Hong Kong part 1

I fell in love with Hong Kong almost immediately. I had a hostel high up on the 14th floor of a dodgy building in Kowloon, the mainland part of Hong Kong. It's a fascinating place where I could happily spend hours just wandering around the streets, taking in the culture and architecture. Everywhere in Kowloon looks a little bit decrepit, there's something interesting to see everywhere you look and every now and then you'll come across a little Buddhist temple hidden away.

A little more upmarket is Victoria Harbour, lined with fancy department stores and world class museums. This is a great spot to get a coffee and people watch for a couple of hours, see how many dogs in prams that you can spot. It is also the best place to watch the Victoria Harbour Light show, a slightly cheesy show where lasers flash around the sky off the top of the skyscrapers to music for 10 minutes.

Kowloon is great for cheap food. Hong Kong was the start of an obsession with milk tea while I was in Asia. It's basically very strong tea boiled in milk and traditionally strained through a stocking, and drank either hot or iced. There were also great dumplings, dim sum, soups, noodles, and weirdly "pineapple bun" with spam, another hangover from British rule. I ordered this by accident, thinking I was ordering a pineapple bun and tomato which was on the menu, but they brought me the spam, it wasn't actually too bad! But I preferred the pineapple bun with condensed milk.

While I spent a lot of time in Kowloon my first week there, I did manage to make it over to Hong Kong Island a few times via the Star Ferry, which had been in operation since 1898 with a fleet almost as old. The central part of Hong Kong Island is quite modern and westernised, but it is still interesting to walk around if you can manage the steep hills, and there's excellent food here from all over the world. Hong Kong Park is a tranquil space to explore the aviary and the terrapin filled lake, with the famous skyscrapers looming over you. The harbour front on that side of the harbour was another great spot to walk along and people watch, I quite enjoyed eves dropping on the British expats and watching the Chinese Hong Kongers fishing.Read more