Spent about two and a half weeks in Hong Kong in late September. First ten days I was working out of Cyberport, then took a week off and moved over to the Kowloon side. All iPhone photos, mostly shot after work or late at night.
I thought I'd come back with skyline shots. Instead, almost everything I kept is street level. Taxis, trams, minibuses, and old apartment blocks with air con units stacked forty floors high.
Image notes:
1–2: Mid-Levels and the hillside roads above Central. The jungle just spills over the retaining walls between the towers. Never got used to it.
3–5: The trams. HK$3.30 a ride, and the front seat on the upper deck is the best view in the city. I rode them end to end a few times just to look out the window.
6–7: Yick Cheong (the Monster Building) in Quarry Bay. Residents banned photos in the courtyard, so these are from King's Road. Exterior is more interesting anyway imo.
8: Same stretch of King's Road. Half the old blocks are wrapped in green scaffold netting.
9: Taxi outside Mido Cafe in Yau Ma Tei.
10: A side street on the Kowloon side. Taxis are half the traffic.
11: Kids kicking a ball around a public pitch, squeezed in between the towers.
12: Minibuses lined up on a side street in Sai Ying Pun with the harbour at the bottom. If you're going, figure these out. They go everywhere the MTR doesn't.
13: A red taxi under a glass office tower. Old and new right next to each other.
14: Back on King's Road. Footbridges, tram tracks, and the hills right behind.
15: Monster Building again, looking straight up.
16: Happy Valley on a Wednesday race night. HK$10 to get in, beer garden in the middle of the track, skyline behind the back straight. Best ten bucks I spent.
17–18: Neon in Jordan and Mong Kok after rain. A lot of it has been pulled down over the last few years, so what's left feels worth shooting while it's there.
19: The beautiful building in the background with the crazy lines is the Bank of China Tower in Central. The one skyline-ish shot that made the cut.
20: A street corner well after midnight. The red taxis never really stop.
Only having evenings free for the first ten days turned out to be fine. The city is better after dark anyway. Cooler, emptier, and after rain everything reflects.
Stuff that stuck with me:
Transit is absurd. Octopus card and you can do MTR, trams, buses, ferries, minibuses, 7-Eleven, everything.
Old and new aren't in separate neighborhoods. A hundred year old shophouse sits under a glass tower and nobody thinks that's weird.
It is a walking city on a hill. Bring better shoes than I did.
Food deserves its own post. Short version: clear soup brisket at Sister Wah, roast goose at Tin Lung, wontons at Shing Kee. Mid-Autumn fell during the trip, so mooncakes everywhere and lanterns in Victoria Park.
Not perfect. Expensive, humid, hotel rooms are tiny. But I get why people get obsessive about this place.
I am originally from there, still have family there, and I visit as often as I can. Thanks for visiting HK. Brings warmth to my heart whenever people talk about how much they loved it there.
I visited for the first time a year or two ago on my way to Singapore and fell in love with the city. I was only there a couple nights but wish I spent much longer, and certainly want to go back. What a fascinating, beautiful, delightful place. So much contrast.
It's one of my favorite cities in the world. My wife and I spent a few long weekends there when we were living in East Asia 40 years ago. We stayed in the Chungking Mansions each time.
I'd love to go back, but my health doesn't allow me to travel much anymore. I'd imagine that things have probably changed a bit since then, but the food must still be amazing!
My wife and I visited your amazing home city 12 years ago on our Honeymoon. The neon was still up and it just vibrated with life. We returned earlier this year and fell even more in love with it, even though Hong Kong has been experiencing some massive shifts. It was sad that so much of the neon is gone, but it made us appreciate mainstays like the ding-dings and the Star Ferry that much more. Absolutely incredible Hong Kongers gave us so much kindness and good conversation. Truly a special place.
That was a long time ago though, I don't know if it's been cleaned up since. Besides that I spent plenty of time in the ocean, probably shouldn't have lol. There are people on the beach plenty.
Not sure how much you're familiar with this kind of city but it also stinks smell wise pretty much everywhere. I really did love the place but expect most of it to have the same smell and feel as having your face in the exhaust of a bus.
I say this just so that the worst parts aren't a surprise, frankly I think you'll find many ways to enjoy it.
Just to add the best beaches are on the south side of Hong Kong Island or East side in the Sai Kung area. Both face away from the turbid Pearl River Delta effluence.
Living costs are insane and unless you’re rich you’re probably living in a tiny apartment. It is polluted and smelly. Over crowded everywhere you go and just generally a very hectic environment. Not a relaxing place to be. Life is very competitive and most people just work all the time. Summers can be too hot and humid for some people (though I prefer that to a cold climate.) Most of the city is very dystopian and just not nice to look at aesthetically.
I am from Hong Kong and I literally just came back from Toronto. You are having a laugh if you think HK smells worse than Toronto considering we don’t have people smoking weed in public here.
Btw I was never comparing the two cities anyway so I don’t think this is very relevant. But if you think Hong Kong smells great then I think you’ve gotten used to it.
But if you think Hong Kong smells great then I think you’ve gotten used to it.
Same for Toronto… Hong Kong does not smell great nor does it smell bad. It has areas that smells good, and areas that smells bad. As with most cities - just the same as NY, as Toronto.
Most of these things I also experienced as a tourist. Next to that, people were generally rude (although I've recently heard this is not on purpose and just the way of communicating) and tourists (mostly from mainland) behave like little children and push in when going up the Victoria Peak. Japan was the exact opposite where the western world could learn a lot from, but in Hong Kong I suddenly felt the western world was quite civilized.
Your photos have a subtle nostalgia to them even for someone who lives here - makes me yearn to just take a day off, walk the streets with some street food and a bubble tea. I can almost hear the basketball bouncing in one of your pictures, great stuff.
This is the look of HK cinema that I grew with. HK'ers or Taiwanese as people who actually live there (some Taiwanese cities have a similar look) might the hate how their cities feel and look like, but for me as an outsider, they are simply charming.
Well maybe I'd say it's somewhat shallow to equate high rather unpretty residential buildings with a high level of development but that's probably the difference in views.
Well it's not an assumption, I just look at it. It's my taste. Tastes are different. No need to get angry. If you like it, good for you, more options to choose from. Be happy 😊
Not really, I pointed out that in my point of view, this architecture is not a sign of superior development. You kind of insinuated an assumption that does not exist.
I'm there with you buddy, as somebody who lived in China and HK for a few years, these ugly ass buildings can't really be defended. They don't have a choice due to space concerns but lots of developed and developing cities can do without in the western world.
Doesn't change the fact they are ugly from the outside and sometimes terribly outdated and horribly maintained from the inside in many HK areas.
It's neither a dystopia nor a utopia. At the end of the day, it's just a taller building and we have a bunch of those. Nothing goes on there that wouldn't happen in, say, London or NYC. And as you see, it's quite often to see greenery just around the corner too. The nearest hike trail is also typically some 10 - 30 mins away, with public transport.
So all in all it is just a mundane but pretty convenient place!
Dystopian? Utopian? These are all fantasy. In reality, living in an apartment is kind of a compromise. Would it be better if everyone lives in a house? More natural lands will need to be consumed for such development. There will be fewer natural lands. And also about maintenance. How much more individual maintenance effort is required for a house? In an apartment this is collectively managed. There are pros and cons as always. Sometimes I saw some of these apartment photos in the r/UrbanHell subreddit. But usually when you shift the direction to include some nature or skyline, that doesn’t look very hell like. Really depends on perspective.
It is very interesting that for a city like Hongkong with such high population density the street can feel so empty. When I visited this was the part that felt a bit shocking to me. Seeing OP’s post again confirms that feeling.
Hong Kong is by far one of my favorite places I have ever traveled, and I can't wait to go back. Your pictures do it supreme justice! That first pic is a work of art and I love that shot of the Bank of China Tower! I have always been captivated by the design of that skyscraper ever since I was a kid seeing it in movies. I love HK, and I'm glad you did too!
Did you get the chance to go to the outskirts OP? Are the holy Buddhist pet cows still at the temple? What about the pink dolphins? Are they still there?
Hope you had a chance to go hiking! It's one of my favorite things to do there. Despite it being a complete concrete jungle, the fact that you're a mere bus ride away to/from some amazing hiking trails is one thing truly to behold
I love your night shots! Especially 17 with the taxi and the neon signage. Such iconic representations of HK. Great placement with the taxi at the vertical center of the frame. Such iconic representations of HK.
Hong Kong is my second (close to being first) favourite city I've ever visited. Loved each moment of it and wish that I could've seen more in my week there.
Great pics! I was there about a decade ago for a study abroad and I remember it being smoggy as hell during the weekdays, has it cleared up any with EV adoption? Some days it was even hard to breathe outside
just a tip if you are planing to visit hk, 5 days is too much, 3 days should be enough if you are fast paced traveler and don’t do hiking in +30 degrees
Living and visiting is never the same. Those who live and lived in Hong Kong still don't understand this concept until now.
You need to put yourself in another person's shoe (which is hard) but if you do you will eventually see the novelty, grit and character that is Hong Kong.
imagine you're a westerner who grew up in a small village or town and come to a huge city like HK for the first time. i did that this march and yeah, it was absolutely mesmerizing!
Exactly. There are so many kinds of places people grew up or live in, a lot of them will find HK exotic, interesting or wonderful simply because it's very different from what they currently have.
No, it's more like I go to your town and take pictures of 12th and oak Street, and you're curious why that corner is particularly mesmerizing and I get offended for you even being surprised I take photos of that street corner... Those pictures aren't typical tourist spots or view points.
Great that's a good explanation! Now how is it offensive for someone to be curious about this car wash? Does it make you angry somehow?
The last photo was literally a picture of two taxis, am I not allowed to be curious to ask why those taxis are particularly mesmerizing or interesting??? I still don't get how this can be interpreted in an offensive way. And I am also more curious the OP didn't even respond but somehow other people are offended on the OP's behalf, like "oh how dare you ask such a question to OP!!"
Because it's irrelevant and dismissive to talk about how other people's travel destinations are mundane to you purely because you spent so much time there, in a community about travelling.
Thanks but don't support me, because these people will likely downvote you just for agreeing with me...
Apperantly if you go to gallery and look at art you should not ask the artist anything about their composition and colour choice. Learn something new everyday.
We used to come frequently pre covid, after all those protestors got muffed over china’s agreement during Y2K “one country , two government system” China lied and didn’t leave HK alone .. for this we never came back
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u/Lostintime1985 1d ago
Love those 90s Toyotas (pic #1) if I could I’d import one.