Chamber of Commerce and Trade Center

Today is Monday and we had the morning free. We slept in :~) I went with Heidi back to the pearl shop where she picked out a few very beautiful pearls. The nice thing about this city is the public transportation. We have become very comfortable with the train system and have been able to explore the city well(and cheaply) by using it. On our way back to the hotel, I walked around the area and found a very cheap nail shop for a manicure, $50 HK dollars, which is $7.14 US dollars. It was a very small shop and the two girls just barely spoke english, but they did a very nice job. They were curious about my age and enjoyed looking at my jewelry and my hair.
The group met up to go to the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce. There we listened to a chief economist, who happend to be a white man, born in the US, but had lived in Hong Kong for 20 years and is a resident. He gave us some interesting facts about Hong Kong and China's economy. A few highlights were that Hong Kong is the most globalized city on earth. They mostly provide banking, insurance, legal, and shipping services. They outsource manufacturing, dry cleaning, foreign affairs and military defense. There are 3.5 million employee's in Hong Kong and 2/3 of the economy is foreign trade. Hong Kong people do not pay taxes unless their salaries meet a certain limit. Only 17% of the population here pays taxes. The government owns all of the land in Hong Kong and sells long-term leases that are typically passed down through the families.







After the chamber we went to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The actual exchage floor was all electronic, which was really for show only. They gave us a great overview of the stocks that are exchanged and their impact to Hong Kong.














After our visits, we changed for the evening and then took the Starr Ferry over to Kowloon to get American food. After walking around for a long time, we settled on TGIFriday.


My
cheeseburger was excellent!!