Hong Kong is the world’s biggest shopping mall. Wherever you look, overpriced shops and restaurants beckon you to enter.
This is clearly a different part of Asia to the area that we’ve grown accustomed to. Judicious use of funds is required to avoid spending more money here in a single weekend than during the previous month of our honeymoon combined.
In many ways, it reminds me of London here. Glitzy, ostentatious, the traffic on the left-hand side of the road, familiar road signs, markings and traffic lights.
As one would expect, excellent Cantonese cuisine can be enjoyed here, but as with all other things, the price reflects this.
The Hong Kong SAR (Special Administrative Region) of China doesn’t seem to have changed that much on the surface since the departure of the marauding Brits after their 99 year lease expired. The roads still bear their English names in addition to the Chinese names, English as a language is still used widely (though apparently on the wane), the currency is still the Hong Kong dollar (HKD) and the region still prints its own stamps. Besides, capitalism is clearly more at home here than in many places in the West.
We arrived late in the afternoon on Friday, which left us just enough time to be very impressed with the efficiency of the airport, the train to Kowloon (travelling at around 135 km/h) and the connecting bus shuttle to the hotel.
After checking in, we wandered out for a walk around downtown Kowloon. As hinted at before, the main thoroughfare of Nathan Road is not dissimilar to London’s Oxford Street: an endless parade of tasteless, designer tat in large window displays; nose-to-bumper double-decker buses, etc. Hong Kong competes admirably with Las Vegas for the sheer amount of neon signage.
Temple Street market was worth a quick look, if only because the corny cheap-and-nasty crap on sale there is different cheap-and-nasty crap than the stuff I’ve seen on sale before.
London has its Thames and Hong Kong has its own stretch of water, too, in the form of its harbour. The eponymous Hong Kong Island can be seen across the water from Kowloon, its own neon frontage reflected in the water and illuminating the low-lying cloud from below. It’s a most impressive sight, combining the spectacle of Las Vegas with the natural coastal beauty of San Francisco or Vancouver.
There are a lot of high-rise buildings in Hong Kong, but somehow they never seem to engulf you in the way that New York’s ugly, discordant skyline inspires claustrophobia and leaves you gasping for a glimpse of the firmament. The big city filth is also conspicuously absent in Hong Kong, with litter bins strategically positioned on every street corner.
Hong Kong traditionally enjoys gorgeous weather at this time of year, but apparently not on days when we’re known to be in town. The city has been plagued by low cloud cover and sporadic showers since our arrival.
Yesterday, we were up early for the tram ride to Victoria Peak (more commonly known as simply The Peak. This is on Hong Kong Island, so we caught the Star ferry from Kowloon, a crossing that takes just a few minutes.
he tram ride up to The Peak ascends some 439 metres with a gradient of 27 degrees to the horizontal in some places. You can feel the seat digging into your back during the ride.
The view from the top should, judging from the placards on the viewing terraces that label the sights, be one of the best cityscapes anywhere in the world, but, sadly, it was not destined to reveal itself to us today. The same thick veil of mist apparent on Friday kept Hong Kong harbour’s majesty well and truly under wraps. We’ll return on Monday if the weather improves.
The next stop on our list was Stanley Market, on the south side of Hong Kong Island. The bus ride there from Central was nothing short of spectacular, even with the inclement weather working against it. Parts of the ride reminded me of Gibraltar and the old valley area of Luxembourg City.
On the way, we passed through Repulse Bay, with some beautiful beaches giving some clue of what Hong Kongers get up to at the weekend when the sun is shining.
After shopping in the rain at Stanley Market, we took another bus to the town of Aberdeen, on the south-west side of the island. This is a place with very little in common with its Scottish namesake.
The light was beginning to fade, so we chartered a sampan (a kind of motorised boat) for a 30 minute ride around the harbour. It wasn’t terribly interesting, but perhaps that’s because we’ve been spoilt by all of our other boating adventures of late.
After an unremarkable dinner, we struggled to find a bus back to Central, but eventually managed to locate a suitable bus-stop. Back at Central, we took the ferry back to Kowloon, where we had dessert and called it a day.