Adventures with a Safety Net

Last week I was in Hong Kong, a city I had already visited in 2004. Since then, I found it has become "japanised" and probably to an even greater extent, "koreanised" a lot. Every other store seems to be a cosmetic one (I wish I could remember what was AS popular before, i.e .what these chains replaced) and I was delighted to even find several branches of my favourite Korean cosmetics brand.

Far Eastern countries are my favourite holiday destinations and would definitely not say no if I got dispatched to either Tokyo, Seoul or Hong Kong for a year on a nice expat contract. I have repeatedly thought about quite what attracts me to them so much and think that it can be summarised as: exotic, but safe and familiar at the same time. While these cities might be way busier than cosy little Vienna and I don't really understand any of the local languages, it is easy to navigate them with everything written in English on public transport and subway exits usually numbered and lettered following a very logical and foreigner-friendly system. Even if you get lost somewhere late at night or encounter an unexpected problem you feel safe and locals are friendly and helpful even if they only speak rudimentary English. It might sound rather adventurous to some people who don't travel much at all to visit those countries as an individual traveller and I sometimes get asked if it was not difficult to get around since I didn't know the language, but in fact it's actually an "Asia light" experience all the way and I am assuming that countries like Laos, Cambodia, or Myanmar might be the really brave choices. Then again, for all I know, their capital cities might have Korean cosmetics stores popping up as I type this...