Hong Kong 2026

Full on in Hong Kong

How can we describe Hong Kong to those who have never been, or to those who are intrigued as to how it’s changed since passing from Britain to China almost thirty years ago? It’s difficult to know where to start. A city where the presence of the ultra modern is totally unmissable yet where traditional ways of life still exist, just out of sight. A city with the best and most comprehensive – and varied – public transport system we’ve ever encountered. A city with such an extensive network of footbridges, walkways, promenades and subways that it’s possible to walk a considerable distance without crossing a single street. And, a city rammed full of people robotically scurrying from place to place, seemingly oblivious to each other’s presence as they walk with eyes fixed to whatever they’re doing with their mobile phones. It’s a science fiction movie from the 1960s where people only talk via machines.

Look up and you see a scarcely believable number of tower blocks, in some districts leaving barely a square inch of ground free from concrete and steel reaching skywards, look out from any window and chances are you’ll see the sea, ferries, freight ships, maybe a cruise liner. Yet there’s urban forests where the birds sing, there’s heavy dark clouds clinging to the peaks of mountains, there’s peasant fishermen earning a meagre living within yards of millionaire yachts and expensive high rise apartments. And there’s shopping malls, gigantic plush shopping malls at every turn, each one with a colossal urban footprint. There’s even beaches somewhere, we’re told.

We knew that four days (five nights) in Hong Kong might not be enough to fit everything in, so there was a need even before we arrived to get our act together and make the days as full on as possible. Those four days unfolded something like this…

Arrive Sunday 12th, late evening, straight to our hotel in Kowloon. Unpack, straight to bed. It’s 11pm but having flown from Auckland it’s 3am in our body clocks and we’ve been up for 21 hours. Set an alarm. Sleep.

Monday 13th. Wide awake by 6am as body clocks not yet fully adjusted, which is handy given how much there is to do today. We haven’t included breakfast in our hotel booking so we start with coffee and modest sandwich round the corner at a badly understocked cafe. Stroll along the Kowloon promenade taking in the incredible concentration of giant buildings, then grab the famous Star Ferry across to Hong Kong Island. Something looked odd about the ferry when we first saw it from the hotel window, and now we know what it is: it doesn’t have a stern, just two bows, meaning it doesn’t have to waste time turning around on the short crossing.

Wander through Statue Square playing spot the big towers, on through Central, taking the escalator which claims to be the world’s longest at over 800m, though actually it’s a succession of travellators and not one continuous unit so we decide to dispute its claim. Find our way to the incredibly steep and lengthy ride on the funicular up to The Peak where the viewing platforms are well placed to grant panoramas across land and sea.

Return on the funicular, hungry after the meagre breakfast, grab lunch in Central Market, noticing that one bar looks like it would be good for a beer if we get the chance one evening. Take the time honoured Star Ferry back, at the terrific price of 77p for the two of us.

4:30pm, board the last of the original Chinese junk boats, The Dukling (no “c”), for a serene half hour cruise around the water, freed for a while from the monster tower blocks, gliding through the waves and listening to an informative commentary on the history of these little red-sailed craft. It’s thoroughly lovely.

Evening, 8pm, watch with hundreds (thousands?) of others the laser/LED/ drone light show which is an absolute spectacle, the 2026 equivalent of a firework display but with ultra modern technology. It’s OK and it’s very clever but we only need to see it once. Afterwards take the metro to Temple Street, wander through the markets and sample the renowned street food including the local delicacy of fish balls on sticks. (I like them, Michaela isn’t keen on the sloppy texture). Grab a cheap but excellent Chinese meal in a locals’ place in Woo Sung Street. Return by metro. Bed at 23:30, only been up the 17 hours today, 4 less than yesterday. Set an alarm. Sleep.

Tuesday 14th. Breakfast at the hotel, much more satisfactory. Take the metro to Tung Chung on Lantau Island and wander into the cable car station from where we take the amazing Npong Ping 360 cable car over the sea and up the mountain. Long long queues to board, by the way – takes almost an hour of queuing before we get our ride. At 25 minutes journey time, 5.7 kilometres in length and an elevation gain of over 600m it’s regularly rated one of the top ten cable car rides in the world. Up at the top we climb the steps to the “Big Buddha” statue, appropriately named as it’s 112ft tall and sits 1580ft above sea level. Could be called “Huge Buddha” and you wouldn’t argue. We explore the surrounding temple of Po Lin and marvel at its ornate beauty.

From here we take the number 21 bus down the other side of Lantau, to the ancient fishing village of Tai O which is a remarkable sight with its myriad of houses built on stilts over the water, tight alleys leading to unusual footbridges without which the community is cut in to separate pieces. Climb into a small boat to move calmly through this remarkable ancient village where little has changed in generations (apart from the advent of gawping tourists like us) and out past the harbour wall to the sea beyond. Still determined to eat in properly local places we grab a couple of bowls of authentic Tai O food. Disappointingly poor quality and squid which is the consistency of a truck tyre. Completely inedible.

Retrace our journey via Bus 21 and the amazing cable car (we took the glass floor option both times just to get the full experience) then metro back to Kowloon.

Evening, head back to Temple Street, aiming for street food and fortune tellers. On plastic chairs on a street corner with dozens of others the food is both excellent and cheap. On plastic chairs in a makeshift kiosk the fortune telling is absolute garbage and a waste of money.

Back to Kowloon via metro. Set an alarm. Sleep soundly.

Wednesday 15th. Decide to take breakfast out rather than pay hotel prices. Fail to find anything half decent (lots aren’t open yet) so head out unfed on the metro to Lei Tung. Find excellent breakfast cafe and order more than we intended because we’re hungry. Nice but full. Here at Ap Lei Chau the attraction is the Aberdeen fishing village. The water here is rammed like an oversubscribed parking lot with every type of boat you can think of. Decrepit little fishing smacks rub shoulders with millionaire launches, big trawlers chug back in from the night’s sortie, water taxis weave back and forth between the hulls and houseboats provide homes for water dwelling families. A handful of the houseboats are nicely presented airbnb lodgings these days. Here as well there are the remains of what was, pre-COVID, one of Hong Kong’s destination restaurants, the floating eatery of Jumbo Kingdom. Having not reopened after the pandemic, the decrepit structure is ample evidence of how quickly the sea and salty air will reclaim disused property.

Fishermen trade at every level here. The trawlers drop large catches into the thriving fish market – strictly wholesale – but independent men in tiny boats bring in their modest catch to sell to eager punters on the quay. We watch the transactions taking place, the fresh fish being descaled and de-finned while still alive, then beheaded and filleted with speed and precision. Money is passed down to the boat in the same net that the fish goes up in.

It’s here as well that the time honoured sampan boats still amble around the waters, some offering half hour trips to visitors. Of course we take one, the lady skipper gently steering us around the crowded waters and carefully explaining all that we see, pointing to a fisherman and saying ‘very poor”, then to the waterfront high rise and saying “very expensive”.

Statues at Aberdeen harbour

Back on the metro to Kowloon, a quick shower and change then on the metro again to Admiralty. From here a major treat for any transport buff as we board one of the quaint old double decker trams which run on rails through the busy streets. These trams, known affectionately as “ding dings” by the locals, have been in operation for over 120 years and are an absolute delight to use, definitely not a smooth ride but huge fun.

We’ve taken the wonderful tram to Happy Valley racecourse. Wednesday night is THE night here, crowds upwards of 50,000 gravitating here every week for racing, music and party. There’s live music, often with a surprisingly big name, in between each race on a stage in the beer garden. Tonight, after Race 4, we are treated to none other than Jason Donovan. Not being big gamblers but always up for some fun, we allocate, and put a ceiling on, our bets for the night at 500 dollars, that’s just under £50, a modest amount In anyone’s book. With an uncharacteristic flash of fortune on the gambling front we snare two winners and one place and end the evening only 49 dollars down. Massively enjoyable entertainment for under a fiver can’t be bad. Great evening, terrific atmosphere, enormous fun.

Food at the races is a first for both of us in one sense, a hot dog which tastes predominantly of basil. Novel.

Back to the hotel via another delightful double decker tram and yet another metro. In bed half an hour after midnight. It’s still full on. Set an alarm. Sleep. 

Thursday 16th. Breakfast at the hotel, given up on the cafes now and paid the money instead. Only one major destination today, the 10,000 buddhas monastery. Long metro journey, followed by a bit of nonsense as we can’t find our way out of the shopping mall and into the street. Close to my worst nightmare, trapped in a shopping mall. I hope it doesn’t give me dreams tonight, I may never recover. There aren’t really 10,000 buddhas at the monastery – no, remarkably, there’s a lot more than that, over 12,000 in the main temple building alone. Most impactful though is the long climb up the long staircase (roughly forty billion steps in extreme humidity) which is lined all the way up with life size golden buddha statues, not in the usual handful of buddha poses but instead seemingly performing all sorts of unusual deeds from hunting prey to reading books to riding animals. There’s also a few in decidedly dodgy poses which brings out the worst of my irreverent humour which is best left where it was and not included in this narrative. Philip The Philistine. 

Back to Kowloon and for the first time since landing here on Sunday night we grant ourselves a siesta hour, from which I have to rouse Michaela otherwise she’ll sleep till tomorrow, and there’s one last thing to do. Remember we said we’d spotted a decent bar in Central Market? Remember that our winnings at Happy Valley meant that we’re left with more cash than we had intended? Can you think of a way of solving both problems in one go? I can.

And so we end our exhausting, exhilarating four days in this city of clashes by spending money on beer and wine at a table by the sidewalk where we can watch the world go by – all oblivious to each other and all glued to their mobile phones.

One last meal – another HK speciality, the cha sui pork dish – and back on the metro to our welcoming hotel bed. Set an alarm. Sleep. 

Friday 17th. Breakfast at the hotel, a couple of paracetamol to ward off the lingering effects of the alcohol, taxi to the airport which uses up the very last of our Hong Kong dollars.

We’re done. It’s been amazing.