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Hong Kong, which Author James Michener calls "the pearl of Asia." From it's high hills visitors can look north across the border to the barren red hills of Communist China; they can spend an evening at the stylized Chinese opera, tramp up and down narrow "ladder" streets and take a 40-mile boat ride down the coast to Portuguese Macao, which will give Americans their best look at China.
Hong Kong's hotels are modest and medium priced ($6 to
$10 for a double room), while its restaurants, with every
kind of Chinese cooking from Cantonese to Szechwanese,
are rated the best in Asia. Since Hong Kong is a free port,
it is a shopper's paradise with luxury goods from England,
cameras from Japan and Germany, locally woven brocades,
teakwood furniture, ivory, silks and pearls, all 10% to 20% cheaper than in the countries they came from. One thing to pass up: all goods originating in Red China; U.S. Customs will not allow them into the country.
Japan, a land of startling contrasts. Its capital, Tokyo, is as big (pop. more than 8,000,000), bustling and gaudily expensive a city (a first-rate geisha party runs up to $60 per person) as any on earth. Yet a few miles outside, Japan goes back centuries to a bygone world of tiny, meticulously tilled farms, tranquil lotus ponds and brilliantly colored shrines and temples. The finest temples are at Kyoto, Nara, where the 1,349-year-old Horyuji Temple is said to be the world's oldest wooden building, and at Nikko, where the brilliant Toshogu Shrine is set in a fairyland of rugged mountains, waterfalls and virgin forests. Tourists also like to drive along the Izu Peninsula, with its tiny fishing villages and bubbling hot springs, visit Hakone for the best view of snow-capped Fujiyama, and stop at Toba, near Ago Bay, where they can see the world's biggest culture pearl operation and find some rare bargains.
In the major cities Japanese hotels ($9 to $15 for a double room) have all the comforts of home, but in the provinces tourists should be prepared for hard beds, little heat and no inside plumbing. Japanese food is generally heartier than Chinese cooking, with tender steaks and sizzling sukiyaki, a thin-sliced beef dish cooked at tableside. Things to buy: tortoise shell, pearls, lacquerware, porcelain, embroidered kimonos, art, furs, cameras, binoculars.
Australia, which has been passed up by most tourists in the past, expects that the 1956 Olympics will bring in many. Visitors follow the relaxed, happy life of Australians, splash in the surf that pounds its beaches, and go to see the original Teddy bears at the Koala Bear Sanctuary in Brisbane. More adventurous types can fly out to Hayman Island (round trip: $209) on the Great Barrier Reef, where there is a good hotel ($5 per day) and some of the world's best skindiving and big game fishing, or go on a three-week hunting trip (cost: $210) for monster crocodiles in the lonely Bay of Carpenteria.