On a Friday night, I was at the Temple Street night market in Kowloon where vendors in makeshift stalls set up on a street and sell knick-knacks, clothes, luggage, toys, food, etc. Then I walked to one of the city's several high-end retail areas -- Canton Road. The walk was about 15 minutes, but it may as well have been a world away.
You can find all the luxury stores on Canton Road. Outside several of them, including Prada and Louis Vuitton, there were lines of 20-30 people waiting for others to exit so they could enter. I'd never seen lines outside of any store in the States (apart from Black Friday morning), let alone luxury stores. Now whether this was all part of a plan by store staff to limit the numbers allowed inside in order to build some sort of buzz, I don't know, or maybe everyone's just "browsing," but it was obvious that there's a lot of money waiting to be spent in Hong Kong.
It wasn't just the name-brand luxury retailers either -- around every corner there seemed to be a jewelry store -- and I always saw customers inside (unlike a lot of the jewelry stores I see at home). Granted, it was a weekend during the holiday season, but it still seemed noteworthy.
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