Three days in Hong Kong, what to do?

;-)

Has anyone flown HK Express? I'm looking at flights from HK to Tokyo and they're about a quarter of the price of JAL, etc.

i haven't heard anything disturbing about hk express but ive never flown with them. i usually take vanilla for that flight, hkg to nrt.

Cool, thanks - i'll look in to Vanilla.

There seem to be really good value Cathay air mile redemptions with air miles as well.

Yes, I'm reviving China threads. Going to be there at the end of next week, wish it could be longer but maybe have 2-3 days in HK. Updated recs?

one of my favorite cities but i feel i've explored v little of it. usually stay in wanchai.
maybe depends on where you're staying but last time there i finally made it out to the islands and i can't recommend it enough. i always thought it would be a bitch to get out there if i was only there for a few days but it takes 30-45 to go to lamma or cheung chao. go out to lamma, wander around, get some tofu hua, record store, eat a late lunch seafood lunch at one of the restaurants by the ferry dock surrounded by sunburnt expats. cheung chao, considerably more chill and vibesy and time capsuley and fewer sunburnt expats.
walk from central over to wanchai, maybe see a horse race at happy valley (i've never done that but supposedly you should).
figure out one of the markets to go to. walk from tsim sha tsui to sham shui po and you'll hit them (as i say earlier "there's an ilx thread where i accidentally walk past chungking mansions and end up walking all the way to sham shui po," and probably check out chunking mansions maybe? if that interests you), depending on your detours and timing, go to vinyl hero in sham shui po.
go to some classic cha chaan teng (preferably in wanchai), get thai food (in wanchai), curry beef brisket noodles, wonton noodles, tuna sandwiches and chocolate milk from 7-11.

Thanks! I think if we even make a third of that list, we'll have a spectacular time.

i think you'll find unlike guangzhou or shanghai or beijing, it's a better city to explore a random area on foot because: it's so dense (mostly talking about hong kong island and kowloon, even parts of the new territories) + it has a history as a major world city that goes back further than 1980 or 1990 (i mean guangzhou and shanghai and beijing were world cities but they were put on ice for almost a hundred years) + far more multicultural than mainland cities, visibly, people from across asia and beyond, but also different peoples from china and the diaspora + more welcoming of outside and non"mainstream" ideas and lifestyles and cuisines and music and religion and everything else, making for a more interesting urban environment than you'll get in any city on the mainland.

i think it's my favorite city on earth and coming back to tokyo after visiting, i'm struck by how dull and unwelcoming this city can be. every time i go back, i regret not somehow living in a box in wanchai or a tiny house out on some island, as bad an idea as that would surely turn out to be. i mean, i think i love hk because i've never lived there... and visiting these days, i think it's impossible, unfortunately, to not feel that hong kong's days are numbered as an vibrant, multicultural urban experiment... i get the sense and maybe it's just my own prejudices that i'm seeing the last of hong kong as it existed for however long before 1997 or before the mid-2000s umbrella protests, the clampdown on hk democracy, the united front strategy, language laws, patriotic education, mainland wealth flooding into the real estate market.

^
Always enjoy your posts D

thanks, buddy

Recent Bourdain Parts Unknown episode on Hong Kong I just saw was interesting to me on how "old" Hong Kong is being knocked down, etc. and on food and fishing villages and politics. Some of the things Dylannn mentioned yesterday.

I haven't been there.

i know arriving in hong kong for the first time in 2006, i had arrived too late to see all of the buildings and the ways of life that disappeared in the postwar boom, up through the 1990s. from that visit in 2006, visiting maybe once a year since, more often when i was in guangzhou, most recently last year, i can feel a difference, though, not just in the, like, physical city but in the feel, maybe? maybe it's because i have a romantic attachment to the city and also follow what's been done there politically.

whining about gentrification as a tourist in hong kong is not what i want to do, though, like complaining its not a perfect museum. even though it's a symptom of a bad things happening in hk it looks bad. i tried writing a long post about walking between sheung wan and shek tong tsui in 2006 vs 2017 to clarify something but my unfamiliarity and mixed emotions were showing. that's it. deleted rest of a long rambling post.

Been here for two days and have already changed plans to nix Shanghai and stay here for a few days more before heading to Beijing. I think I can simultaneously hold all three “this city is special,” “you should have been here years ago,” and “gentrification has ruined the place” perspectives at the same time.

Buildings older than 1990 stand out from the scene like old appendixes, there are more $200K cars here than Beverly Hills, and the construction along the train line down from Shenzhen is indistinguishable from SimCity at 10x the speed. OTOH, had an all-time great meal somewhere here at 3am, had a cab ride with a driver who insisted that we all sing “California Dreaming” together when he learned we were from LA, and goddamn.... killer Hedgehog show at This Town Needs. Going out the hotel door is insane and great.

good choice. dig deeper into hk.

lol ironically when I hear “California Dreamin” it is intrinsically linked w “Chungking Express” and nothing else. That would have been so surreal for me.

I understand why people miss Hong Kong. I miss Hong Kong.

i too miss hong kong

Thirded, and I’ve only spent three days there!

revive? or is there another thread to discuss HK?

穹顶之下: Rolling 中华人民共和国 / People's Republic of China (PRC) Thread

some mentions on here

I always forget how staggeringly Western ILX is (unless it is the middle east)...

at least they've got one region sorted :p

When these protesters are waving British colonial flags or stars and stripes i don't what to say tbh

I've been there a few times, AMA

I recommend a very long recent episode of the "Grubstakers" podcast on HK that eventually goes into the highly diverse makeup of the protesters

(ideologically speaking)

a lot of the familiar human grievances behind these protests get lost in all the noise, which is very sad.

I work with a guy from Hong Kong and he's been back and forth to there quite a lot recently but I've never actually heard him talking about what's going on.

Even where I am (chile) one of the Taiwanese pollo places got fucked with by the here Chinese because the restaurant had a HK support sign.

unless you are buddies, I'm not sure I'd bother to bring it up. I feel like I have a decent grasp of it but it is in essence a very confused thing. Daily life goes on basically as normal, it isn't the battleground you get the picture of sometimes

xp

Yes, we don't have that kind of relationship, he's not really a hanging out kinda guy.

You could just ask him if his family is all in HK and if they are ok.

They are, that's why he goes back!

I haven't been following closely but have been seeing bits via twitter. There's this thread instigated by an American who's spent a lot of time in Hong Kong during the riots. I feel slightly wary of the outsider perspective on something that's probably changed character in quite complex ways since its started - he's very supportive of the protests and Hong Kong culture in a way that seems to skew things a bit sometimes, but it seems like a useful summary:

SHAME-FREE thread: ask the dumbest question you have about the Hong Kong protests. I'll try to answer it or loop in a real Hong Konger to answer it for you. No question too ignorant or basic.

— Pinboard (@Pinboard) October 15, 2019

He also wrote this quite nice piece on the mechanics of protest.

A Walk in Hong Kong

I found this Chuang piece on the perspective from within China an interesting and useful perspective, with wider application to how government can control media, and how absence of information doesn't mean that there's a gap from which you can infer correctly what's going on, more that you get stuck on an axis of the controlled government messaage and confusion.

Why are informed Beijingers increasingly baffled by the struggle in Hong Kong?

There's a useful timeline if slightly annoyingly presented here.

reusing this thread to offset some air miles

theres no real reason to avoid a layover in HK airport in the next few months.....right?

people i know have been through hong kong airport fine over the last month. i almost did as well, but then went via dubai, because of the same doubts as you, which was a) in retrospect a bit silly and b) the rong decision because dubai airport is horrible and i quite like hong kong airport as airports go (good food options and cheap electronics).

excellent, seeing as we booked regardless

reusing this thread to offset some air miles

theres no real reason to avoid a layover in HK airport in the next few months.....right?

― Banáná hÉireann (darraghmac), Thursday, 2 January 2020 13:13 (six months ago) bookmarkflaglink

Oh my