I arrived in Hong Kong on Thursday the 6th at about midday. The airport is somewhat out of the city, on Lantau island. There is an express train into the city, but I chose to take a bus instead since I gathered it would let me see more on the way. Lantau is hilly and largely unpopulated except for the airport and the area next to it. The way into the city goes across a series of large bridges leading to Kowloon. My bus then went through the tunnel under Victoria Harbour to get to Hong Kong island, and I stayed on as it continued along the island until the Fortress Hill area where my hostel was located.

In general Hong Kong feels very dense, as is expected. However, it is not dense in the sense of an endless urban area, but rather in the sense that everyone has decided to live around Victoria Harbour, a relatively small area bounded by hills. The unpopulated hills are often visible, and there is a reasonable bit of green space within at least parts of the city. I didn't have any very strong reaction to Hong Kong overall, although the density and the transit were impressive. One of the other people in my hostel described Hong Kong as a European city inhabited by Chinese people, and in that way it doesn't differ hugely from parts of Greater Vancouver.

The public transit in Hong Kong is really good. The MTR rail system (mostly underground but sometimes on raised tracks) is very extensive and has several intersecting lines covering the city and also reaching parts of the mainland New Territories and Lantau island. There are also many buses and at least on Hong Kong Island also trams. In the Western New Territories there is light rail. From what I saw it was bit slower than the MTR due to having to stop at streets to let cars pass, but was still pretty efficient. For all of the transit you can use an Octopus Card, which you add money to and then just touch to a machine when boarding and/or leaving (when boarding for buses, when leaving for trams, and both for the MTR and light rail). There are turnstiles for the MTR, but the light rail seemed to be on the honour system. There are also ferries over Victoria Harbour (though I'm not sure if these are really for transit or more for tourism) and to the islands. These I think are more privately operated, but also accept the Octopus Card. Additionally, convenience stores usually take the Octopus Card. A card is often just referred to as an Octopus, which leads to some mildly amusing instructions about where to put your Octopus for various tasks.

Unlike in Taiwan street rules actually matter (although certainly they are not always followed), so that for example crosswalks are usually honoured by cars even when other traffic lights are not giving them motivation to stop. One travel website I read advised having a look at the Road User's Code, which is not actually law but apparently can be taken into account in legal cases. The markings for crossing roads are somewhat complex (perhaps no more than in Vancouver, but there are a number of subtleties), but are throughly thought out and seemed to be used consistently. Whereas in BC crosswalks are usually at intersections and can be unmarked, Hong Kong takes a different approach to street crossings. As far as I know there are no unmarked crosswalks. The advice given is to cross streets at any safe location when there is no marked crossing place or an over/underpass. Further, intersections are not considered to be a safe location for crossing, so the advice is to cross away from intersections in this case, and the marked crossing places are also often set back from intersections. Often there are barriers along streets to control where people can cross. In some places there are overpasses or underpasses (called subways) instead of crossing places on the street. I found this could be confusing since I often had to backtrack to find over/underpasses on discovering that there was no street-level crossing place.

Hong Kong often gives the impression of being very carefully managed. For example, there seems to be a registry for slopes needing stabilization, and such slopes are marked with tags giving the registration number and contact information. Things and places that are out of order often have apologetic signs in cases where there wouldn't be any sign in Vancouver. Doors that get a lot of traffic commonly have signs indicating how often the handles are sanitized, with times frequently around every two hours. This also applies to bathroom fixtures and some railings and similar things.

There are often large birds circling above the buildings in the city. I think these are black kites.

Money in Hong Kong was a little complicated in comparison to Taiwan. Unlike Taiwan there are cents in the currency, leading to a wider range of coins. There is a relatively large amount of variety in the coins, with a couple kinds having wavy edges and one having two metals like a toonie. Bills are often issued by private banks, and include a range of designs including some with plastic windows.

I mostly explored in Hong Kong using the guide book I had picked up in Taipei, "Hong Kong Step by Step" from Insight Guides. This was organized as a series of tours in various locations, which I largely followed.

After finding my hostel on the first day I walked over to the Causeway Bay area, not far from my hostel (and the closest area to it that my guide book covered), and spent the rest of the first day following my guide book around there. This included a couple of temples, Victoria Park, and a shopping area including both street markets and the relatively upscale Times Square mall. After that I took a tram up past the Happy Vally race course, which I couldn't see into much since it seemed to be closed and under renovations, and walked down the other side of the race course. Across the road from the race course is a sequence of cemeteries. The largest is a Christian cemetery (or possibly more than one joined together) which contains graves from something like a century and a half ago through the present. The older graves and monuments are largely from the colonial military and administration. There are also smaller Muslim and Parsi cemeteries. I didn't look as much in these since it was harder to tell if they were open.

On Friday I got up fairly late in the morning and started by walking back through Victoria Park to see the Noon-Day Gun being fired in its small enclosure on the waterfront. This isn't too dramatic, with one guard type person coming to ring a small bell and fire the gun. For some reason the bell gets rung both before and after the gun is fired; I'm not quite sure what the point of the second ringing is since it is hard to miss the gun going off. After that I walked along to Central District to tour there. Central seems to be largely a series of malls and large office buildings connected by raised walkways, but there are also some small parks and squares, with larger parks farther up the hill. The malls here (and in general in Hong Kong) tend to feel very upscale, so I didn't spend much time in them. I found that the raised walkways made it hard to get around without knowing the area, as they are not as extensive as sidewalks but are sometimes the only way to cross streets. This area also includes the Central MTR station (serving two of the main city lines) and the Hong Kong MTR station (serving the two lines out to Lantau island, including the Airport Express), connected by a long underground walkway. Not far from the MTR stations and accessible by one of the raised walkways are terminals for the harbour and island ferries. Continuing up the hill from the dense part of Central, I went past a few old colonial buildings and through the Zoological and Botanical Gardens. Nearby is also Hong Kong park, but I only went through it briefly on the way out later. Just past the gardens is the lower end of the Peak Tram, a funicular railway which has been around for a bit over a century after being developed to replace sedan chairs as the way for wealthy Peak residents to reach their homes. The tram has a few stops on the way up the hill for local residents, but the main stop is at the Peak Tower on top of the hill. The Peak Tower is very touristy with a number of souvenir shops, restaurants, and small attractions. There is also a viewing area on the top of the tower, but it cost a bit more and so I stuck to the views from the publicly accessible areas. Outside the Peak Tower (which doesn't make the way out especially obvious) there are a few more similar shops and attractions, and a public viewing area. These buildings are all just to one side of Victoria Peak itself, which is much quieter and is largely forested with some exclusive housing. I waked on the road (more of a trail, although there are some driveways off it) which circles Victoria Peek, which had more views of the city and also of some of the islands. There was also a road leading up to Victoria Peak itself, where there is apparently a garden and better views, but I didn't try it.

On Saturday I took the Star Ferry across Victoria Harbour to the Tsim Sha Tsui area in Kowloon. Like the Peak Tram, the Star Ferry has also been in operation for a bit over a century and seems to be considered a major attraction. The ferries retain a somewhat old fashioned feel with simple wood and metal fittings. Most parts have open sides (and therefore have especially good views), but there are also compartments with glass windows. On the waterfront near the ferry terminal on the Kowloon side are a cultural centre and a couple of museums, and the Avenue of Stars which has plaques and some hand prints for actors and directors from the Hong Kong movie industry. Continuing inland there is a long shopping area along Nathan Road and many side streets. One area of side streets has many clothing outlet shops and custom tailors. Also on Nathan road is Chungking Mansion, a somewhat infamous building which contains a number of hostels, among other things. Apparently when going to any particular hostel in the building you have to be careful not to be mislead by people trying to get you to go to their hostels instead. The whole area is more gritty than central, with fewer flashy malls and generally less well maintained buildings. However, as with central there are a few old colonial buildings and a few parks including the large Kowloon Park. I gather there is a relatively large South Asian population in the area, and seemingly a large Muslim presence given the mosque by Kowloon Park. Farther into Kowloon I went through parts of Yau Ma Tei and Mong Kok. The latter apparently may have the highest population density in the world. There are a number of night (or at least street) markets in these areas. In general these seemed to have fewer places to eat than the night markets in Taiwan, and instead had a lot of stalls with clothing and relatively generic decorative items. It looked to me like many of the stalls were very similar to each other. There are also some more specific shopping areas, including a religious supplies street near the Tin Hau (Mazu) temple, a goldfish market, and a flower market.

On Sunday I went back to Kowloon to see a few more things I hadn't on the previous day. One of these was Kung Fu Corner, a martial arts demonstration which happens every Sunday afternoon in Kowloon Park. I also went farther into Kowloon on the MTR to see the Wang Dai Sin temple. I also wanted to see the Chi Lin Nunnery, but got there after the visiting hours and could only see the first courtyard garden (I went back later; see below). In the evening I went back to the Tsui Sha Tsui waterfront near the ferry terminal to see A Symphony of Lights, a display put on more or less every evening using lights and lasers on buildings in Central. Several buildings have lights which can form distinctive moving patterns. Others are just platforms for the laser show part. The whole display is set to music which is played on the waterfront.

On Monday I went out to parts of the Western New Territories (in the part of the New Territories attached to Kowloon and the mainland, rather than the islands). My first stop was at Tseun Wan where one of the MTR lines ends. Near the MTR station is Sam Tung Uk Museum, an old Hakka walled village (although it seems small for a village, with only a few houses) which was in use for a couple of centuries, up until 1980 when it was evacuated and then after a few years restored and turned into a museum. I also took a short bus ride out of Tseun Wan to the Yuan Yuan Institute, a temple for Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism simultaneously, and the Western Monastery next to it. After that I continued from Tseun Wan on a bus along the coast to Tuen Mun, farther into the New Territories, and then took the light rail back to another MTR station (at Yuen Long, I think). Along the way I stopped briefly to look (from the outside) at the Chung Koon and Miu Fat monasteries.

On Tuesday I went to Macau.

On Wednesday I went with another traveller from my hostel to see more of Lantau island, following part of the route in my guide book. We first took a ferry from the terminal in Central to Mui Wo on the island, and then took a bus past a long beach on the side of the island opposite the airport, and then up into the hills. The bus ended at Ngong Ping, a touristy village which is next to Po Lin Monastery and its Big Buddha statue. We went to see the statue and the small museum in the base of the statue, which includes both relics of the Buddha and more ordinary religious artifacts. We also got lunch at one of the monastery's restaurants (it had two, one more expensive than the other, and also a café). The monastery was very crowded with tourists, although I assume there must have been some place past the immediately visible buildings for actual monks, if there are still some there. After lunch we went separate ways, and after concluding that the next bus on the guide book's route would require a long wait I instead took the cable car, Ngong Ping's other main attraction, down to the Tung Chung MTR station near the airport. The cars came in regular and glass-floored varieties, and I stuck to the cheaper and less intimidating regular kind. The views were limited by fog, but still impressive especially when the airport was visible.

On Thursday morning I went back to Chi Lin Nunnery to see the inner public courtyard with a main temple and shrines; previously I had been able to see only the outer courtyard garden and the park across the street (which I think is related to the nunnery). The nunnery is built in Tang dynasty architecture with no nails. There are many more buildings extending back from the public areas. I also ate lunch at the vegetarian restaurant in the park across the road. I think the restaurant was associated with the nunnery, although it was surprisingly fancy with a waterfall over the windows and meals delivered in multiple courses. (It was still reasonably priced for the amount of food, though.) After that it was time to go to the airport. I had been thinking of trying the Airport Express MTR on the way out, since it sounds convenient and quick once you get to the terminal, at the Hong Kong MTR station in Central. You can apparently even check luggage for the plane at the station in Central. However, I ended up taking a bus again since it was cheaper and also stopped right outside my hostel.