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I am writing from a 13th floor, archaic high-rise hostel. It's hot and the door is ajar, opening out onto a small balcony housing the washing and the garbage, allowing the distant traffic, pounding construction, and life sounds of the city to float in. The room walls are lined in blue tile and the bed is hard, with grubby old blankets for pillows and coverings. Two ancient, dirty fans are working overtime, battling the dust bunnies lining their wire rim covers, to provide some relief from the subtropical heat. Voices of languages – Danish, I think, and Persian - are emanating from the bunks below and beside me. A Chinese worker files through wearing a frumpy, red Snoopy shirt and plastic shower shoes, on her way to and fro' from the balcony washing area.

This is Hong Kong.

I've been in this metropolis for 48 brilliant hours and find myself never wanting to leave. After the short flight from Hangzhou to Shenzhen, I caught a minibus through kamikaze Shenzhen traffic to the border. The crossing on the Mainland side is a huge marketplace bus and train station filled with shops peddling pirated DVDs, fake silk bags, and a sundry of related items that file across from Hong Kong on a daily basis. I disembarked from the bus and wound my way through the crowds, following signs directing "TO HONG KONG"... an ominous and exciting prospect for me, having not left the People's Republic for nearly 6 months. Customs and immigration were a breeze - first you depart the PRC with a resounding passport stamp, and then make your way through a small, brightly-lit tiled hallway (international ground!) to Hong Kong immigration and customs. Within 4 minutes, I had two new stamps in my passport. After that, I hopped a long-distance commuter KRC train through the new territories to Kowloon. At some point, the train went underground, so I didn't get any glimpse of my surroundings until emerging from the subway station at Nathan Road in Kowloon.

Hong Kong is split into two areas – the Kowloon peninsula is located opposite Hong Kong Island on the Mainland side of the harbour. A bustling shopping and residential district, it is slightly cheaper and more accessible than Hong Kong Island. My hostel is located on Kowloon's Nathan Road, one of the most famous shopping avenues in Hong Kong, which is saying a lot, considering this city is hailed as the world's shopping paradise. The bottom floor of the high rise is a dirty, dimly lit bazaar brimming with tiny shops that offer an assortment of useless, fake goods. South Asian shopkeepers bombard you as you walk through, offering you the best deals on every imaginable worthless item. You board one of two elevators and find each level houses a different local guesthouse or hostel, all with the same tiled, dirty walls. When the lift door opens, smells of cooking curry and general heat and grime waft in and assault your nose.

It was around 7:00 when I got to the "reception" at my hostel. My German friend, who lives in Hong Kong, had rung to book a room for me and, of course, the little man and woman who own the hostel could not find my reservation when I arrived. There being no room at the inn that night, they offered to "do me a favor" and let me sleep on their personal sofa in the apartment upstairs. I warily accepted, knowing this week is a national holiday and most accommodation, especially of the budget variety, (read: 60 HKD a night, about $7) would be booked. A worker led me through a dank stairwell where spray-painted signs warned "NO DUMPING" (encouraging), to the sofa - a faux leather two-seater in teal. It had seen better days, along with the rest of the flat. A little old man in a wheelchair with an IV drip and his old-lady counterpart were sat at a tiny round table near the couch. The worker threw my pillow and sheet down on the loveseat and left me, bewildered, to figure things out.

I spent the evening avoiding my dodgy accommodation and taking in views instead. The promenade at the edge of Kowloon, where the water meets the peninsula, is touted as Hong Kong's “Walk of Fame” and it boasts a line of celebrity handprint stars. It is also the best place to view the Kong Kong skyline. Skyscrapers fill your peripheral vision from left to right as you stand on the promenade, making even Shanghai look and feel like a village. The salty harbour air is thick with humidity, smog and ocean. Sparkling clean walkways paved with glass in the concrete create a "glittering" effect as the light reflects on the very ground you walk over. This definitely isn't the Hong Kong I'd anticipated.

Later, after enjoying potato skins, fries, and luscious pints of cold, smooth ale with my German friend, I landed back at the high-rise hostel's ground floor, now deserted and gated, with security guards waiting to check me in. The apartment upstairs, however, was anything but empty. Several hostel residents were writing postcards at the table where the IV drip guy had been before. It was past midnight and I was ready for bed, but clearly this place was not on my schedule. I spread the sheet over the worn, dirty couch and hoped for sleep.

Sometime into the night, I was awoken by itchy pricks on my arms and inspected the couch to find bed bugs! I didn't know what to do. 30 minutes or so had passed since I'd first laid down on the couch. It was nearly 2 in the morning, hostel residents were still milling about the room, oblivious or uncaring to my presence on the couch. Now..... to top things off.... I had bugs. I was just after contemplating my lonely, bug-ridden demise when the owner and his wife appeared and informed me that one guest had failed to check in. A bed awaited me downstairs. I duly gathered up, shuffled back down the stairs, past the NO DUMPING sign, and into a dark dorm room.

Hong Kong represents everything international that the world has to offer. In the same block, you can find tiny dirty Dim Sum restaurants with chicken gizzards hanging to dry in the unwashed windows and shirtless Chinese men screaming commands in Cantonese to workers on the street, Indian prostitutes wearing long, colorful saris, standing idly waiting for their next customers, and the glitzy facades of Prada and Versace stores. Westerners abound in this metropolis, as does western culture in all its forms. Nonetheless, the small winding lanes of old Hong Kong twist through the congested central district of HK island, reeking of a bygone time - tailors shops, fish markets, and bright neon signs leftover from 100 years of British colonisation.

Even despite the grimy hostel, I adore Hong Kong. It is clean, efficient, and beautiful. These days, the climate has been perfect and it is possible to live royally for very cheap. The trains are efficient and everything is sparkling clean. Signs warning against spitting, hawking, and littering, reminders to use hand-railing on trains and escalators, and general hygiene helpful hints abound on walls across the city. There are even courtesy hand sanitizer dispensers along subway corridors - installed during the 90's in attempt to combat the SARS virus. People queue and there are no mad rushes to push, shove, and generally get through. Glimmering subway stations are equipped with the most modern trains and space-age technologies - moving sidewalks, high-speed lifts, digital LCDs displaying the time remaining for approaching trains. Hong Kong people are modern, international city-dwellers, rushing to and fro' in business attire, carrying briefcases. The influence of British culture is also highly evident with cute, London style taxis careening around left-turns, signposting of classic Britishisms (Mind your head!), and most especially, the big Wednesday night social outing - horse racing. My second evening here, my German friend and I went to Happy Valley Racecourse, one of the world's most famous horse racing venues. The atmosphere was exactly how I imagine old-school British racing would have been - a huge, brightly lit oval course on grass. Skyscrapers and vast apartment buildings tower over the promenade, chock full of glitzed-up westerners drinking pitchers of beer, standing on fake turf waiting for the next race to begin, and screaming loud "bloody hells" as their horses fall behind.

Hong Kong is a place to live.