5 nights in Singapore and now 7 nights in Hong Kong…this really is the relaxing part of my trip!
A slightly over 3 hour flight from Singapore and I arrived into Hong Kong, and easily the longest immigration queue of my trip so far. Thankfully it was moving and it may have been 15 minutes of a snaking queue before I was through with my little bit of paper which tells me I can stay until September if I wanted to.
The airport in Hong Kong is out west, and my hotel is on Hong Kong Island. The quickest way on public transport is the Airport Express train which goes to Hong Kong station on the island in about 25 minutes. The cost is $120 HKD / £12 (thankfully not quite at Heathrow Express prices!). I also had to take the metro a couple of stops to where I was staying in Sai Ying Pun, but overall this was a very straightforward trip to my hotel. The easiest way to pay for transport, and a whole heap of other things, in Hong Kong is via the Octopus card. You can buy physical cards in 7-Eleven’s or download the Octopus for Tourists app which allows you to add the card to your digital wallet and top up from the cards you already have in your wallet. In my experience this is an essential card to have in Hong Kong as all the transport and a lot of shops and restaurants accept this, as well as the laundrette I used.
One of my reasons for coming to Hong Kong was to catch up with a uni friend who I last saw 10 years ago on my previous chunk of time off work when I also came to Hong Kong. And it’s also on the way to Japan which will be my last stop on this leg of my sabbatical travels.
We managed to meet up on my first evening and went for a catch up over a very relaxing foot massage. Even though we hadn’t seen each other for over 10 years, it really was like no time had passed at all. I travel mostly on my own (if I was waiting to meet someone to travel, I would never leave my house! If you want to come with me on a trip, please holler!), but it has been really fantastic to catch up with a number of people on this long trip. And to meet all the new people I’ve met, who I will hopefully see again at some point.
I spent most of the next day with my friend too, it was so good just to hang out, meet her kids and catch up.
The following day I’d booked a food tour in the afternoon. If you’ve been reading this blog through my SE Asia travels, you’ll know I enjoy a food tour, I think it’s a really good way to get a more local experience, and give you a bit of confidence about the local food. The one I’d chosen was a local dim sum tour, and was half the price of every other food tour in HK on Viator. It was based on HK Island and we went to some very local stops including the Sheung Wan Market which was a supremely local food court. There is no way I’d have found this on my own. 3 hours later and I was very full!
With having a week here, I had been looking for some day excursions, and plumped for a day trip to neighbouring Macau the following day. Like Hong Kong, Macau is a special administrative region of China. It is not mainland China – certainly from an immigration point of view.
After taking a ferry over in the morning (about an hour), and going through immigration, we met with the tour guide in Macau. We started by going to the Kun Iam statue on the waterfront. This is a large statue dedicated to the goddess of mercy. Afterwards we drove past Macau Tower and saw some people bungee jumping off it (no thank you!) before heading to A-Ma Temple, one of the oldest in Macau. It was very busy with tourists and lots of burning incense.
After a buffet lunch, we went to the ruins of St Paul’s, and then walked through the old town where you can really see the Portuguese and European influence in the architecture. The town square could be anywhere on the Mediterranean!
Our last stop of the day was at the Venetian casino. Casinos are banned in mainland China (and Hong Kong), so everyone comes to Macau for the casinos. It’s like a mini Las Vegas. Except that this version of the Venetian is larger than the one in Vegas. It was extremely busy with Chinese tourists.
We got back to Hong Kong via the HZM (Hong Kong – Zhuhai – Macau) bridge, a 55km bridge and 6km tunnel which join Macau and Hong Kong. A very impressive feat of engineering!
This was a pretty full-on day trip – 12 hours in hotel and I was pretty tired by the end of it, though very happy I’d decided to go to Macau.
I should have had a bit of a rest the following day but instead I’d devised myself an itinerary for Kowloon. First up was Wong Tai Sin temple, which was overrun with tourists so wasn’t the best experience. I took the metro a couple of stops down the line to Chi Lin Nunnery which I’d visited on my previous trip to Hong Kong in 2016. It was so much more peaceful here, way fewer people, and I had a lovely time wandering around the temple. I also went to the neighbouring Nan Lian Gardens and then got back on the metro to head to Mongkok for some lunch. I picked a very quiet rooftop bar for a quick bite to eat before heading back into the madness of Mongkok, and the Ladies Market. And after that I headed back on the metro to Kowloon Walled City Park, which was formerly an incredibly densely populated part of Kowloon before it was demolished in the 1990s. I had planned to visit the Tsim Sha Tsui promenade which gives great views of the Hong Kong Island skyline but I was pretty tired after 2 long days on my feet so I headed back to the hotel and called it a day.
After a lazy start the next day, I headed to the Victoria Peak tram to take me up Victoria Peak. I was quite fortunate it was a relatively clear day, and so got some great views of the city skyline from the top. I can’t really get over how many skyscrapers there are here, and how tightly packed they are. After taking the tram back down, I walked a short distance to the Central Mid Level Escalators which are a very helpful way of climbing the steep streets in the Mid Levels on Hong Kong Island. I took them most of the way to the top and then walked back to my hotel through local neighbourhoods which were fairly quiet in the mid afternoon.
After a quiet evening, I had a quiet final day where I did make it back to Kowloon to walk along the promenade and take in the views.
And that was it for my visit to Hong Kong. This was the longest I will spend in one hotel in my whole year of travels. It was really nice to not have to repack my bag every other day, and also to spend a couple of days not hot-footing it around all the sights. And most of all, so great to see my friend after such a long time. Now off to Japan for the final part of this section of my travels
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