Hong Kong better second time around
Add a little adventure, shopping and exotic sights, tastes to your trip
My first trip to Hong Kong was, at times, overwhelming. This time around I found some places off the tourist radar. So, if you’re ready for a little adventure with a side of quirky thrown in, add these spots to your itinerary.
Hollywood Road
Hollywood Road is lined with art galleries, notably the photo gallery La Galerie Paris 1839 and Karin Weber Gallery. Art spills into alleys and side streets in the form of graffiti and street art. PMQ, formerly the Police Married Quarters, houses work by local creatives and a cool gift store.
Pop into Tai Cheong Bakery for a piping hot egg tart — or two. And a refreshing sugarcane juice at Kung Lee Herbal Tea Shop, pressed on-site with a juicer resembling an antique wringer-washer. Nearby is the little Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences with exhibits on the plague, SARS and Chinese medicine. (Visit the bakery first.)
Window shopping
The entire Tung Choi Street North, or Goldfish Market, is devoted to fish — the aquarium kind. They make perfect pets for Hong Kong highrise life and they are believed to bring good luck. With some of these price tags, luck is expensive.
As for the eating kind, hundreds of little shops on Des Voeux Road West, or Dried Seafood Street, sell unidentifiable dried products for traditional remedies and recipes — from all kinds of crawly and slithering creatures to birds’ nests that look like spun sugar cups.
Reflexology
If you shop ’til you drop, spend an hour at Pure Massage, where repeat customers go for their “Chinese traditional medical foot massage.” It might hurt a bit but you’ll be thankful the next day. Ten locations that stay open until the wee hours also offer shoulder and neck massage, a jet lag remedy.
UNESCO Global Geopark
Take a boat trip from Sai Kung to the Geopark — beautiful volcanic islands with rare geological features. But first, visit the new Volcano Discovery Centre adjacent to the Sai Kung Bus Terminus with its informative exhibition on rock formations. You can also bring a bathing suit to Sharp Island and Half Moon Bay, a great beach with facilities including changing rooms and showers.
Sai Kung is also visited for seafood restaurants on the waterfront. You can’t miss Chuen Kee with its huge tanks of live seafood on the terrace. I was mesmerized by a grouper the size of a smart car — locals get together and place their orders well in advance because a fish this size can likely feed a small village. We ate excellent bean curd, fried clams and a smaller grouper.
Ma Wan Abandoned village
Walking around Ma Wan is eerie, like a backdrop to a post-apocalyptic movie. Once a bustling fishing village, only a few older residents remain in what is now a ghost town. Photographers have replaced visitors who came here up until 2011 — when the inhabitants were evicted — for the seafood restaurants. These abandoned buildings stand under the shadow of Tsing Ma Bridge and nearby on Ma Wan Island is a theme park (Ma Wan Park and Noah’s Ark) that looked almost as deserted.
Eat
After a tranquil stroll at Nan Lian Garden, where the cacophony of city life is replaced by songbirds, the sound of a waterfall will take you to the Chi Lin Vegetarian Restaurant at the Chi Lin Nunnery, where lunch is prepared and served by Buddhist nuns. Fancy French? The latest addition to Hong Kong’s star-studded restaurant list is Rech by Alain Ducasse inside the Intercontinental Hotel. Featuring a dizzying selection of seafood from Brittany, enjoy superb cuisine with one of the best panoramic views of the harbour.
Sleep
Depending upon when you go, it’s possible to find a decent room for around $100 per night. The Hong Kong Tourism Board provides a list of hotels with Quality Tourism Services accreditation. I stayed two nights at Attitude on Granville and then splurged at the Intercontinental.
How to get there
Hong Kong Airlines in June 2017 launched its daily flights between Vancouver and Hong Kong. And bonus: Both business and economy passengers can stretch their legs and order a cocktail at the SkyBar on this non-stop, 12-hour flight. For more information about Hong Kong, visit www.DiscoverHongKong.com
The writer was a guest of Hong Kong Tourism. No one from that organization read or approved of this article before publication.