Given the number of times I’ve been to Hong Kong over the past two years to show friends around I’m pretty sure that I could be an official tour guide by now. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy going there but there’s a limit to how many time you want to visit the same places. Here are some more of my favourite Hong Kong moments…
Last week I continued my quest to stay at the worlds most amazing hotels for free with a visit to the W in Hong Kong (for previous escapades see W Seoul, Park Hyatt Shanghai, and Hotel Éclat Taipei). The hotel is located alongside the relatively new Elements shopping mall in Kowloon right above the MTR station.
As in may parts of the world May 1st is a national holiday in China. I’ve learnt from bitter experience that during holidays in China it’s best to avoid popular locations since you’re more likely to be greeted by hordes of people rather than beautiful views…
I’ve long been fascinated by the density of housing which can be found in many parts of Asia, and in particular Hong Kong where high-rise living has been taken to the extremes of both human and technological limits. I find it remarkable how people are able to adapt to their particular circumstances, be they due to space or resource constrains, and still retain their sanity (mostly).
Hong Kong is a mesmerizing city unlike any other. Each time I visit there’s never a lack of interesting streets to wander through and at night the mass of concrete and steel are brought to life by thousands of neon lights.
As any long-term readers will know I absolutely love dim sum. It’s the food of Chinese gods and southern China is the best place to sample it. On Sunday morning our hosts for the weekend took us to the famous Jumbo Floating Restaurant located in Aberdeen Harbor.
I spent last weekend in Hong Kong and had a chance to visit Aberdeen Harbor again which is on the south-western side of the island. As with so many places in Hong Kong it’s a dense mix of high-rise apartments packed closely against the shore.
A friend of mine noticed something odd while visiting Hong Kong last weekend. Despite Hong Kong not being subject to the heavy internet blocks and censorship on the mainland he still couldn’t get Facebook or Twitter to work on his iPhone (which had international roaming turned on). Hong Kong residents using one of the local providers don’t face any such restrictions and after testing out a few different apps as well as making sure the sites worked fine on a normal laptop we began to become suspicious.
This post should really be title “One Day in Hong Kong” but it didn’t match the above photo (a junk sailboat which was cruising along Victoria Harbour at night) so nicely. It’s not a wonderful photo but I like the red colour of the sails against the skyscraper shoreline. Of all the skylines in the world HK is hard to beat… anyway, I digress… I hadn’t been to HK for a few months so on Saturday I crossed over the border for a day trip to explore the southern half of Lamma Island (southwest of Hong Kong Island proper). Starting from Shenzhen Bay I took the bus down to Kowloon and then a ferry from the central piers to the island, a trip of about…
One of the highlights on my previous weekend in Hong Kong was taking the Ngong Ping 360 cable car up Lantau Island (from Tung Chung). It nearly didn’t happen due to a thunderstorm which shut things down for about half an hour but on the plus side did shorten the queues considerably! The 5.7km journey takes about 25 minues offering spectacular views of the surrounding mountains and airport (which was built on reclaimed land). It’s a bit pricy, starting at 96 HKD for a standard cabin and 157 HKD for a crystal cabin (one with a glass floor) – even more on “special days”. We choose the latter, primarily because the queue was much shorter and we were on a tight schedule. Don’t look…