Hong Kong Day 1

What can I say about Hong Kong? Skyscrapers - Shops - People - all in overwhelming numbers. Quite a contrast to New Zealand.

Looking across Victoria Harbour to Hong Kong City

Our flight arrived early in Hong Kong, at ~4.30am, before any of the airport shuttle buses or airport express train started operating. Just pondering what to do when we got into conversation with a limo driver whose client hadn't turned up and he offered to drive us into town to our hotel for a bargain price. Slightly nervous in case we were about to be kidnapped in a strange city, we accepted the offer and were transported in style direct to our hotel in Kowloon. We checked in and, much to our surprise, were able to gain immediate access to our room. We had expected to have to use their travellers' lounge until our room was ready later in the day. This was the first example of the superb service we received from the Hotel Icon.

Street sweeper in Kowloon

Our room was on the 20th floor, looking across Victoria Harbour to Hong Kong Island with all its neon-lit skyscrapers. The view was amazing and the room extremely comfortable. (I'd splashed out a bit for our final two days.)  We crashed out for a few hours, then hit the streets of Kowloon. I felt like an ant, in comparison to the enormous buildings. The streets were all immaculate, maintained by an army of street sweepers, each with brush and pan and coolie hat. The weather was overcast and quite cool. We wandered through the streets for a bit, soaking in the atmosphere, then headed for the promenade, along the harbour front. This led to the 'Promenade of Stars', HK's version of Holywood Boulevard, with hand-prints of stars in the pavement and various statues and themed-objects, all crowded by Chinese tourists taking photos of one another. We were to walk along this promenade several times during our two days in HK and never once did we see it without queues of people waiting to take photos beside these rather kitsch icons. Kitsch appears to be another defining attribute of.HK.

1881 Heritage Building in Kowloon - former HQ of Hong Kong
Marine Police, now an upmarket hotel and shopping centre

As we began to appreciate the scale of Hong Kong, we realised that we'd need to sort out some kind of transport if we were to see all we wanted to and, given the short duration of our stay, we took the easy option of signing up for the 'Big Bus'. After a bit of humming and hawing, we secured the two-day pass for the price of the one-day one and got the harbour boat tour thrown in as well. The pass gave us three open-topped bus tours - one of Kowloon, one of Hong Kong city and one that went across to the other side of Hong Kong Island to Stanley Beach and Aberdeen Harbour, where a sampan ride was part of the tour.

Ladies Market in Kowloon

We did the Kowloon tour first. This took us around the streets, markets and shopping malls of Kowloon. Given more time, we could have hopped off at various places to explore a bit more but didn't do this. Next, we took the Star Ferry across to HK Island, for our tour of the city. The Star Ferry across Victoria Harbour is one of HK's highlights. These old boats ply their way back and fore across the harbour, providing a quick commute along with fabulous views.

"Koala" buildings in central Hong Kong

Golden Bauhinia Square

The HK city tour was equally fascinating. It took us through the central and commercial districts which are dominated by enormous, gleaming skyscrapers, up to 100 stories high, then up into the mid-levels where scruffy residential skyscrapers are interspersed with the shiny business ones. Very occasionally, there is a low-level building, dating back to earlier times. One landmark on the tour was Golden Bauhinia Square where the handover of sovereignty from Britain to China took place on 1 July 1997. A Golden Bauhinia sculpture marks the spot.  The bauhinia is the national emblem of Hong Kong and is included on the Hong Kong flag.

Hong Kong trams

Trams rattle through the streets. These were under threat when the MTR system was planned in the 1970s but were retained by popular demand. Walking the streets is seldom practical. Instead, buildings are linked by arial walkways and escalators. One of my regrets was that we didn't have time to explore this pedestrian maze.

Building work is going on everywhere: new developments, refurbishment of old buildings and new MTR stations. We noticed this on all three of our bus tours and were fascinated at the use of bamboo scaffolding up to 30 storeys high and beyond.

Erecting bamboo scaffolding high above the street

New building work in Kowloon

The density of shops and vast shopping malls In both Kowloon and HK city is overwhelming. Designer label shops are everywhere. Think of an expensive designer (Versace, Guchi, Armani, etc.) and it's there. Not just in one outlet but in multiple outlets, all with huge, glossy displays and western mannequins. I was struck by how few advertising hoardings and shop displays used Asian models. Curious since the majority of the population and the people we saw in the street are Chinese.

Queen Elizabeth docked in Kowloon

Hong Kong is on the cruise liner circuit. The Queen Elizabeth was docked in Kowloon while we were there. The liners dock right next to one of the biggest and most expensive shopping malls and we were amused to see that the gangways from the boats appear to funnel the passengers straight into the shopping mall. Perhaps this has a bearing on why the shops don't tailor their displays to Asian models.

We took the ferry back to Kowloon and went for something to eat in a real Chinese restaurant, not far from our hotel. Very little English spoken there. Then we made our way back to the Avenue of Stars to watch the evening's Symphony of Lights. This is a son-et-lumiere display involving the skyscrapers on either side of Victoria Harbour. The buildings light up with multi-coloured neon displays in time to music and lasers lights are shone up into the clouds from the very top of some of the highest buildings. It happens every evening though, as we were to discover the following evening, the use of the lasers is weather dependent. By now rather weary after our very long day, we headed home to our hotel for an early night.

Symphony of Lights