Parcly Taxel: Even though it wasn’t raining, I could see clear condensation on the bedroom window. Hong Kong may be considered a borderline city between the temperate and tropical zones; summers and winters do exist but they’re quite mild, snowfall is a once-in-a-blue moon thing and it’s very humid all year round.
 
Spindle: Hence a great many indoor places throughout the territory have air conditioning, usually set stronger than needed for comfort because local ponies have inherited a love for hot tea and hot food from the south of China proper. Yet it reminds me of my homeland more than any other locale, since my fellow windigos are more comfortable with their idea of “room temperature” (around freezing) than the room temperature in (say) Appleloosa.
 
Parcly had enough energy to pull herself into her bottle the previous night instead of sleeping as a solid pony, the latter of which wouldn’t be as comfortable as the former even if a cloud bed was there. She looked cheerful upon popping out and resting prone, her lower body still swirling without objective, to see the nearby buildings outside.
 
Parcly: The older skyscrapers in Hong Kong are not very colourful. Their upper floors are primarily used for residential or office purposes, while most of the bunch are built from concrete; such buildings were around me in Mong Kok. The newer skyscrapers elsewhere and on the Island are in contrast meant as tourists’ eye candy, with shiny windows, steel columns and floors avoiding the digit 4 – not just because it is a common superstition, but also to give the pretense of living or working higher, which carries more market value. Thus, the day-to-day happenings occur in one place: on the streets at ground level.
 
For breakfast I had macaroni with ham and egg on toast alongside a cup of tea. Like many other shops in the city, there was a minimum spending per pony of HK$15 so as to discourage sharing the food, although there was no restriction on sharing the love, which I did with Spindle.
 
King Thorax: Oh? Were there many ponies outside buzzing like my hive?
 
Parcly: Eheheh, not a lot. The early morning is the quietest time in Hong Kong, save for the markets I went through en route to the breakfast shop: after wide stands lined with crates of fresh fruits and vegetables are set up, only a narrow wet corridor remains for traversal. Otherwise, hoof traffic is low and most of the vehicles plying the streets are for resupply of goods to shops.
 
Wait, that’s a Saturday morning. I’m not sure if what I’ve said is also true on weekdays? Nevertheless, I’m confident that it’s far, far busier at night when tourists are riding taxis and the MTR to shopping centres and individual outlets.
 
Thorax: You’d be mostly right about the description of Hong Kong on weekdays too. The MTR is supremely efficient at moving ponies and other creatures, more so than the tunnel network Chrysalis’s old changelings dug and which my changed-lings still use to travel around the hive, so it’s the preferred method of commuting for both local workers and expatriates alike.
 
Parcly: How fitting that we brought up the MTR! After breakfast I took it from Olympic to Hong Kong to Central to North Point (the middle two of these stations form the network’s busiest interchange).
 
Spindle: It’s a little fun to see how colonial rule and native life come together for station names. Some of the English names are descriptive or mere translations: Central (中環), Wan Chai (灣仔). But then there are a few oddballs like Admiralty (金鐘) which have no obvious relation to the Chinese original. Either way, we accidentally overshot the destination and had to loop back at Quarry Bay.
 
North Point, on the eastern part of Hong Kong Island, is relatively free from the trappings of tourism with markets and old apartments all over the place. A tram service, exclusive to the Island, runs across some of its streets and has priority wherever it passes; even the stalls that spill over the pavement because of space pack their belongings for the occasion.
 
Parcly: There was a marked contrast between fast and slow when I weaved in and out of the common markets. It was noon now, and with the sun came much activity outside. New condominiums being constructed, new film screenings, buses plying their routes. Yet the stalls inside remained isolated and quiet, their owners sitting alert for the next customer or playing games among themselves. “Leave them alone,” I decided within. “They don’t want to change, but they don’t need changing either.”
 
We had goose rice for lunch at a store near the North Point MTR entrance, then travelled to Sogo at Causeway Bay. As we had arrived in Hong Kong in the early afternoon looking for small snacks at first, so were other tourists flooding into this bejewelled department store looking for their own (expensive?) desires.
 
Spindle: From a slow-moving suburb we had walked unaware into the diametrically opposite – one place to woo shoppers from the four corners of the world. International marques! Multiple languages! Rewards programmes! And yet, among 21 floors of this material paradise, not a single chair for Parcly to rest her hooves. We had to go to the nearby Hysan Place for that, where she had a mocha.
 
Thorax: Why doesn’t Parcly just float around tethered to her bottle? Wouldn’t it be easier on her legs?
 
Spindle: Thorax, her bottle is quite tall and would bump into nearby objects or ponies if she let it loose. Thus she either carries it empty or whisks it into her pocket dimension when not needed.
 
Parcly: To be clear, I have ways to tie down my bottle with the genie tail so it doesn’t sway while moving, but regardless of method most would find a moving genie half-inside their bottle very weird. A table or chair is just a place I can let it go and not surprise anypony.
 
We had our dinner at Olympian City, the complex adjacent to both Olympic and Mong Kok MTR stations, after finding a larger bench to recuperate on. I could simply fall into pleasant unconsciousness, while Spindle kept watch so nopony would think I was a potion to drink, and she transported me to a sushi restaurant for the surprise. Despite the food’s mediocre quality, I still found one more joke: the “UG” floor the restaurant was on was not the obvious “underground”, it was-
 
Thorax: “Upper ground”… teehee, got you!