HK Part V - Hong Kong Nights
^ Above image copyright Kent Wang, 2006, courtesy Wikipedia. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hong_Kong_skyline_night_lights.jpg
Hong Kong has a legendary nightlife. The city is world famous for being a city that never sleeps, and although it has been trying to clean up it's image lately, it is still a bustling place for almost all hours of the night. It is the kind of place where it's perfectly normal for people to go get groceries and do their nightly shopping at 10 or 11 pm. We went to a small supermarket in HK around 10:15 pm and the place was packed, and we waited in line for easily ten minutes. It really is a 24-hour affair in Hong Kong, with life happening everywhere, all the time.
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Alas, we tend to be more boring individuals in our old age, and even on vacation we rarely make it past 10 or 11. Here in HK, we managed to stay up longer than we usually do most of the nights, but while we stayed up late we certainly didn't go out and rage until all hours. Our longest night out was probably our first night there, and all we did was get pizza and sub sandwiches at 11:30. Woo. They were delicious by the way. My first legitimate turkey sub in months!
Another night we wandered around the area known as Queen's Road, which is turning into another upscale Western area, similar to the SoHo/Midlevels area. We had dinner here at a place called the Stone Nullar Tavern, which had good food and lots of Westerners and foreigners drinking beer on the steps outside. After dinner we strolled around the nighborhood, taking pictures of the various local shops, enjoying some delicious fancy ice cream. We happened across a wholesale food area, with lots of seafood sellers, butchers, and fruit/vegetable stands. It was quite a sight to see, if a little.......pungent.
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All above: Butcher shops in the neighborhoods around Queen's Road.
Later in the trip we ended up in the Causeway Bay area, an area packed with lots of Western stores and shopping malls, including many upscale places such as Emporio Armani, Kate Spade, and Cartier. Even on a Tuesday night this place was incredibly busy, with thousands of shoppers out mingling with people who were just hanging out and enjoying the time. We got some McDonald's while we were here, which was fantastically awesome. Of course, we also did some shopping, enjoying the nice selection of stores we don't get in Da Nang. Whilst shopping in the H&M, I realized I was not hip or fashionable enough to be shopping in many of the stores. When it came time to go home, we went through the now-standard Hong Kong taxi BS, where the first two or three didn't want to take us and we only succeeded on the fourth or fifth try.
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Hong Kong is a city of lights, and seeing the lit-up towers was pretty incredible. Unfortunately, our camera isn't so great at taking night time shots, especially with awkward lighting gradients, so we really didn't come away with any super awesome shots of the skyline at night. It bums be out but just gives me incentive to buy a new camera so we can finally get those awesome shots. Instead, please enjoy this shot by David Iliff, courtesy of Wikipedia, and the shot at the top of the page, courtesy of Kent Wang, also from Wikipedia.
Left to Right: Sun Hung Kai Centre (215 m / 705 ft), Central Plaza Tower, Bank of China Tower, and
International Commerce Center.
International Commerce Center.
The last night we had in town we met up with one of Kelsey's former students, a wonderfal young woman named Cloe. She (and her sister Hannah) had attended SIS Da Nang for half of the 2013-2014 school year, and all of the 2014-2015 year, before moving with their father to Hong Kong. We were both fairly close to them, and when we started planning our trip one of the first things we did was contact her and plan a meeting. She lived out east of Kowloon, in one of the suburb areas of the New Territories, so originally we were going to meet somewhere in Quarry Bay, which would have been about halfway for the both of us. However, we couldn't find a restaurant that sounded good, so we ended up eating at a place called "Agave", in our local Wan Chai neighborhood. It was a great meal with her, and great to catch up, and a great way to spend our last night in the city.
Both above: Dinner with Cloe.
All photos copyright Kit Davidson unless otherwise noted.