Hong Kong

The subway door opens at Mong Kok station and 400 people press past you in eighteen seconds. Later, at a dai pai dong near Fa Yuen Street, we ate salt and pepper squid for $4.80 while watching a woman hang laundry from a seventh-floor window six meters from our table.

Chapter 01: Arrival

We landed at 22:14 on a Tuesday in October, walked through immigration in eleven minutes, and rode the Airport Express into Central for $12.50. The train moves fast and quiet, nothing like the old bus routes we took in 2011. Outside the window, apartment towers stacked thirty, forty stories high, lit windows forming irregular grids against the dark. Hong Kong Island appeared across the harbor, a wall of glass and steel rising straight from the water.

Our hotel sat above Tsim Sha Tsui station in Kowloon, seventeen floors up in a building that also contained three banks, a clinic, two tailors, and a shop selling only iPhone cases. The room measured maybe 14 square meters. We opened the window and heard Cantonese, car horns, the beep of a crosswalk signal, someone’s television playing a drama we couldn’t see. The density here isn’t oppressive if you stop fighting it. You learn to move with the crowd, to occupy less space, to understand that 7.5 million people in 1,114 square kilometers creates a specific kind of urban choreography.

We walked to the waterfront at 23:40. The harbor stretched black and wide, ferries crossing with green and red lights, the island skyline reflected and fractured in the water. A man was fishing off the promenade. Two teenagers sat on a bench sharing headphones. The city doesn’t sleep in the Western sense, it just shifts modes, becomes quieter but never empty.

Chapter 02: Why now, and why Hong Kong

Hong Kong teaches you that density and livability aren’t opposites. We’ve sent readers here for twelve years, and the ones who return always mention the same thing: the city works. Seven and a half million people compressed into a territory smaller than Rogaland, yet the subway runs every three minutes, the bins get emptied, the neon signs stay lit. It’s the fourth-most densely populated region in the world, and somehow that fact becomes invisible after two days because the infrastructure absorbs it.

The special administrative region status creates odd political layers we won’t pretend to untangle in a travel article, but it means Hong Kong feels distinct from mainland China in ways that matter to visitors. English works here. Google works here. The street signs use traditional Chinese characters that look like small architectural drawings. You can drink the tap water, though nobody does.

We came in autumn because summer humidity in Hong Kong turns the air into soup. October through December gives you 22-26 degrees and clear skies, perfect for walking the steep streets of Central or hiking the Dragon’s Back trail. January and February bring cooler temperatures, sometimes down to 15 degrees, which sounds mild but feels cold in a city built for heat. Spring means rain and fog that obscures the harbor for days.

The food situation here is absurd. You can eat Cantonese roast goose at a Michelin-starred restaurant for $18, or buy pork and century egg congee from a stall in Sham Shui Po for $2.70. We ate soup dumplings in Mong Kok at a place with no English menu, just pointed at what the next table ordered. The dumplings arrived in a bamboo steamer, thin-skinned and scalding, filled with broth that burned our mouths because we couldn’t wait. Cost: $5.40 for eight.

The city reveals itself vertically. Hong Kong Island is essentially a mountain with buildings clinging to it, so you’re always walking up or down, taking escalators that climb through neighborhoods, riding trams that somehow navigate 15-degree inclines. The Mid-Levels Escalator runs 800 meters uphill through Central and Soho, the longest outdoor covered escalator system in the world. We rode it at 09:20 on a Wednesday, passing wet markets, antique shops, residential buildings where people were eating breakfast on tiny balconets three meters from the moving stairs.

Chapter 03: What to skip, honestly

Skip Victoria Peak at sunset. Everyone tells you to go, every guidebook puts it on the first page, and it’s consistently disappointing. The Peak Tram costs $14 round trip, the viewing platform gets mobbed with tour groups, and the sunset view usually involves staring through haze at a skyline you can see better from a dozen other spots. We went at 18:30 on a Saturday in 2019 and spent forty minutes queuing for a view obscured by fog and selfie sticks. If you must go, do it on a weekday morning at 10:00 when it’s empty and you can actually see Kowloon and the New Territories.

Don’t book a private junk boat harbor cruise. These cost $200 to $400 and deliver exactly what you’d expect: a wooden boat, some drinks, a tour guide pointing at buildings. Take the Star Ferry instead. It costs $0.40, runs every six to twelve minutes between Central and Tsim Sha Tsui, and crosses the harbor in eight minutes. We rode it four times in three days, including once at 07:15 when the morning light hit the island towers and turned them gold and silver. Best $0.40 we spent all week.

Avoid Lan Kwai Fong unless you’re specifically seeking overpriced cocktails and finance bros. This cluster of bars in Central has a reputation as Hong Kong’s nightlife center, but it’s essentially a corporate drinking zone where a gin and tonic costs $15 and everyone’s talking about real estate. We walked through on a Friday at 23:00, heard Swedish House Mafia playing from three different venues, and kept walking to a bar in Sheung Wan where local wine was $6 a glass and the crowd was actually from Hong Kong.

Don’t waste time in Stanley Market. It’s a tourist market on the southern side of Hong Kong Island selling the same factory outlet clothes and wooden elephants you’ll find at any Asian tourist market. The bus ride takes an hour each way. We went in 2016, spent twenty minutes there, left. If you want markets, go to the street markets in Mong Kok or Sham Shui Po where actual Hong Kong people buy things they actually need.

Chapter 04: One perfect day

Wake at 07:30, walk to a cha chaan teng near your hotel. Order macaroni soup with ham, milk tea, an egg tart. The tea arrives in a thick glass mug, strong and sweet, mixed with evaporated milk. Breakfast costs $5.20. The restaurant is full of older men reading newspapers, a couple of students on their phones, a woman in a business suit eating congee before work. You’re the only tourist, which is correct.

Take the subway to Central, exit at the Landmark stop, walk uphill through the financial district. The buildings here are absurd: Norman Foster’s HSBC headquarters with its exposed structural elements, I.M. Pei’s Bank of China Tower with its geometric glass facades. Keep walking uphill. At 09:15 you’ll hit the Mid-Levels Escalator. Ride it up through residential neighborhoods, watch Hong Kong wake and move. Get off at Hollywood Road.

Walk west along Hollywood Road past antique shops selling jade and pottery and furniture from dynasties you can’t identify. Turn left down Ladder Street, a steep stairway built in the 1840s. At the bottom, find Man Mo Temple, built in 1847, filled with massive spiral incense coils hanging from the ceiling. The smoke is thick and sweet. We stood there at 10:00 on a Thursday while an old woman prayed in front of the altar, the coils burning slow overhead, traffic noise from the street barely reaching inside.

Walk to a dim sum restaurant in Sheung Wan. Order har gow, siu mai, char siu bao, turnip cake. Drink jasmine tea. The dumplings arrive in bamboo steamers carried by servers pushing carts through the dining room. You point, they stamp your card, the dumplings cost $4 to $6 per basket. We ate five baskets, drank three pots of tea, paid $28 including tip.

Take the subway to Mong Kok at 13:30. This is Hong Kong at maximum density, the streets packed with people and shops and signs stacked six stories high. Walk through the Ladies’ Market, which sells everything except what its name suggests: phone cases, kitchen tools, cheap watches, clothing with misspelled English slogans. We bought nothing but the energy here is worth experiencing. Everyone moving fast, negotiating prices, carrying plastic bags, the street vendors calling out in Cantonese.

Walk east to Yau Ma Tei and find a traditional herbal tea shop. Order a glass of bitter cooling tea made from herbs you can’t identify. It tastes like medicine and grass and costs $1.80. The woman behind the counter will tell you it’s good for heat in your body. Drink it anyway.

Take the subway back to Tsim Sha Tsui at 17:00. Walk to the harbor promenade. At 18:00, find a spot and watch the light change. The island skyline turns on piece by piece, buildings lighting up in whites and blues and golds, the Bank of China Tower with its red crown, the ICC tower across the harbor in Kowloon with its LED displays. The Symphony of Lights show happens at 20:00, a coordinated light and music show involving forty buildings. It’s touristy but we watch it every time we’re here, standing at the railing while the lasers trace patterns across the harbor.

Walk to a dai pai dong in Yau Ma Tei for dinner at 20:45. Order salt and pepper squid, stir-fried morning glory with garlic, claypot rice with Chinese sausage, two bottles of Tsingtao. The restaurant is outdoors under a blue tarp, plastic stools, fluorescent lights, the kitchen visible and loud. Your table wobbles. The food arrives fast and hot. Total: $32 for two people. We ate there until 22:30, watching the street, drinking cold beer, learning again that Hong Kong’s best moments happen at ground level, not from scenic viewpoints, not in fancy restaurants, just in the compressed everyday choreography of 7.5 million people sharing 1,114 square kilometers and somehow making it work.