On shopping

Well, I've been in Hong Kong for about a month now and so I feel that it is prudent to say this: Hong Kong has a lot of places to shop.  For a place smaller than the smallest US state, there are more places to shop than you might think.  It's hard to say that Hong Kong is a country when there aren't any real cities or towns inside it.  It would be better described as a region where people live, divided into different districts.  Anyways, enough of the pointless talk, onto shopping in Hong Kong.
While I personally do not enjoy shopping all that much, there is a lot to see and even more to potentially buy.  The sheer range of different stores is a bit staggering when considering the size of the area.  Some of the MTR stations have their own malls attached to them, complete with places to eat and simply walk around.  While perhaps not true, it seems that just as frequently as you see 7-Elevens, you also see shopping malls.  However, what I've said isn't very specific so I'll move down the ladder a bit.
From where I've been, I have seen 3 pretty big shopping districts.  If you plan on coming to Hong Kong, these are probably pretty good places to go.   The first is Sham Shui Po.  Sham Shui Po is a really big electronics district so the streets are just lined with shops selling things like phones and small electronics.  There are also malls that just sell computer related things, from hard drives to speakers to mice and keyboards and computer related books.  Next is Mong Kok.  Mong Kok is part of the Kowloon district and is one of the most densely packed places I have ever been.  People walk in the streets and there are so many shops lining the streets that it's overwhelming.  I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say that it is literally a shopping district for just shopping.  There is for example a street simply for shoes, every single shop minus a couple of food shops are dedicated to selling shoes.  While I'm not interested in shoes, even I was awed by simply how many different shoes they had lining the streets.  For more information on the different stores and streets in Mong Kok, here is a link.  Yea, I know that it isn't hard to search for it on wikipedia, but now you don't have to so that's one fewer thing for you to do.
The last district I'll be focusing on is Tsim Sha Tsui.  Tsim Sha Tsui is a port city and thus is a huge tourist attraction.  Apparently, there are a lot of museums in the area as well, although I haven't been to one yet.  In any case, it has a pretty magnificent view and has to my knowledge at least 3 shopping malls in the area and they're all quite large.  Since wikipedia doesn't seem to much useful information on Tsim Sha Tsui and I'm too lazy to go looking, this section is without a link.  Interestingly, I've only been to Tsim Sha Tsui for dinner and thus haven't had a lot of time to look around.
Originally I was gonna make two posts for shopping in Hong Kong, and I may yet, but for the time being this is all.  With that, I'd like to leave some interesting bits of things I've seen here that don't translate to things in the US, at least not that I know of.  Apparently, "adult" stores are quite a bit more prevalent here and they are sometimes set up right next to normal stores with only curtains blocking the store's contents.  Also, there are quite a few places where there are headphones on display that you can try out.  Another good thing to know is that most stores, especially in places like Tsim Sha Tsui and Mong Kok, have employees that speak English.  Anyways, I'd like to end this with a couple of pictures of the streets of Mong Kok on a Saturday.

With that, my post on shopping is complete and I've said what I wanted.

--CsMiREK