Hong Kong Island, Hong Kong (SAR)
Hong Kong consists of three main areas - Hong Kong Island, Kowloon and Lantau - and a number of smaller islands. I'm staying in Discovery Bay which is a high rise area of Lantau, the biggest of the islands, and is where you will find many ex pats living a reasonably western lifestyle full of McDonalds and pubs. A short ferry ride on the famous Star Ferry takes me across to Central which is the main hub of Hong Kong and from where buses, trains, taxis and rickshaws will happily take you wherever you want to go. The Star Ferry, in fact, is one of the highlights of the whole Hong Kong experience for me - not only can you get a ferry to any of the outlying islands to experience everything Hong Kong has to offer for next to nothing, but the fact is that my place of residence while I'm here in Discovery Bay means that I am actually forced to sit back and relax for the 30 minute ferry crossing to Central every morning before I can even think about going anywhere. An early morning ferry ride really sets you up for the day! Of the other two main areas of the region, Hong Kong Island itself contains all the markets, the zoological gardens, the Hong Kong Peak with it's almost vertical tram to the top and most of the nightlife. Hong Kong Island is where you will find Central, as well as a reasonable selection of shops and restaurants and the intriguingly out of place town of Aberdeen - where you can visit Ocean Park, a marine park not dissimilar to Sea World in Florida, and the Middle Kingdom which is a huge Theme Park full of Japanese Pagodas and water gardens. It is here that, on my last visit to the territory, I was sucked into a demonstration of local dance and forced to gyrate madly with beautiful Chinese girls in front of a laughing audience. Wan Chai, the nightlife district, gained notoriety as the red light district back in the days of Suzie Wong. Nowadays, however, there isn't very much about Wan Chai that could be considered seedy - it's full of McDonalds, Irish Bars and Nightclubs. The most popular bar at the moment (1998) is Carneigies, which is a rock and roll Bar and is packed to the hilt nightly by people dancing precariously on the bar and the balcony to rock from the Seventies and Eighties. The few "Girlie" bars that do exist in the area display their presence via huge neon signs but usually offer little more to the sleazy traveller than a woman in her seventies pretending to be in her twenties and a huge bar bill at the end of the night. The days of Suzie Wong are long gone. Getting around Hong Kong is easy. Kowloon, Hong Kong Island and Lantau are all joined by a clean and highly efficient subway train service called the MTR. The first challenge which greets new arrivals to Hong Kong is working out how to find their way around, and once the seemingly complex subway map has been mastered this becomes as easy as pie - as long as you don't set out in the rush hour, when slightly less than the population of North America all decide to swoop down on the system and try to board a train at the same time, getting around is a doddle and you can even switch to the overland railway and travel right up to the border with China as I will be doing later in the week. The ticketing system on the MTR also beats any I have seen elsewhere hands down. Using a system called Octopus, You buy a special train ticket with a microchip embedded in it and then keep it for as long as you like. The original Octopus ticket costs you a small deposit to cover the cost of the microchip technology should you lose it, but this is returned to you if you turn the ticket in later. Octopus is essentially a reloadable ticket, and you can add as much cash value to it as you like at any station by either going to the ticket office and handing it over or using the ticket machines you see everywhere you turn. When you walk through the turnstile onto the platform at the beginning of your journey, the system reads your Octopus automatically as you walk through without even requiring you to take it out of your bag, and then when you pass through the corresponding turnstile at your destination it deducts the cost of the journey and a little screen lights up telling you your balance. As an added bonus, you can make a journey of any length to use up whatever remains on the ticket - so if you only have a few cents left on your Octopus, you can use it to travel all the way across town which I think is a nice touch. Once again, Hong Kong is ahead of the pack on technology - why don't we have ideas like this back home (1)? Octopus can also be used just about anywhere - Taxis have a reader to swipe it, so do buses, you can even use it in McDonalds to buy a Big Mac! Today, I started my trip around the sights of Hong Kong by making my way up to the highest point on Hong Kong Island, known imaginatively as "The Peak". There are two ways to get up there, one of which is by using one of the most fascinating innovations I have ever come across, an escalator which runs right up the street from sea level to the peak. This moving staircase runs in stages between each street which crosses it all the way to the top, and you can make your way all the way to the top by jumping onto the lowest escalator and then just taking a few steps onto the next each time a road crosses your path and the current escalator is forced to stop. Each section is covered with a canopy in case it rains, and they have the system set up so that the stairs all move downward in the morning and upwards in the afternoon so that people can come down from the hillside to work and then return home later with the absolute minimum of effort. Only in Hong Kong would they think of something like this! The other way to the Peak, and the one I took today, involves walking from Central for a few blocks until you arrive at the base station for The Peak Tram. The tram is pulled at a ridiculously steep angle up the hillside to the peak, stopping twice on the way to let people on and off at intermediate stations, and arrives, unlike the escalators, right in the heart of the Peak Tower. This is a combined shopping and entertainment complex full of both expensive boutiques and local souvenir shops, and there are fairground attractions and a lookout point from which you can obtain the famous view of the neon metropolis by night. A large restaurant also allows you to eat and look at the view at the same time, which I suspect brings a lot of romance-seekers up here late at night. There are the usual assortment of loud bars and pubs for those who just want to get drunk somewhere different. Right next door is the Peak Galleria, an even bigger shopping complex on three floors with altogether too many modern boutiques for it's own good, and outside the Galleria is an enormous fountain set into the pavement with jets which shoot water high into the air at just the right intervals so that you don't notice and scare the willies out of yourself walking across them and getting soaked to the skin. A return ticket on the Peak Tram will set you back about 28 Hong Kong Dollars, which is about £2.50 (2), but this often includes entrance to some of the attractions when you get to the top. The Peak also includes extensive gardens and walks, which a lot of people manage to totally miss as they aren't very well signposted. A visit to the Peak without taking a walk through the gardens and exploring the different nature trails laid out for you would almost be a sin and a pleasant afternoon can easily be spent just wandering aimlessly before getting hopelessly lost trying to find your way back to the Peak Tram and coming back down on the escalator instead! A trip to Hong Kong Island is never complete without at least one trip to a local street market, of which the best balance between ethnic and touristy are to be found by going on the MTR to Mong Kok or Sham Shui Po where the stall holders are happy to bargain with you as most of the prices are hugely inflated to start with. The best and most extensive market on the island for tourists is at Stanley, and this is where you can get hold of all those local handicrafts you're dying to pore over - A fairly long bus ride on Route 260 from Central takes you into Stanley and drops you off practically on the doorstep of the market, ensuring however that you have to walk past a couple of little coffee shops on the way which will try to entice you in for refreshments. Stanley market is far more than just tacky souvenirs, however; I managed to pick up a beautiful painting on fabric of boats on the harbour which I actually got to watch the artist putting the finishing touches to and which now takes pride of place on my living room wall... and let's face it, this is the only place in the world you can actually get genuine local crafts and not be remotely bothered about finding a "Made in Hong Kong" sticker on the bottom! If you're looking for a taste of the local markets, there are so many that you could spend all week wandering around them and still not come close to seeing everything. There are bird markets, fish markets, flower markets, clothes markets, fruit markets, the ladies market, the list goes on. There are markets selling nothing but Jade, markets selling nothing but candles or incense or Chinese medicines. Whatever you want, it's here. It really does sound like a get-out, but there are so many markets to be found in Hong Kong that there's little point in listing them all here - just grab a guidebook and explore and you'll be pleasantly surprised what you can find littering the tiny side streets, especially after dusk when the Temple Street night market opens and you find yourself surrounded by stall holders selling watches and men's clothing. In a grubby corner of Mong Kok, you'll find the Bird market, a fascinating but slightly worrying part of town where lonely old men come to buy and sell caged birds of every variety from mynahs to budgies, or just to show off their birds to each other (and not in the sense you're thinking, either!). Here, if you're not going deaf at the sound of a million shrill tweets from every direction, you're jumping a mile in the air because a small snake has escaped from the live bird food stalls and slithered up your trouser leg! Not being a huge fan of seeing animals caged up, the bird market doesn't exactly float my boat, and the same goes for the Goldfish market at which you will find nothing but endless varieties of fish hanging from tiny plastic bags as though they are at a fairground and with a life expectancy of about 5 minutes - unfortunately, the Chinese believe that goldfish add to the fung shui of a property so this isn't likely to stop anytime soon. At the Jade market in Yau Ma Tei, accessible from the MTR, you can bargain for Jade, Amber and Lapis carved into every shape imaginable until you realise just how much you're being ripped off compared to the locals. The only problem, in fact, with the infinite options for shopping in Hong Kong is that there is so much more space allocated to shopping centres and so little to actually getting inside. Builders here seem to build until they've created a shopping complex the size of a small town and then slap a small door onto one corner of it as an afterthought - you can literally walk around for hours looking for a way into a concrete monstrosity several blocks in size before finally discovering that you have to go down into an MTR station to get into it, or up a small flight of steps marked "Bakery - this way" One of the things that often gets mentioned about Hong Kong is the fact that many shopping centres in certain areas quite openly sell pirated computer software, something which constantly gets right up the noses of the software giants. This has always been a major problem, because as a communist country where the idea of individuals owning anything is totally unknown, China doesn't have any copyright laws as such and is not in a position to tell anybody off for making copies. From what I have been led to believe, it is alleged that the system has always involved the local Hong Kong police occasionally turning up at a well known pirate store, the owner handing over a large amount of money and them going away again - although, of course, this is purely hearsay. Recently it seems that the US government has finally thrown its dummy out of the pram and had something of a hissy fit with the Chinese stance on piracy - and whatever they've done, it seems to have worked as the local papers have been reporting a heavy downturn in the sale of pirated software in the region recently. My own experience of the situation doesn't quite tie up with the official line that piracy is going away. On my last visit to Hong Kong, I strolled into the large computer centre in Mong Kok - a shopping centre devoted entirely to computer equipment and software - and was immediately pounced upon by a man who had been waiting just inside the door. Clearly he had been put there to wait for any Westerners who looked as though they might have some money, and he didn't waste any time at all in getting to business. Upstairs, he told me, I would find hardware and PC accessories. Downstairs, there was everything I could possibly want for my PlayStation or Nintendo Console. Oh and if I wanted the "special" department then I should walk down the street for two blocks, go up a flight of dirty steps between a bakery and a Chinese Medicine Centre, and into a room where a queue of people would be lining up to ask a dodgy looking guy at a desk for copies of just about anything! I followed the directions he gave me and, although I wasn't about to partake myself (as a software designer myself, wouldn't that be just a bit hypocritical?), I observed the man at the desk sending a runner off to some secret location to collect orders as they were placed. As I walked back to the computer centre afterwards, I looked back and saw everybody leaving - which I took to mean that the police were on their way and the location would simply be casually moving somewhere else. If you want a real taste of China, you could do worse than pull up a stall and plonk yourself down at one of the gutter restaurants you'll find everywhere - and yes, gutter restaurants are exactly what it says on the box, restaurants in the gutter. If you're longing for local quaintness extends to eating something you can't quite identify on a rickety table perched under an umbrella in the gutter while a collection of soggy cats and flea infested rats stare up at you hungrily, this is the place to be! And if you go home without having contracted the plague, you can consider your holiday a success...You can read my complete travel journals at www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer and www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer2 (1) Well, now we do - in London, at least. Sort of. Octopus has been almost totally "borrowed" by Transport for London and given a name so amazingly similar in thinking that you really do have to rub your chin and go "Hmmm". Oyster, as it is called in London, does suffer from the British tendency to want to make as much money as possible - not only does it not contain the option to make a journey of any length on the remaining balance, or even any remotely similar incentive, but it is actually more expensive to use an Oyster card than it is to buy a daily travelcard which allows a whole days worth of travel anywhere in London for 6 pounds. Every trip you take using Oyster is billed at the full single fare, meaning that compared to Octopus it is almost totally worthless. Another shining example of taking somebody else's idea and totally messing it up. Oyster, currently, cannot even be used anywhere other than on the train. Come on Mr Mayor of London, get your finger out! (2) Well, all things change. The current price, as of October 2007, is now 33 Hong Kong Dollars for Adults return or 22 if you don't fancy going back. For Children, it is 15 Return or 8 Single. If you fancy access to the Sky Terrace as part of your ticket, you now have to pay 48 HKD for an Adult or 23 for a child - this includes a return on the Peak Tram. Current attractions include Madame Tussauds and the EA Gaming Experience - for the latest information, check out http://www.thepeak.com.hk. This has been a public service announcement on behalf of nobody in particular.
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