Item 75: Hong Kong For a Day

Location: Hong Kong

On the way back to London during a recent visit to Melbourne, I booked myself a one day stop-over in Hong Kong.

I arrived while the city was still sleeping at 5:50am. I collected my luggage at the baggage carousel, bought a return ticket for the Airport Express train and hopped on board to Hong Kong station. As my flight back to London was at 8am the next day, I made use of the in-city check-in service which allows Airport Express ticket holders to check-in at Hong Kong or Kowloon stations 24 hours before the flight, saving me from taking my suitcase to through the city to my hotel. Handy or what?

Luggage-free, I loaded up my Octopus Card (aka Hong Kong's Oyster) and found the MTR (metro) line that would take me to Wan Chai.

Slowly the city began to wake, shops started to open their doors and people began to over-crowd the streets. Thanks to the city's strong British history (ownership until 1997), navigating my way around was made very easy. Hong Kong is indeed bilingual. The signs are in English and Chinese, while announcements on the trains are made in Cantonese, English and Mandarin.

I was caught up in the big city, there seemed to be little reprieve from all the people. But at lunch, I was lucky enough to meet up with my friend who lives in town and there I had my own personal tour guide for the rest of the day.

We walked to the expatriate area of Wan Chai. Hidden away we discovered the 'blue house', one of the last remaining low-rise buildings in the city, recreated as an old tea house amongst the new high-rise developments in the concrete jungle.

Next, we hopped on the MTR and made our way to the Hong Kong Museum of History to get a better understanding of how this busy city around me came about. At a bargain entrance price of $10HKD, the visit took me to the East providing an accessible history of the city. There were life-size exhibits from ships, homes, British banks, schools and shops. It was all captured inside and the museum is worth a good couple of hours of your day. If you're as fortunate as me to have a local take you around, you will get an even more realistic understanding of the traditions and culture that make up the East-Meets-West that is Hong Kong.

A very worthwhile stop-over, and possibly a longer stay will be needed the next time I take a long-haul flight past Asia.

Item 75: Hong Kong? CHECK!