I knew the girly bar comment would drag a comment out of ya.....
Good question.
Well, Hong Kong is still as obsessed with money as it's always been. The wheels of commerce still turn as relentlesly as they always have, although it may be true to say that there's a little less regulation as there was when the Brits were here. It might also be true to say that the current government aren't quite as concerned with the social costs of ecomonic exapnsion as they might have been before.
Historic buildings get pulled down to make way for dull new office blocks and non-descript overpriced housing developments. The Harbour,which in one of the key features of Hong Kong is getting gradually eroded by reclamation which the government makes a fortune out of in terms of property and development tax. The environment is suffering as green spaces are increasingly under threat as a tide of concrete approaches fuelled by property specualtion and poorly justified public works that only serve to keep manual labourers off the unemployment lists.
Pollution from Guangdong just over the border in China is posing severe chalenges to the public health system. Having said that, a British colonial authority wouldn't be able to do much about that either, but they wouldn't say, as the current Beijing appointed bunch do, that it's just 'Haze' and there's not much that can be done.
Freedom of speech is being gradually eroded by Beijing inspired secrecy and patriotism laws that allow snooping by the government into most areas of public life under the guise of catching criminals. I myself, am subject to a contract under which I can be fired and prosecuted for 'treason' if I indulge in behaviour which is deemed contrary to the public interests of the Hong Kong SAR and by extension China. The fact I am a foreign national makes this unlikely, but my local colleagues are subject to it.
Democracy, which the British colonial authority, to it's everlasting shame failed to introduce to HK, but which the last governor Chris Patten attempted to redress, has been put on the back burner by Beijing even though it was timetabled to be introduced under the terms of the joint agreement signed by Brtian and China. It won't be seen before 2050 if I'm a betting man and even then only if China has a form of it.
All that said, if you don't live here then you won't get an impression of any of it.
We've had plenty of visitors over and they have loved it.
Hong Kong is still an exciting, vibrant city with a huge array of sights, smells, tastes and sounds. A cacophony of sensual assault that at times can leave you reeling.
There are more restaraunts here than you can shake a dirty stick at and more bars than that. We could go out to a different restaraunt every night followed by a difererent bar for a year or more and never be in danger of hitting the same one twice. And they'd all be good because bad ones dont last, sometimes good ones don't.
There's still the markets that sell fake rolexes (Best in asia), fake Louis Vuitton, fake blah, blah, blah........the markets that deal in fish and meat that make you sick, the snake vendors, the Big Buddha, the Buddhist temples, the clan homes up in the new territories, the police museum where you can see the head of the Tiger that ate about three policemen here in the 20's, the cultural museum, Cantonese opera, the cheap electronic goods, the peak with it's views over the harbour, the outlying islands (such as the one I live on) that have great seafood places, the occasionally clean beaches, the huge shopping centers and the occasionally old building such as the police station on Hollywood road and the old law courts on old Bailey street.
There's also Stanley, Sai Kung, Shek O, Mui Wo, Big Wave Bay and other places which are good to visit.
There's also still Wanchai..........which may be a little cleaner than when you were last there but still has the seediest repuation of any district outside of Mongkok.
So I'd say that it's still fun and that you're still welcome but you may not have quite as much fun as you did last time.
For a visitor, Hong Kong is a great place to spend 4-5 days in on the way to somewhere else. As a two week holiday destination, unless you know someone who lives here, it'll be expensive and get a little wearing after a week or so.
