earlier, because this is a growing industry, that has been resisting to the economic downturn in almost every part of the World and especially in Asia supposed to be its major market. Understanding why Luxury is now part of the asian consumers habits and without any doubt part of Hong Kong culture, I think, would have been interesting to discover and discuss.

Do you want my business card?!

A part from that, I enjoyed most of the company visits with a clear preference for the Anglo-Eastern Group company visit and especially the Investhk one. I found that company visit extremely beneficial as I plan to be an entrepreneur and launch my own fashion magazine one day! It is one thing to ear that Hong Kong is a very dynamic place, opened to business adventurers, in sum, a paradise for potential entrepreneurs. But having the opportunity to listen to a concrete and professional presentation on the business environment and about local opportunities was way beyond my expectations. This visit in particular comforted me in my belief that this trip is a must-do in the MBA course.

A n o t h e r d e t a i l t h a t I h i g h l y appreciated about the business mindset in Hong kong was the fact that people are constantly trying to build business relationship through networking wether it is after a one shot meeting or an event; such as the wonderful reception we had at the Belgian consul house; and especially by exchanging business cards. During our first lecture in the Hong Kong University on the local bus i ness cu l t u re , we had a discussion about how exchanging business card was such an important «passeport» to build a network and m a k e y o u r s e l f c o u n t i n t h e professional local environment. And It became clear when I received my

first business card from one of our lecturer about PR relations; while I was asking him a question about his slides, and he took the opportunity to give me his card by just saying, « you can send me an email and I’ll give you the information you want». A quick and very efficient way to build a professional connection with people.

WELCOME to MaCAu

Visiting Macau was a wonderful journey. It began at the Ferry station of Hong Kong where I was really excited to take for the first time the TurboJet boat despite the fact that I suffer from sea sickness. It was a great experience after getting in it: the TurboJet is considered as one of the most performing high speed boat in Asia. Indeed, it took us about an hour to reach Macau! During the trip, we could watch on a flatscreen a short promotionnal video clip about Macau and what the city has to offer; I can tell you that I was eager to get there!

Arriving in Macau made me a funny impression as it was not a while ago (about 3 years) when I first knew about the city as an attractive touristic place. Actually, I was watching a U.S tv show, «America’s Next Top Model», where the concept is to follow 14 female model apprentices in their way to success as the best america’s Top Model. Every week, one candidate is eliminated and at the stage of the last 4 candidates they go for a trip out of America and on that cycle the trip was in Macau! From their arrival in the city, the hotel booking, their visits to several entertaining places and touristic hotspots, everything was broadcasted in the show.

And I remember telling myself that I will put Macau in my list of cities to visit. Macau is a fast growing region and it was with no surprise that I learned in a lecture in class from the CEO of the Bloom consulting group that Macau has reached the 8th place in the yearly ranking the company make on country branding for tourism strategy. Indeed, even 3 years after wacthing the show, I was marked by the country image and was certainly not disappointed when I get there. I had a quick yet interesting view of the city in our way to the «city of dreams»: a wonderful luxurious hotel with a very impressive casino. During our visit, we had the opportunity to meet with the hotel representatives and it was extremely interesting to hear from them the story of Macau and its fantastic growing economy; before attending the spectacular water show of Franco Dragone! That day was defineltly one of my favourite journey and I remember wishing to spend more time there in another occasion while I was watching in the plane, on my way back to Brussels, the new James Bond movie filmed in guess where? Macau!

THE PARADISE FOR CASINO LOVERS,THE PLACE TO BE FOR PARTY PEOPLE,

AND THESE ARE ONLY A SMALL PART OF WHAT MACAU OFFERS...

If there is one place you want to go for a night experience in Hong Kong, it’s definitely in Soho! Situated in the center, the area is full of bars, restaurants and clubs to go out. While walking in the street, you can ear the music everywhere around and can simply try the bars one by one until you find the One! And that’s what happenned on our first night out when we discovered: THE JUKE BOX BAR!

It all happened after a very long day in Macau, we went back to the hotel and had the evening free. Exhausted by our long journey one of my MBAmate suggested that we go in town for a foot massage: another must-do in Hong Kong. Excited about the idea, we jumped in one of those red-cab and drove down to Soho. The foot massage was an indescriptible experience and that, in a good way. Not only because I was tired and my feet were a little tense but also because the ambiance of the place was so relaxing that I ended up falling asleep after sipping a cup of chinese floral tea.After the massage, I had the impression that I was walking on a cloud to describ how soft my feet were feeling. Energized by this foot massage, we decided to quickly walk around Soho before getting back to the hotel. And this is how we found, discretely placed in the corner of a pedestrian street, a small bar with a Jukebox. We decided to stay for one drink and try to select one or two music tracks for fun... and one drink became four drinks... and we stayed much more longer that we initally planned but it felt good to discover that place which became our official night spot in Hong Kong.

A night in SoHo

Another nice play for a drink in Hong Kong is the Ozone bar situated in the 118th and last floor of the Ritz Carlton hotel. Beside the fact that it’s the highest bar in the world and that

it has a stunning view over the city, the Ozone bar offers as well a creative menu of tasty cocktails.

That definitely makes it a place to remember!

Cheers from the sky!

The wall of Fame from the «Juke Box bar». If you look very closely you might see me in a picture with my acolytes!

FROM CHINA TO MAINLAND CHINA

Going to Shenzhen was a real adventure itself compared to our expedition in Macau. The city is really close to Hong Kong but all the formalities around, the lining up for the visas checking and borders control made the trip longer that it should have been. But once we finally reached the mainland the bad first impression disappeared immediately. Hong Kong architectural type makes it an interesting city but I found out that it was nothing compared to Shenzhen one. The city was very impressive and I spent most of the time in the bus my nose pressed against the window to look at the buildings, skycrapers, restaurants, people on the street, shops with «fake» brand names...The overall journey in Shenzhen was a very nice experience with an extremely interesting visit to the OrbusNeich company, a lunch in an authentic chinese restaurant but the only part that I would have skipped in the schedule was the shopping part in the mall which was less interesting. I would have gladly switched that «activity» with another company visit instead.

SUN & SANDWhat makes Hong Kong an amazing place is certainly this warm and sunny wether and especially the fact that you can actually enjoy it by doing a little «farniente» in one of the many beaches close to the city. That’s what I had the chance to do during my last day in town with the happy few remainers. And we spent a very relaxing and quiet time on the beach, debriefing our crazy, busy, exhausting yet wonderful week in Hong Kong!

This week has been an unforgettable one as I completely fell in love with Hong Kong. On my departure day, after I had registered my luggages at the central station thanks to their wonderful system, I was sitting in the Airport Express train thinking to myself with a smile on my face: living here, why not?!