Adventures in Asia: Hong Kong

This morning we woke up in time to watch the Sapphire Princess sail around the east side of Hong Kong and into Kowloon Bay to dock at Kai Tak Cruise Terminal, which is built on the old airport runway.

At some point in the last couple decades the airport moved out to an island, but for most of Hong Kong's aviation history, airplanes landed almost right in the middle of the city, creating some stunning (and surely terrifying) scenes involving airliners and skyscrapers (Google "Kai Tak landing," for example).  Now, Kai Tak welcomes large cruise ships in much more peaceful and less dramatic fashion.

From Kai Tak there are two free shuttles running to two different shopping malls, and we took one to a place called Plaza Hollywood, which is above a MTR station.  We took the MTR to Tsim Sha Tsui, which is the waterfront area on the Kowloon side of Victoria Harbour.  

We enjoyed the Hong Kong island skyline from here, before catching one of the famous Star ferries across the harbour to Hong Kong island.  

The ferry ride is cheap--$2.5 HKD, or less than 50 cents Canadian--and a neat experience.  It is only about five or ten minutes across the harbour, but it is open air, and you get to see the harbour on either side and all the traffic in the harbour.  

Once on Hong Kong island, we walked up to where the Peak tram begins ascending Victoria Peak, the highest of several ~500 metre high mountains.  Along the way we passed City Hall, and the post office, in which I mailed a postcard.  The post office has the world's largest postage stamp mosaic, a really cool piece of art depicting Hong Kong using the medium of canceled postage stamps.  Up close it just looks like a collection of stamps, but the picture emerges as you back up.  It is really one of the coolest works of art I have ever seen.

Sadly, by the time we got to the Peak Tram lineup, it was hundreds of people long.

I momentarily questioned whether I wanted to do it, but we did, and after over an hour of waiting were on our way up the hill.

While "The Peak" is very, very commercialized and developed, the tram itself, despite its long lines, manages to retain some of its historic romance, at least it did for me.  It is also a really fun ride because not only does it ascend at a remarkably steep incline, but it does not travel at a consistent incline, so there are lots of up and down.  It feels almost like a bit of an amusement park ride.  Nonetheless, were I to visit Hong Kong again, and assuming the queues are as bad, I would probably try to walk up to the Peak or get up some way other than the tram.  I think once was enough for me.

We ate lunch at the Peak and then set out to walk what is called the Circle Hike, around the mountain.

This is a three kilometre route that follows what are actually roads, but in fact are so narrow that I do not think there are many, if any, cars driving on them.  We certainly did not see any.

I had heard this walk provided a nice way to see Hong Kong nature, which is actually something Hong Kong, despite its high population density, is very famous for.  Something like 70% of Hong Kong territory is green, with over a third parkland!  What I was not aware of is how amazing the vistas would be from this trail, nor how quiet it would be relative to the chaos around the tram.  There were stretches of the walk--at least a hundred metres at a time--during which we would only see one or two other people, and often when we stopped to take pictures we were entirely alone.  We were never far from butterflies and birds (both songbirds and raptors), however, although we did not get to see any of the wild boars that apparently inhabit the mountain.

On the north side of the mountain, breaks in the trees allowed us to see the Peak infrastructure; 

Hong Kong island skyline below us; 

Kowloon Bay (including Sapphire Princess way in the distance); 

and Kowloon itself.

Once on the south side, we could see Aberdeen and the southern portions of Hong Kong island, as well as more of the islands and the South China Sea.

On this portion of the hike we also crossed an amazing waterfall, which was entirely unexpected and extraordinarily gorgeous.

Hong Kong is famous for its low clouds, and these did certainly prevent us from seeing as far as we might have (we could only just make out our cruise ship, for example, although it was only on the other side of Kowloon Bay), but I am glad it was as clear as it was, because I gather visibility can be much, much worse.

Back at the commercial portion of the peak, we went up to the Sky Terrace, which our tram ticket included entrance to, and enjoyed the view from there.  Really this view was not all that more special than what we had enjoyed on our hike, but there was an audio tour included that was surprisingly informative.  It lacked the obnoxiousness that I find ubiquitous of these types of things (perhaps the British-accented English helped), and gave good current and historical information of the buildings and landmarks and geography we were seeing, and Hong Kong generally.

Once back down below, we walked through Hong Kong Park, crossing the path of a "turtle out of water" (see video below). to the MTR.

 

We took the MTR under Victoria Harbour back to Kowloon, where we visited Nathan Road and the Temple Street Night Market.  It was not yet night, so the market was not quite in full swing, but it was a bustling place nonetheless, and generally walking through this neighborhood was very interesting.  

We ate dinner near Nathan Road, before taking the MTR back down to Tsim Sha Tsui.  We were quite taken with how incredible the Hong Kong skyline is at night, with most of the skyscrapers lit up in various colours.

We took the Star ferry again back across the harbour, and from Central Pier we walked over to the Hong Kong Macau Ferry Terminal, where we caught a TurboJet catamaran ferry to Macau.  Our ticket was for 21:00, but we were early enough to catch the 20:45, which was not a problem.  I gather you cannot take a later ferry, but they will put you on an earlier one if you want, assuming they have room.  In this case, the ferry was mostly empty.