IREE City Guide - Hong Kong
Table of Contents
Things to do in HK
Food
- Tim Ho Wan – Michelin-starred dim sum; try the bbq pork buns
- Honeymoon Dessert – excellent mango pudding; original is in Sai Kung
- Mong Kok food stalls – egg waffles and fish balls are commonly sold by street vendors
Shopping/Entertainment
- Jardine’s Crescent – an outdoor market in Causeway Bay
- Temple Street Night Market
- Ladies Market
- Hong Kong Arts Centre – the Agnes B Cinema is good for catching indie films
Sights/Things to do
- The Peak – go before sunset to catch a great view of the harbor lightshow
- Cheng Chau – fishing village with nice beaches and a pirates’ cave
- Hiking
- Kowloon Walled City Park
- Museums – Hong Kong Heritage Museum, Hong Kong Museum of History, etc.
- Stanley
- Happy Valley Racecourse
- The Big Buddha (Lantau Island)
Random thoughts:
If you find yourself at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) during the summer months, and you like to sleep past 9am, you should buy good earplugs or a powerful noise cancellation headset. Given the ongoing expansion of the campus, the construction was never-ending.
The staff canteens on campus provide great food options, but the cost of a meal goes from about 20-30rmb to 40-50rmb. Well worth it in my opinion.
And if you want to try windsurfing, you will need to take a certification course and must sign up well in advance! The certification course on campus is great but expensive compared to lessons offered by the government…see here http://www2.lcsd.gov.hk/cf/search/leisure/list.cfm?lang=en&type=crsp. It seems the government courses are ALWAYS full.
Hiking Trails:
If all the city life, shopping, and food gets old, you should really consider the hiking trails in Hong Kong. Despite its reputation as an urban hub, about 2/3 of HK’s land is reserved as country parks. The best ones are in the New Terrorities, the Southern Half of HK Island, and on Lantau. There’s a sufficient diversity of hiking trails for all levels. The trails are all accessible by public transportation—you would usually take a bus to the trailhead, hike the route, and take another bus at the end of the trail.
Hong Kong Walkers (http://www.hkwalkers.net/eng/index3.htm) has a list of some of the nice trails in Hong Kong. The MacLehose, Lantau, and HK trails are between 70-100 km, but divded into many sections. The start of many sections are connected by pubic transport. One of the best is Tai Long Wan (Big Wave Bay, 大浪灣) in Sai Kung （西貢）. It’s a difficult hike—12 km, 4 hours of hiking trails. But you pass through the best beach in Hong Kong, and maybe all of China. It’s compared to those in Southern California and Hawaii. Best of all, the long hike means very few people take the effort to go there, a nice contrast to the extremely crowded public beaches like Clearwater （清水灣） and Repulse Bay （淺水灣）.