Hong Kong

Time: 7:13pm

Location: on the flight from Hong Kong to Taipei

Weather: clear 16C

The first chapter of travelling comes to a close as I return to Taiwan! This was my first time leaving Lantau Island and let me just say that Hong Kong continues to impress me every day. Before I would have thought that it would be too busy for my liking, but after SE Asia, Hong Kong seems so organized and tame. And I have to admit that it's nice feeling clean again, not to say that we went for days without showers in SE Asia but when you are constantly sweating and sticky and walking through littered streets with dust, fumes and who-knows-what blowing in your face, you never feel completely clean. It doesn't take long to get away from the urban city to find gorgeous mountains, beaches and islands, which make up a surprising-to-many significant proportion of the Hong Kong area. I managed to go hiking like every day which only made me hungrier to come back and explore all the other nature. Hong Kong also boasts a dazzling skyline, and the pictures definitely don't do it justice. The evening that I arrived, I walked all the way to Tsim Sha Tsui just in time to catch the Symphony of Lights. I was very fortunate to stay in a high rise apartment where I even managed to get glimpses of the ICC (tallest building in Hong Kong) Lightshow.

On my second day, I had a lovely reunion with Jo and Cindy over dim sum at one of the more traditional restaurants where they wheel everything around and it's a bit of a fight trying to grab the food you want. Even though we are spoiled with great dim sum in Vancouver, I still managed to try a variety of new things like duck feet wrapped with bean curd and taro. Afterwards Cindy and I took a ferry to Lamma Island and did a walk from Yung Shue Wan to Sok Kwu Wan, traversing up and down along the beautiful coastline as well as browsing through the boutique shops and farms. This was my first instance of "I can't believe this is Hong Kong". Being close to water is important to me and I think coastlines are one of my favourite natural sceneries. 

At night we took a bus (side note: riding the double decker buses should be a must-do in Hong Kong on its own! I found every ride exciting filled with many turns and ups and downs. Needless to say the drivers are masters at navigating the narrow-a double lane is the equivalent of a single lane in Canada, twisty and hilly roads) up to The Peak. The visibility wasn't in our favour but at one point the clouds did part enough for this. 

We finished off the evening stuffed with fried oyster pancakes, rice bowls and Cha Cha, apparently a Malaysian dessert soup made of various beans, at Temple Street Market. Hong Kong has so much good food (even if everything costs a lot more than what I had been used to) and we were also completely stuffed the second time we met for dinner yesterday. 

Dragon's Back definitely lived up to its name of one of the best urban hikes in the world. On Monday, I started in To Tei Wan towards Shek O Beach and was hitting myself for not bringing my bathing suit when I got to the perfect beach at Big Wave Bay. Later that day I went on a long tram ride with no destination in mind. The trams (also double decker!) are super slow and inefficient for getting to places but very cool to just sit and take in the city if you have the time. Eventually I ended up at HKU, maybe checking out university campuses should be my new thing to do when travelling. On the way back for the night I walked through the Ladies and Goldfish Markets, the latter of course being the more interesting of the two. 

The last two days I also spent quite some time hiking parts of the Maclehose Trail, a 100km long trail traversing Kowloon and New Territories. There is a charity trail race where competitors do the whole thing over 2.5 days and I saw no shortage of trail runners along the trail. Yesterday I took a bus to Sai Kung, used to be primarily a fishing village but now turning into a commuter town in west Kowloon, and then another bus to Pak Tam Chung for the start of Maclehose Trail Section 1. The first 10km was along a road that was only open to authorized vehicles going around High Island Reservoir, the largest reservoir in Hong Kong. This area of the Sai Kung Peninsula is part of the Hong Kong Geopark for its hexagonal shaped rhyolite columns that were formed as a result of a volcano 140 million years ago. The climbing started with Section 2 up Sai Wan Shan, passing through Long Ke Beach which, not to keep repeating myself, took my breath away. Soft white sand with turquoise lapping waves and not a single soul in sight. A few kilometres after I looked over a viewpoint at four other just as picture-perfect beaches in Tai Long Wan but unfortunately didn't have the time to go down to them. About 15km later, I finished at Sai Wan Pavilion, where an infrequent minibus designed to serve the villagers but I think more used by visitors, took me along with some other hikers back to Sai Kung, once again along beautiful windy seashore roads. 

Today I paid a visit to the ever so popular Wong Tai Sin temple before squeezing in one more hike along Maclehose Trail Section 5 with a detour up Lion Rock for a city view, starting directly from the MTR station. It's not until high up that you get a good sense of how densely built Hong Kong is. They must use some of the best construction technologies because buildings cover the side slopes of mountains and in places that wouldn't appear to be stable at all. No wonder there are so many rock slope maintenance ladders everywhere. I even found some pigs and monkeys!

 

Hong Kong has been an absolute gem. For anyone who thinks Hong Kong is just metropolis of shopping malls, hopefully this convinces you otherwise and that it's definitely worthy for a visit.

In two days (yikes!) I will be embarking on my 4th bike tour, around Taiwan, and I will attempt to have daily updates!