The last time I was in Hong Kong prior to '98 was for the Chinese New Year in '97, months before the much publicised take-over of the region by China. On that occasion, I was stopped several times in the street and asked by schoolchildren taking part in a project whether I thought the take-over would be good or bad for Hong Kong, and my immediate reaction was to say that I didn't think the region would change much. All in all, I think this has so far turned out to be a fairly sound prediction - China don't seem to be about to step on the feet of what must for them be an extremely prosperous area both in tourism and productivity, and as such have named the region as a special economic zone. This is basically the Chinese way of saying that an area is, to a large extent, outside of the normal strict rules laid down elsewhere by the communist government and that it can continue to be run almost as a separate entity for as long as it shows a return. For this reason, nothing much has changed here - Chinese citizens still can't just walk across the border at will, and although westerners are welcomed with open arms to Hong Kong we still have to jump through hoops to get into mainland China.

Hong Kong was originally acquired by the British Empire through a series of treaties. In 1842 the Treaty of Nanking handed over Hong Kong Island, while this was followed eighteen years later by the Treaty of Beijing which handed over Kowloon, the area of the mainland up to the border of the New Territories. It is little understood that both of these treaties gave the British Empire total control over these areas forever, with no possibility that the Chinese would be able to get them back later. However, a third treaty, signed in 1898, handed over the New Territories, the large area of countryside, hills and rural villages beyond Kowloon and up to the Chinese border, but only until 1997.

The problem was that, because the New Territories provided most of the natural resources to the rest of Hong Kong, handing them back in 1997 and holding on to the rest of the region would have caused more problems than it was worth, not least because the Chinese almost certainly would've made it difficult or costly to transfer resources across the new border - so the British government decided after much negotiation to hand the whole region back. These negotiations didn't go very smoothly, with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher wanting assurances from the Peoples Republic of China that Britain would retain an administrative presence on Hong Kong after the handover to ensure the Chinese didn't just march in and impose communist values. China refused point blank, and pretty much threatened to make up the British governments mind for it, which would have meant that when the lease ran out in 1997 the PRC could have just walked in and chucked the British out anyway. Things came to a head after Black Saturday in 1983, when the stock market in Hong Kong plummeted overnight. The British government pointed the finger at China, saying that people were unnerved by the political climate, and China pointed their collective fingers right back, accusing Britain of taking advantage of the situation to bend the truth. Seeing that the people of Hong Kong were starting to lose confidence in their government, Thatcher conceded to China's demands on the understanding that China would turn Hong Kong into a special economic zone where the socialist system would not prevail and the current system of Capitalism would continue for at least 50 years. Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands of people flocked out of Hong Kong for new homes around the world in response to the news that the PRC would be taking over, especially after the events at Tiananmen Square in 1989. The world waited with bated breath as July 1st 1997 approached, expecting anything from a total anticlimax to Chinese troops swarming over the horizon! As we now know, the events of that day were televised around the world and went off virtually trouble free, and in my humble opinion Hong Kong hasn't changed one iota. Of course, it'll all start again when the 50 year capitalist deadline runs out in 2047, but that's a few years off yet...

I wanted to come back for a number of reasons, not least of which was the simple fact that I always enjoy the diversity of the islands which make up Hong Kong; from the hippy community of Lamma to the ex-pat settlements here in Discovery Bay. There are also, of course, shopping opportunities here beyond your wildest dreams, from the many colourful markets selling anything and everything to the packed high-rise multi-storey shopping blocks within which each floor is packed with tiny little cubical shops selling any type of technology known to man. When I was here before, it struck me that one of the great myths of our time is the notion that you can't move in Hong Kong for people. I mean to say, there certainly are a heck of a lot of people around, but most of them go to work like the rest of us. The popular misconception that you have to walk through the streets as though in a jammed lift full of people, sharpening the point of an opened umbrella and forcing people out of the way is simply untrue. So it came as a total shock to me to see the scenes at Bangkok airport this morning when I arrived for my flight. I've never seen so many Chinese people in my life - It was as though everybody who left Hong Kong in the 80s and 90s had all decided to come back at once!

When our flight was called, it was as if a great dam had burst: Hundreds of people literally surged through the small door and along the passage to the plane as though it was going to leave in about 10 seconds. The crush was unbelievable - Like being at a concert. People found their luggage caught between other bodies and disappearing off in the direction of the cockpit. The Chinese aren't exactly known for their subtlety or patience, but I just couldn't believe this frantic rush to get on board! It wasn't any different inside the plane, either. Everybody seemed to be in everyone else's seat, and I thought that a number of fights were going to break out. The cabin crew certainly deserve medals of valour on China Airlines - and this, remember, was just a 3 and a half hour flight from Thailand to Hong Kong. I really can't imagine what it must be like on a major long-haul flight.

Anyway, I fell asleep for the duration of the flight and missed whatever other unpleasantness went on. Awaking as we approached the shiny new International airport at Chep Lap Kok on Lantau Island, I looked out of the window expecting to see skyscrapers looming up around us but was pleasantly surprised. No longer do we have to hang on to our seats and pray as the plane makes it's famous low approach over the houses at the end of the runway and has to bank sharply through the valley - The approach to the new airport is totally different, giving panoramic views of one of the most incredible cities on Earth by night. Miles of twinkling neon lights tempt the passenger to the shopping delights awaiting him on the ground. Closing your eyes and praying for a safe landing is no longer written into the itinerary.

The new Airport is impressive, to say the least. It sort of reminds me of Heathrow, and is a hell of a lot more modern that Kai Tak was before it. For a start, you come out of the arrival gates onto long corridors with moving sidewalks to whisk you to Customs and Immigration, whereas before it was an effort to locate where you were going at all. The whole thing looks shiny and new and actually feels like a real airport, a suitable addition to a modern Hong Kong. I was meeting a friend of mine who has been working out here for a couple of years on the Airport, and I was impressed with the speed in which we got through the terminal and hopped onto a train which connected us with the main subway system and went right into the heart of the city, a journey which used to take a long time through heavy traffic from the old Airport. In fact, it wasn't until we strolled off the platform at the other end that I suddenly knew exactly where I was. Hong Kong was exactly as I had left it, give or take a few touches. This was the familiar "Central" where all the buses, ferries and trains go from, and it somehow felt like home.

Lantau really is an island of two extremes. The largest of Hong Kong's islands, it is both home to a vast array of high rise apartment complexes which house the region's ex-pat community, and an almost mind numbing expanse of mountainous and quite staggeringly beautiful scenery. It really is quite a shame that humans have felt the need to tramp all over it, especially when you consider that this once sleepy island of fishing villages is now home to Hong Kong's shiny new international airport and a road infrastructure which would put some of Britain's motorways to shame. And yet, you can still go wandering out into the mountains and get happily lost; you can visit communities such as Tai O or see the Big Buddha at Po Lin monastery; and, as long as you don't spend too much time lounging around on the beach at Discovery Bay or making use of the ex-pat pubs, you could probably spend a couple of weeks forgetting that modern Hong Kong even exists.

Discovery Bay seems to be an attempt to create a sort of miniature Milton Keynes in Hong Kong. Disembarking from the jet-cat after a smooth ride across from Central, visitors are greeted with a large modern plaza arouund which every amenity can be found - a British pub complete with dart board and warm beer, a McDonalds, a laundry and a selection of boring but essential shops for the locals. Around the corner is a pleasent looking beach, quite obviously man made, which would probably be a nice place to spend an afternoon if it weren't for both the weather and the view of the Hong Kong skyline across the bay.

Discovery Bay is home to a really quite unneccesarily large bus station, with altogether more stops than can be strictly needed. Every five and a half seconds it seems as though another bus is arriving, and I do believe that if you ever get off the ferry and find that there isn't a bus waiting to shuttle you a few hundred yards up the road to your apartment block, you are actually allowed to sue someone.

When I arrived in Hong Kong for the first time back in 1997, before the handover of the colonies to the Chinese later that year, my first real experience of the place was through Discovery Bay - and I remember being very surprised. Having seen pictures of Hong Kong in print and on television throughout my life, I was expecting to step off the plane into a neon metropolis not dissimilar to something you might see in the film Blade Runner. I expected to find that my friend worked in a cramped cubical in a neon covered building on a side street just wide enough for two people to walk down side by side. I thought the streets would be filled with smoke and dust and... well, I had obviously been watching too much science fiction. Instead, I was driven from the airport to Central along modern multi-lane highways and then bundled onto a modern jet-cat which shot across the water at high speed and deposited me on the plaza at Discovery Bay, which seemed to me to be more like a large estate back home than the neon metropolis I had been expecting. After Simon had tapped his security code into the front door of his apartment block and we had travelled seventeen thousand stories up into the sky to drop my suitcase off in his comfortable looking flat, we had headed straight back to the plaza on another bus to meet all his friends at the pub...

We could have been back in England. We sat next to the dart board and, over drinks, I was introduced to Simon's friends and we talked about life in Hong Kong for ex-pats while ducking occasionally whenever somebody threw a dart in our direction. With the western square outside, McDonalds next door and hardly a Chinese face in the crowd, my first impressions of Hong Kong were that it was exactly like any town centre back home. I would soon be proved totally wrong, of course, when I got over to the mainland.

One of Simon's friends had brought his new Chinese girlfriend along, and she nearly choked on her drink when Simon introduced himself. It would seem, and I don't claim to be any sort of expert here, that something about the name Simon amused her greatly - after calming down a bit, she explained that the Chinese phonetic characters for Si and Mon, when superimposed in that fascinating way that the Chinese like to do, spell out a dirty word. The dirty word, in fact. The one we don't talk about. Yes, that one.

"Where," she wanted to know, "did you hear the word Simon?"

Simon looked quite put out: "It's my name, thanks very much." he told her.

The trouble with stories like this, of course, is that somebody will immediately get all up in arms and say that it isn't true. In fact, I can't find anything on the internet to substantiate what I just told you, despite several happy hours searching Google for rude words in Chinese. The problem is that, not only can the same Chinese symbols be combined in different ways to make different words, but what one Chinese person hears a westerner say might be totally different from what the person next to her hears. This is because the Chinese spoken language (or, more correctly, Cantonese which is the form spoken in Hong Kong) is one of those languages where exactly the same word can mean several different things depending on how you speak it. Depending on how you put the inflection in your voice when you say it, "How is your mother today?" can easily become "Please may I sleep with your sister?".

One thing I did learn on that first night in Discovery Bay which surprised me was just how strange some of the local Chinese customs were. Simon's friend told me that, when he had first arrived in Hong Kong, he had been taken out for a meal by colleagues. During the meal, and much to his surprise, a giant rat had leapt suddenly onto the table and started scurrying around amongst the plates of food. Naturally, he had leapt up and squeaked a bit, pointing at the rat and choking on his food. His Chinese colleagues, however, were all chattering excitedly amongst themselves and laughing at the stupid foreigner. It would seem that rats are considered very lucky in Hong Kong, and many restaurant owners consider themselves to be almost cursed if their eatery isn't infested with them... Not a place for the squeamish!

Lantau seems to be becoming something of the holiday resort of Hong Kong- the place where they stick all the new attractions for which there isn't any room on Hong Kong Island or the mainland. Having finished building the shiny new airport on the lsland, and filled all the gaps between the mountains with modern high rise apartment blocks, shopping plazas and multi-lane highways, the latest addition to Lantau is the Hong Kong Disneyland Resort. In many ways, this is actually a better proposition than its sister resorts in America and Paris - after all, where else can you enjoy all the fun Disney can offer and also be just a stones throw from both a landscape full of high peaks and beautiful scenery waiting to be explored and the neon shopping metropolis that is Hong Kong? If there's one place in the world where everything is jam packed into a perfectly sized package with ferries running between all the attractions, then this has got to be it.

It's typical, though, of Hong Kong. Every time I visit, I think that I've now seen everything I wanted to see. Then, as soon as I get home, they add something new and I want to go back.Disneyland Hong Kong, here I come...

About Simon and Burfords Travels:

Simon Burford is a UK based travel writer. He will be re-publishing his travel blogs, chapters from his books and other miscellaneous rantings on these pages over the coming weeks and months, and the entry on this page may not necessarily reflect todays date.