A short 14 hour flight with Cathay Pacific from Vancouver and your in Hong Kong. We arrived at 7:30pm local time.....who knows what time it was back home. Our guide was at the airport to gather us and our luggage and transport us to Kowloon and the Peninsula Hotel. Wow this is how all future hotels in my life will be measured! The hotel maintains a fleet of 14 Rolls Royce autos to transport guests around the city. One of many "nice touches" at the Peninsula. The following morning our guide, Donald, came to the hotel along with our driver to escort us on a tour of the city. We saw a contrast of rich and poor, modern and old. Hong Kong, HK, is a city of 7.5million people living and working in a city that physically is very similar to Vancouver, with the combination of mountains and a beautiful natural harbour. You get the sense of frantic commerce, with the numerous tall buildings, the tallest is 118 floors, new construction and endless high end shopping. The pace of change in HK has mirrored the rise in the fortunes of the economy of mainland China. HK hosts 50mm tourist per year, 70% of which come from mainland China. Interestingly the Chinese in HK don't even speak the same language as the Chinese tourists from mainland.......we sensed a strong tension between the two. The city is very congested and the building and population density makes West Vancouver look sparse by comparison. Reluctantly we had to pack our suitcase and leave the Peninsula and head to the airport and our flight to Siem Reap Cambodia.