The first time I was in Hong Kong was actually kind of a coincidence. My sister, who was supposed to be visiting me in Taiwan, had some problems with her visa. She calls me on Thursday night with the bad news, and in a matter of a couple of hours we had changed all of our plans; we would meet in Hong Kong and spend a week exploring it. So, I got a last minute ticket (which was actually quite cheap to be honest), and in 12 hours I was on my way.
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| Hong Kong Street at Night |
My first impression of Hong Kong? Well, it is impressive, it is clean, it is modern and, it is crowded, I noticed this right when I got off the plane, you can start feeling how close you actually are from other human beings, but no biggy, this was my first time here so there was more excitement than anything else.
The immigration process is pretty simple and straight forward. Sadly, for those stamp collectors out there (I include myself in this group) you will not get a stamp. I don't really understand the reason, but instead you get a scrummy piece of paper that is not even attached to the passport.
Right outside from the baggage collection you will see the MTR ticketing office, in my opinion this is the best way to move around Hong Kong, you can pretty much get anywhere by a combination of MTR and light walking (sometimes maybe a bus). I would suggest you to get the 2 way MTR into town, it is 350 HKD and includes 3 days of unlimited MTR around the city, and after those three days you can recharge it as a regular 'Octopus' Card and you will get 50 HKD back if you return it at the end of your journey, it is a nice souvenir to keep though.
Before anything you should decide where to stay, the busier more uptight Hong Kong or the mellower, crazier more bohemian Kowloon. This time, since I was traveling with my sister we stayed in Hong Kong, particularly in 'Causeway Bay' , the Holiday Inn Express was decently priced and included breakfast. There are plenty of places to eat outside and the Hotel breakfast are usually not great, but it is quite convenient if you are planning to be out and about the whole day.
After we settled in, the first thing to do was to go out and get lost. Just wander around. One of the beauties of Hong Kong is that it is one of those cities that never sleeps, so no matter the time you will find something interesting to see or do.
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| Hong Kong at Night |
Our plan was simple: wander around, look for nice landscapes and places to enjoy the views, visit some temples, drink some nice tea and find as much great food as possible and indulge ourselves in the wonderfulness of Hong Kong's cuisine. So here is a list of the things that, in my opinion, you should definitely see.
- One of the must see places in Hong Kong is the Peak; one of the highest points in Hong Kong, it will give you the vantage point to check out most of the city. To reach the peak you have to take the Peak Tram, a cable car of sorts, which is an attraction by itself. It gets very crowded, so make sure you are there quite early in the morning or late in the afternoon. (80 HKD for a return ticket, you can buy your ticket online and get through the special line for online shoppers, it will save you some time).
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| Hong Kong Bay from the Peak |
- One of my favourite activities in Hong Kong is walking alongside the Tsim Sha Tsui promenade and get to the Avenue of the Stars. This place is actually in Kowloon and you can reach it by ferry, it will set you back only 4 HKD and you get to enjoy the view from the boat. Once you disembark you will quickly see the famous Clock Tower and the start of the promenade. It is a fantastic view.
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| A beautiful view of the bay |
Sunset around this place is something else, but you should also come back at night, at around 8 pm most of the days, most of the buildings in front of the promenade, on the Hong Kong side, coordinate and present a light show that is pretty impressive.
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| The light show |
- The avenue of the stars is called a Must See place, but to be honest I don’t see why all the fuzz. Other than looking at Bruce Lee's statue and his star and maybe Jackie Chan's or Chow Yun Fat's there is nothing of interest, at least for me. I did walk around but because I was already there, I would not have gone out of my way to visit this place. But if you are super into Chinese Cinema and know all the names and films, well, this might be the place for you.
- From here you can walk to Kowloon Park, it is pretty cool. It is pretty big and has a Mosque right outside, and a big one. It happened to be Sunday and there was a lot of people in the park, mostly Muslims coming out of the Mosque and picknicking. It was indeed pretty interesting. After walking around a bit you can find a lot of neat things like the statues of Japanese Anime Characters. Also, in the mornings they hold Tai Chi classes in English, and they are free, awesome!
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| Some girl chilling in the park. |
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| A dude chilling in the park. |
- After a good night sleep we embarked to our next stop. The Temple of the 10,000 Buddhas. Reaching it is fairly easy, get to Sha Tin MTR station, take exit A, walk to the left and follow the signs. One of my favourite places, It is a very light hike up a hill, the first thing you will notice is the stairs and the endless lines of golden statues, which contrary to popular belief are not the Buddhas, rather they are representations of monks and Bodhisattvas (holy men and women).
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| The staircase to the temple. |
You will reach the first part of the temple, the main temple. You can enjoy very cool views from here and some awesome statues. If you are into the spiritual jazz, you can cheaply buy some incense and light it up and place it in the incense plates in front of the deities. Try to place the incense in groups of threes or at least in odd numbers, even numbers and specially the four, are related to death, and they do take their superstitions very seriously.
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| Cool Statue |
There is a small cafeteria that offers vegetarian snacks for a very cheap price.
Now, if you continue up, you will reach the second part, which comprises a couple more temples and more statues. The temple is called the 10,000 Buddhas because of the Buddha figurines and statues inside the temples (which actually add up to more than 13, 000) but to be fair, I don’t find that impressive whatsoever; what I did like was all the golden statues and deities placed outside and around the premises of the temple.
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| More Bodhisattvas chilling in the mountain. |
- After walking down you will find yourself pretty hungry, I shuold advice you to get back into the city to get a hefty meal and maybe you want to get some shopping going. By all means, after this walking you have earned it. Sleep tight because tomorrow there will be a lot more things to see.
I will continues with this little "guide' of Hong Kong very soon, in the mean time if you are interested in some more nice Photos of Hong Kong, you can visit my Flickr Album of Hong Kong:
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