When we first started planning this trip, we knew that Hong Kong had to be on the list. Even though Kate was born in Swindon, she was born to Cantonese parents and raised in Hong Kong for a significant part of her childhood, and still very much views it as her cultural home. It was important that we try to spend a decent chunk of time immersed in Hong Kong life during this trip, so that the kids can experience it before it’s too late. I say before it’s too late because Hong Kong is changing at an astronomical rate. When Kate lived here as a child it was still a British Colony under British rule. Obviously in 1997 that all changed when the 100 year lease granted to the British came to an end, and control was handed back to China. And so started a 50 year period whereby China would govern Hong Kong as a Special Administrative Region of China, but supposedly wouldn’t let it become fully China-ised until the 50 years had passed. As it turns out though, China didn’t really stick to their word on that one, and their promises are already wearing decidedly thin. Schools are now placing “patriotism” high on the agenda, parents themselves are also being re-educated, electoral reforms are limiting free opposition and people are genuinely afraid to discuss politics out in public for fear of reprisal. Hong Kong as we knew it is sadly not long for this world, and this may be the only chance for Hunter and Bam to experience “old” Hong Kong before it just becomes another extension of China.
All that said, we didn’t actually know if we’d be able to visit Hong Kong when we planned our year off. There were intense riots a few years ago, for all the reasons outlined above, and it seemed like it could have been almost inadvisable to visit from a public safety perspective. But the riots then gave way to COVID, and Hong Kong also didn’t deal with that very well. In fact most of Asia wasn’t available for travel when we started booking flights all that time ago, and we had to simply leave the whole end of our trip open, to arrange it as and when it eventually reopened for business. Which it did thank God, and here we are. And surprisingly, in light of all the troubles Hong Kong has been through in the last few years, it doesn’t feel hugely different from the last time we visited eight years ago when Hunter was just a baby. It feels a bit quieter, and everything seems to close a bit earlier, but essentially it’s much the same. There are a LOT of mainland Chinese tourists here too, much more than before. It’s harder for me to pick out with my western ears (although I’m not too bad at it), but in many areas the mandarin speakers definitely outweigh the local Cantonese dialect.
Anyway, we had arrived! We had managed to book a decent hotel room in Sai Ying Pun on Hong Kong Island, and that would be our Hong Kong home for the next three weeks. Interestingly, Des Voeux Road where our hotel was located is known as Dried Seafood Street, due to being lined with shops dedicated to retailing and wholesaling, you’ve guessed it, dried seafood. Everything from tiny dried shrimp, through dried and flattened pufferfish, all the way up to a dizzying variety of dried shark fins. It’s pretty interesting looking at the wares for sale on the shop fronts as we pass them everyday, and you soon get used to the “aroma”!
I think we did pretty well finding this room to be honest. Not only was it in a great location, right next to a MTR tube stop and on the Island Tram line, but at around 700 square feet it was positively cavernous by Hong Kong standards. The last time we visited, we booked a three bedroom AirBnb in Kowloon that someone had somehow managed to carve out of a 300 square foot apartment! Yep, you read that right, three bedrooms in 300 square feet. And our room this time was cheaper! We had two large bedroom areas, two huge separate bathrooms, and two weird “office” areas – perfect for catching up on home school. Amazing – hit me up if you need details.
We settled into our new pad before heading out for a quick wander around our new neighbourhood. Hong Kong was hot, we were heading into the tropical monsoon season, but it felt like a walk in the park compared to the humidity of Vietnam. We didn’t really get up to much besides grabbing a bite to eat at our local Fairwood canteen and calling into a dessert parlour for a sweet treat before calling it a day.
We settled into our new pad before heading out for a quick wander around our new neighbourhood. Hong Kong was hot, we were heading into the tropical monsoon season, but it felt like a walk in the park compared to the humidity of Vietnam. We didn’t really get up to much besides grabbing a bite to eat at our local Fairwood canteen and calling into a dessert parlour for a sweet treat before calling it a day.
We finally managed to squeeze in a bit of school in the morning – we only had a few weeks worth left to finish off the year, and we had somehow managed to significantly fall behind over the last few weeks, so I was (strangely) pretty keen to crack on with it to be honest. There were also some grown-up errands to run on our first day in HK – we had accumulated a fair bit of laundry over the last few weeks that needed seeing to, and luckily there was a launderette right next door. After seeing to our smalls, and once again making our hotel room look like a shanty town via the cunning use of drying lines tied between windows and door frames, we headed into Central to see to Kate’s affairs. She needed to obtain a new bank card for her HK account, as well as heading to the Government Offices in Sham Sui Po to renew her Hong Kong ID card. Kate’s Dad, Ken, still lives in HK, and we hadn’t seen him for four years due to the recent pandemic, so we were all pretty excited to catch up with him. To that end, we enlisted his help to assist us in navigating the confusing departments of the government buildings.
The kids were excited to hang out with Gong-Gong (Grandpa in local lingo), they barely remembered the last time they saw him in person, and FaceTime conversations just aren’t the same. We wandered for a while, taking in the sights, before heading for dinner in a local roast duck specialty restaurant Ken recommended in Causeway Bay. He’s pretty encyclopaedic with his in-depth knowledge of where to eat in Hong Kong. I guess that’s one of the benefits of retirement – I reckon he’s tried pretty much every single cafe, restaurant and greasy spoon in the greater HK area. He also seems to know the location of every single accessible toilet, and how clean it is – and trust me when I say it, that is indispensable know-how in a town like this!
We said goodnight to Ken, and caught the ding-ding home. That’s the tram by the way. But we hooked up with Ken again the following day straight after school. It turns out he’s a pretty keen swimmer, so we met him for lunch and a few lengths at one of the awesome public swimming pools that you can find around HK. This particular one had not one, but two 50 metre pools, one indoor and one outdoor, as well as a kiddies 25 metre pool. And anyone can enter for just a few quid, what a bargain! Senior Citizens get an even better deal – every public transport journey costs just 2 dollars (20p), and entry to these pools is around 8 dollars (80p) with no membership required. Hunter seemed to relish getting back in a proper pool and churning out the lengths. Before long he was well over a kilometre, so he set himself a target of a mile before calling it a day. I set myself the rather more pedestrian target of 300 metres alongside Bam, and I reckon that’s a PB for her and me!
For those of you that don’t know, Kate used to work for Cathay Pacific, back in the days before we had kids. She spent the best part of a decade travelling back and forth between London and Hong Kong, and many of her friends still fly with Cathay today. So, of course, we will be meeting up with a fair few of her old friends and colleagues during our time here. Tonight, we were heading out to Fanling in the New Territories of Hong Kong, towards the border with mainland China. We were meeting Kate’s old friend Lai Yu at her mum’s house, who had kindly offered to cook us all dinner. Another of Kate’s old friends from her airline days, Rafael, was also there. It was just like the old days. They catch up in the UK pretty often, but this was the first time they had hung out like this in Hong Kong for almost a decade. After several hours of eating, drinking and catching up (and the obligatory catwalk lessons for Bam from Rafael), we headed home.
We hooked up with this crowd again on Wednesday. Cathay crew are always put up in Headland Hotel in Tung Chung on Lantau Island, so we headed that way for a cheeky swim in the hotel swimming pool with Lai Yu. Hunter managed to squeeze out another mile in the hour we were there, I guess he hasn’t lost the knack while we’ve been away. Time for a quick tour of Kate’s old workplace – Cathay City – where we met up with the others before heading into Tung Chung for a bit of arcade fun and some dinner.
One of the best day trips (in my humble opinion anyway) you can do in Hong Kong, is the awesome journey to see the Tian Tan Buddha, perched high in the hills of Ngong Ping on Lantau Island. This 34 metre tall, 280 ton lump of bronze sits atop a flight of 268 marble steps, and affords breathtaking views over the surrounding hills, bays and islands. We met Ken off the ding-ding outside our hotel, and made our way on the MTR to Tung Chung station to start our journey on the epic Ngong Ping 360 cable car. Luckily we had booked our tickets online the day before, because the queues were absolutely ridiculous. Even the queue for the smart people who had pre-booked online took half an hour – to pick up the wristbands! Why on earth a country as technologically advanced as Hong Kong can’t work out how to just email a scannable QR code is beyond me. Before long though, we were sailing high above the hills of Lantau, along the nearly six kilometre cable car route to the summit. I love a good cable car, it’s such a peaceful and serene way to view the surrounding landscape. Although, it doesn’t always feel like the safest mode of transport. You might recall me writing about the incident on the Singapore Cable Car, which we visited a few months back. It was snared by an oil rig travelling underneath causing the deaths of seven people. And the same morbid curiosity which caused me to google that incident while travelling on that cable car also peaked my curiosity on this outing. It turns out that this gondola also suffered an incident in 2007 when a (luckily) empty cabin actually fell off the cable, crashing into the mountainside below. I’ve gotta stop googling these things, at least until afterwards anyway.
Anyway, we did arrive in Ngong Ping Village in one piece, and made our way to the Po Lin Monastery to burn a bit of incense in the usual offering of reverence to the big man himself, before tackling the rather imposing staircase to his statue, standing proud at the top. The whole experience of visiting a site such as this for someone who doesn’t come from a devout Buddhist background is obviously a purely touristic one. But it’s important to remember that as well as being an interesting cultural experience, these temples are a deeply religious place for the many Buddhists who make the journey here every day, and to treat the area with the respect it deserves.
We had a look around a few of the well appointed shops which had sought to take advantage of the huge daily influx of visitors by lightening their wallets before tackling the stairs up to see Buddha, and then found our way back to the cable car for the return trip to sea level. Our tickets allowed us to make the return in a glass bottomed “crystal” cabin, which was a worthwhile upgrade allowing the kids to watch the forest and South China Sea rush by beneath our feet.
After our cable car adventure, we made our way to Sha Tin in the New Territories to meet up with an old friend of Ken’s from his childhood. “Uncle Tim”, as we have come to know him, has been best friends with Ken since they were Hunter’s age, and they are still thick as thieves now. We caught up on the 8 years since we last saw him while sharing a fantastic banquet style dinner with him and his wife.
We started Friday with a hearty noodle style breakfast at a traditional “cha chaan teng” restaurant. This is basically the HK equivalent of a greasy spoon, and the pinnacle of east-meets-west colonial fusion, serving Asian versions of European brekkie favourites alongside buttery pineapple buns and satay beef noodle soups. Then, after a brief stint of school, we headed into the buzzing Kowloon fashion district of Mong Kok for a trawl around the vibrant maze of shopping streets. Street food is a viable light lunch in Hong Kong, and you are well catered for in MK. As well as the ever popular curried fish balls and Siu Mai dumplings, the more adventurous can chow down on such treats as skewered chicken intestines, stinky tofu and fried blood cubes. This can all be followed up with a visit to one of the many bubble tea stalls for a fruity beverage and a bubble waffle for dessert. Did I say “light lunch”?!
The ever popular “Ladies Market” has been one of the main shopping attractions of MK for decades. This kilometre long stretch of Tung Choi Street is densely packed with hundreds of stalls selling cheap souvenirs, accessories and knock off goods. If something is currently in fashion, or the latest fad with the fashionable youth, then these stall holders have sourced the cheapest Chinese fakey versions for your shopping pleasure. I don’t think the market has quite recovered from the Covid crisis yet though, and it feels a lot more sparse than the last time we visited in 2015. There were definitely less tourists perusing the wares on offer as well.
Ever since Japan, we had promised Bam a visit to another cat cafe, and there are plenty to choose from here. We spent a full hour in the 200 square foot converted apartment space of “Catsky” several storeys above Ladies Market, indulging Bam’s love/hate relationships with these animals. She’s strange like that: she is the first to coo and dote on any fluffy cute animals from afar. But as soon as one actually approaches her, her body instantly retreats into an involuntarily panic mode, as though the fluffy hairballs are about to attack!
If you have any faulty electronics in need of attention, then Hong Kong is the place to be. My iPhone had been on its last legs since all the way back in New Orleans. I had dropped it a few times this year, and the rear glass had been repaired several times in Australia already, but it had now also started randomly switching itself off unless permanently tethered to a battery pack. This had become a total pain in the backside, as I use my phone a lot for photography and work, and I was on the brink of buying a new iPhone. Amazingly, the clever chaps in one of the numerous electronics malls in HK can sort most problems that will cost you a small fortune in Apple, for a fraction of the price. I got a replacement battery and new rear glass for around eighty quid from a chap in the awesome Golden Computer Centre. The quote from Apple for the same job was almost a grand. Yeah sure, you would get proper Apple parts, but you literally can’t tell the difference, and I reckon the battery actually has more life now than when it was brand new!
One more stop today, and it another family meal. Kate’s uncle still lives in Hong Kong, in the same suburb she used to live with her grandmother. We found our way to Kwun Tong, past Kate’s old primary school, and all the way to the same restaurant in which I last saw Kau Fu 8 years ago. Kau Fu is not his name, in fact I don’t think I actually know his name. Kau Fu means mother’s brother in Cantonese. There’s no simple word for “uncle” in Chinese, there’s different words depending on exactly which part of the family they hail from. It makes it pretty bloody complicated to learn, but I guess at least you know exactly who you’re talking about without having to explain it!
Anyway, we shared a proper Chinese meal while Kate caught Kau Fu up on all the family news and vice versa, before we took a walk back to his nearby flat for an impromptu piano rehearsal. He’s a piano teacher you see, and somehow he has managed to squeeze not one, but two pianos into his compact HK apartment. AND ONE OF THEM IS A GRAND PIANO! He doesn’t live on the first floor either. Oh no, he lives 23 floors up. And that piano doesn’t fit in the lift. So that means some poor sap has had to walk this hulking lump of wood and metal up 23 floors of winding stairs. It turns out it costs 1000 dollars per floor to move a piano up stairs out here. So that makes £2300 just to get it up here. Money well spent though, I wouldn’t fancy moving it, what’s wrong with a keyboard?!
Our final day of week one saw us heading to the very end of the Kwun Tong line in East Kowloon for yet another family meal. We met up with Kate’s Dad, his uncle and aunt, and another of his Dad’s old friends. Uncle Tim was there too, he loves a good meal! There was more catching up, and more discussion of distant family news and adventures, followed by a wander along the sea front in the sunshine.
After lunch, Ken took us back to Kowloon Tong to visit the memorial site for his parents. These purpose built buildings are scattered all over HK, and it’s where you go to visit your departed nearest and dearest, and offer up a bit of incense and a prayer or two. It’s a lovely, respectful kinda ritual, to regularly remember those who aren’t around any more in lieu of visiting a grave site. Barely anyone gets buried in HK, there just isn’t any space for it, so these are the Buddhist versions of our cemeteries I suppose.
That evening, after another spot of swimming in our local Olympic sized pool, we headed into the heart of Kowloon to have a wander around the famous Temple Street Night Market. To be honest, it’s not dissimilar from the shopping experience of yesterday’s Ladies Market, except at night. It’s the same old crap for sale, except when you get right down the cheap end, where the usual crap gets even more crappy. But if you’re willing to dig deep and sift through the boxes of dusty and potentially ancient China-factory castoffs, you might just find a bargain.
Another bonus of coming here is eating in one of the many Claypot Rice restaurants lining the streets. This particular speciality involves baking rice topped with various toppings in a hot clay pot, until the bottom almost burns and becomes crunchy. It’s not actually my favourite thing to eat to be honest, but pick the right one and the flavours can be quite delicious. Sausage, chicken and mushroom was a great combo for me, and Kate actually plumped for the preserved salty duck, a more conservative choice than I was expecting, considering her earlier cravings for frog and liver!
We wandered back through the tat a second time, and found our way past the many haggard looking fortune tellers, and horrendously awful karaoke singers towards the station. Amazingly, some of these “singers” (if you can call them that) were receiving large tips from the throngs of strange old men who had come out to enjoy their awful warblings. Although I suspect the skimpy outfits probably had more influence over the size of the notes being handed over than the quality of the musical performance.
Just time for a quick dessert in the insanely popular KaiKai dessert house before turning in for the night. People were queuing up and down the pavement on both sides of the road, eager to partake in a bowl of their Michelin recommended sweet slop, so we thought we’d better see what the fuss was about. Incredibly, the kids were actually converted to the idea of a chilled bowl of… wait for it… sweetened snow fungus. Wonders will never cease.
That was the end of our first week in Hong Kong. I thought we’d come here for a few quiet weeks after the craziness of Japan and Vietnam. But actually it’s been completely flat out since we arrived. Ah well, better to pack it in now I guess – soon enough we’re gonna be back in the real world wishing we were still here. Plenty of time to rest when we get home…