Pre-Halloween Bash

I've been told that Halloween is a big deal here in Hong Kong. In New York, it's basically an excuse to dress quite scandalously in a costume and drink all weekend. Here in Hong Kong, they take it even further.

Halloween is celebrated in both the traditional (actually doing haunted scary things) and the yuppie way (partying). This weekend, I went to the Halloween Bash at Ocean Park in Aberdeen, Hong Kong. Ocean Park is an amusement park in Hong Kong that is actually quite fun and a good tourist spot if you ever come to Hong Kong.

People went ALL OUT. It's two weeks before Halloween and thousands people dressed in all sort of witches, ghosts, zombies, etc. participated in the highly popular bash. The haunted houses included a western version in the Museum of Terror and a eastern version in the Ghost of "Guangzhou", featuring different cultural difference on what is considered scary. Where there were spiderwebs in the western version, there were deadfishesin the eastern one. The blood and gore is universally present and in large quantities. What I found most scary was a ride called "Burned Alive", where you are placed into a coffin and move through a cave. There is no one in front of you so I have no idea what to expect. When the skeltons and ghosts are dropping on you from above and you trapped in the coffin and can't move because of the fire that's surrounding you outside, it is truly one of the scarier experiences I have been in. Coincidentally, the day I went to Ocean Park, New York Times Travel section did a piece on this expecting event.

http://intransit.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/15/halloween-fun-at-hong-kong-theme-park/

The event illustrated that 1) Hong Kong is quite the most densely populated place ever and 2) labor is very cheap. For each of the rides, it is not out of the question to wait over an hour in-line. The lines move very efficiently so basically there were thousands of people waiting for each houses at a particular time. At 11PM, the amusement park is PACKED with people. The most popular attraction, Zombie Hunt, had a 2-hour line. 2) Inside the haunted houses, on the streets, anywhere in the amusement park, people are dressed up and their job is to follow you around and scare you. I must have encountered over 100 of these employees, whose sole jobs are to scare you. If labor wasn't cheap, there is no way the amusement park would spend such an amount of money where probably 20 people would have been able to create the same effect. Even when we are waiting in line, there are 5-10 people just directing traffic and the lines.