Hong Kong / Japan / Singapore... Hongpan! - March and April 2025 - Page 2

Here is the departure area after customs at the Sheung Wan terminal. I took the Turbojet, which is one of 2 different companies that travel the route. There are 2 departure points to pick from, but Sheung Wan has a lot more sailings and arrives at a better location in Macau.

I had a window seat. More on that below. The ferry was quite full on the way over.

At this point I could see out the window. There is Hong Kong.

But as soon as the boeing jets that power the thing fire up, you can no longer see out the window.

Now I am in Macau. Over that bridge is the Taipa part of Macau.

My journey into Macau took me over this long elevated blue floored walkway. The government of Macau has gone to great lengths to ensure there is no view.

I got down at a nice harbour area. A lot of joggers. Also I bravely boarded the boat in shorts and a t-shirt, thinking it would get warmer. Everyone else was in arctic gear, but now they regret it because it is nice and warm.

Here is a typical Macau housing area. They are a bit denser than Hong Kong.

The other thing different about Macau is scooters, lots of scooters. You do not really see scooters in Hong Kong. The public transport in Macau is crap, not that it will bother me today, I shall be walking.

Soon, by accident, I found a park / zoo / flower garden complete with pointless cable car. I believe it is called Jardim da Flora.

Some nice views to be had from the garden.

The area is an old fort. I presume Japan were the problem, as usual.

They refused to allow me to operate the cannon.

It is an interesting thing to consider, this is one of the few places in the world where English is the 3rd language. Most signs in Macau have Chinese and Portuguese.

The main skyline area, I suspect the buildings in the distance are taller, but the Casino Lisboa will always be the star.

On top of the garden is the historic lighthouse. Apparently the first one ever constructed along the Chinese coast.

Rusty knot.

Behold, the Lisboa Casino. I did not go inside. Somehow on a previous visit I was still here at night, and observed hundreds of possibly 'ladies' of the night walking laps up and down a shopping area inside the casino waiting to be bought for the evening while the triads watched on.

The lesser side of the Casino Lisboa.

I do not know what is going on here, pink santa?

Time to wander around the shopping area, apparently called Macau Ginza, for no known reason.

This old church is still standing.

A hugely busy area. Macau exists only for tourists. They do not complain about over tourism.

There is the church that is only partially still standing. Probably the most taken photo of Macau.

The main shopping street is very busy, but even one street over and there is almost no one.

The shops here do not take visa or mastercard, they fully embraced China with alipay and wepay. They do however take Hong Kong dollars, and give you change in Macau patacas. This meant I had to spend about $20 Australian. A challenge for me. I bought the most expensive Portuguese tarts to waste money. I still did not spend all the change I received. When I arrived back in Hong Kong I left about $5 worth of patacas in a plant pot for someone on their way to Macau to find.

Time to head back to the ferry terminal and observe some cool architecture.

That is the sands casino. Every single one of these places is owned by criminals.

At this time the Macau ferry terminal was very quiet. I tried to spend my patacas here, but they only had a mcdonalds and places to buy moutai.

Finally, here is my ferry back to Hong Kong (the one on the right). So there you go, a day trip to Macau and I never set foot inside a casino.

When you cross the road in Hong Kong, you often have to wait in the middle for a while. Maybe 10 minutes. Despite there being no traffic and only 2 lanes of road to cross. They do this to give you extra time to look at your phone while you hope the double decker busses turning at you actually get around the corner.

Here is the temple street market. I might as well show all the markets even though I have no reason to look at things in the market.

This is a mascot invented by the infamous Hong Kong police. It is a purple grape, apparently in Cantonese 'the little grape' sounds similar to 'beware of liars', and it therefore helps inform the elderly that at all times, they are being scammed. The explanation of the mascot is perhaps more complicated than any scam the elderly might get involved with.

Instead of wontons, I had beef slices in spicy sour soup with pickled vegetables. There are noodles in it too. I think normally this bright yellow soup is done with fish slices, but not at this place. It was neither very spicy or sour, but it was very yellow.

And for my final of only 5 photos this evening, here is the best bit for walking along Nathan road, due to the very wide footpath. Slow walking is the new plague.

I had planned my journey as a bus was involved. This is Tsuen Wan station area, where I transferred to a very regular bus, which was the wrong bus.

Here is where I got off the bus, on a highway, just before a long tunnel. Google maps suggested I could walk down to the road up into the mountain. I could not. A bus depot was between me and the road, there was a gate at the back of the bus depot. The bus security guard would not let me cross the car park and go through the gate. He did tell me how to cross under the highway, and which bus to catch back in the other direction, that would go back under the same highway and let me off about 50m from where I am now.

And so, here I am going under the bus stop I got off at earlier.

And here is the gate I was not allowed to go through. The bus stop on the highway is just the other side of that building. In hindsight I should have just run through past the guard.

The path up to the dam where the hike officially starts from was full of many monkeys.

Dam number one of the day, the pineapple dam.

Here is the reservoir. Tricky light today due to the pollution that comes with sunny skies.

Time to cross dam number 2, I do not think it has a cool name like pineapple dam.

In the middle of this photo you can see the main mountain of the day. It does not look too far away, however I will take a very CIRCUITOUS route to get there. I like the word circuitous and will use it many times in the future.

There appears to be zero water on the far side of the dam.

Much of today's hike will be concrete steps, or worse, stay tuned.

Already getting quite high, these will be the clearest photos of the city as the pollution will get worse during the day.

Perpetual pollution twilight.

There is needle hill. It is steep to get up, and even steeper to get down the other side. My circuitous route meant a lot of up and down today, hence the high number of metres of vertical ascent.

Top of needle hill.

Maybe photo of the day, the pollution was still tolerable.

I am getting further away from my eventual summit!

Those mountains are all part of Hong Kong, more on that later too.

First stance of the trip! Should have added more leg spread.

And then for a while, the 'trail' became a hiking trail, with Chinese characteristics.

Getting further away from the city, that is not anywhere near the main parts of Hong Kong, that is Tsuen Wan which is on the very end of the red subway line.

I am still a long way from the summit, and now I am going a long way down.

An actual real looking hiking trail, no concrete steps, no road.

The helicopter landing area is at the lead mine camping area (the mine is long closed), a cross-ways of the the two main trails, the Maclehose and Wilson trails.

Time to start the ascent to the last summit, more concrete steps.

This part of the trail almost looks like Japan.

Unexpected rocks! Exciting.

That is all still Hong Kong, there are lots of tiny little islands.

Other people! There were a few others today, but mainly at the start, and then once again when I was over the summit of Tai Mo Shan.

I am far away from Tsuen Wan.

Cows! There are cows on this hike. They do not belong to anyone. They just laze about. I prefer them to bears. The path was quite nice along this stretch, just me and the cows.

Getting closer.

There is a lot of military stuff on the summit.

That is all still part of Hong Kong, without high rises. Note that the runway there is for a helicopter base. They used to land small planes there but not anymore. Of course I have landed a huge jet there on flight simulator, it did not go well.

You can see some of the exposed circuitous path I had come along. A lot of the route was exposed, so I was glad I had applied sunscreen.

Getting more polluted.

There is the summit. I cannot get to the summit. Usually they put a fake summit marker, but there was nothing. Nothing for the highest point in Hong Kong.

View from near the summit.

This is all still part of Hong Kong. All that greenery. Note that the planes descending into Hong Kong airport fly quite close to the summit of Tai Mo Shan, keeping me company every 30 seconds all day long.

After the summit area I came past this abandoned concrete bunker of a house. The writing on the left says Bruce Wayne is Batman. So there you go, confirmation.

Looking back up to the closed off summit. It was quite tropical on the lower parts of the descent.

I had 2 bus choices, I chose the one that seemed to be more regular, but it added about an extra 1.5km of walking down a road at the end, I was very happy when I got to the stop and it was there waiting. But why is it on such a lean?

This is a public community bus. It will now take me down a mountain road with busted suspension, at tremendous speed. This is the most dangerous part of any hike I ever do.
So that is how you hike a really long way around to get near the top of the highest point in Hong Kong.

Times Square. A shopping centre I recall spending a lot of time in the first time I came here when my hotel was next door.

A double decker tram, unique to Hong Kong as far as I know. A relic from times gone by they persist with. I have been on them, getting down the stairs to get off at your stop is quite an achievement.

Causeway Bay is a very busy area.

Hong Kong also has Sogo, so with all the Japanese restaurants around, and yet another Donki nearby, there is really no reason to go to Japan at all.

I thought I might find my dinner on this food street brought to you by Citibank, but they had everything except Chinese food.

This is the best overpass in all of Hong Kong. Double decker buses and double decker trams.

And so for my dinner I went into one of the many Hong Kong cafes, they all have a similar menu, a few have now sprung up in Melbourne recently with the same menu. You can get all day breakfast if you want. You cannot get wonton noodle soup, not that I would have got that from this sort of place anyway. So instead I had beef ribs in black pepper sauce, on top of spaghetti, baked with cheese. Yes, that is indeed authentic Hong Kong food.
Tomorrow, I will try and find out if the visa free Chinese mainland entry thing really works by going to Shenzhen. I do not have alipay or wechat, so I will not be able to buy anything.

Here is what you see after you exit the Lo Wu checkpoint. It is a lot less chaotic than it used to be. The first time I came here there were police everywhere and hundreds of touts. I did not take any photos inside the border control area, that would be foolish.

Look how quiet it is. That would remain the case throughout the day. Also, very polluted today.

Plenty of creative architecture around, if you like photos of random buildings you will enjoy today's presentation. Lo Wu where I entered is the old part of Shenzhen, so the buildings around here are more China of 1990 style rather the China of now style, but you will see both.

I took out cash, $20 Australian worth. It will be a great challenge (which I failed) to spend it all in a day. I did not setup alipay or wechat, no one takes visa, but everywhere I tried takes cash, one place had no change so I told them not to worry, only for someone to run after me with my change once they found it.

Nice view of the old part of Shenzhen.

China has Lawson. No need to go to Japan. They also changed my 100 Yuan when I bought a bottle of water.

I enjoyed this traffic jam. Most cars and all scooters in Shenzhen are electric.

Coffee shop? I do not know, I was too scared to go down the stairs. So were the ten other people taking a photo.

The Dongmen pedestrian area is undergoing a major revamp, construction everywhere, entire sections were closed. Here is a boring section that was still open.

Abandoned, and probably about to be knocked down.

McDonalds, with Chinese characteristics.

Inside this old looking building is a hipster food street. It was not open yet.

Next I headed into the Mix C mall, in an attempt to spend some Yuan.

I found a great food court, but it was not yet lunch time, what to do...

First I had an expensive watermelon and lemon tea, with chunks of watermelon and lemon and way too much ice. 3 sips and I was done.

Then I enjoyed a global snail. The snail paste inside was divine.

I considered going ice skating, but since my insurance does not cover snow sports, I thought better of it.

A tall building, but not THE tall building, stay tuned.

Next I caught the subway. I have a Shenzhen Tong subway card from many years ago, it expires if you don't use it. I chatted in Chinese with the service centre to get it reactivated and found out I still had almost $20 Australian credit on it, I have no idea why I put so much money on the card on a previous trip. I have enough credit for 10 more day trips.

The Mei Tuan delivery riders are lazing about waiting for a job.

Next I headed into the Coco mall, I think I have been there before, but there are so many malls in Shenzhen I am not completely sure. They have an excellent lego shop with huge re-creations of all the big buildings in Shenzhen.

The inside of the Coco mall is very mall like.

Looks like it is actually called Coco park, and I do think I maybe perhaps have been there before almost certainly.

Ping An tower, the 5th highest building in the world. This did not exist the last time I was here.

Desperate to spend more money, I decided to have a dessert. The milk is coconut milk. The black sesame filled balls are my favourite.

A nearby mall decided to cat theme itself. There were a lot of cats.

Although the one on the right looks more like a dog here? Hmm, maybe it is a cat. This will consume my thoughts now, it is like that dress that is either gold or blue or whatever that was all about.

From the mall area I walked back to Lok Ma Chau checkpoint, enjoying the wide footpaths and lack of people. On the way I passed a very large food truck park, that appears to not be in use.

Behold the checkpoint. Completely non chaotic, no lines to get through immigration. You walk over a bridge across a river, I wanted to take a photo but again thought better of it.

And finally, proof that I had re-entered Hong Kong, the East Rail train waiting to take me back downtown.

Here is a random street scene on my journey north along Nathan rd.

I love overpasses.

This is what basically all the apartments in Sham Shui Po look like. Inspiration for many computer games.

I like how Hong Kong has these 'parks' everywhere, open to all, with lighting.

Time to explore the hardware store area and associated market.

It was generally busy, this is the end of the street market area where the crowd thins out a bit.

Wanna buy a stolen power tool? It is a fascinating concept that you can wander down from your apartment at 10pm every night to buy a drill off a rug in the street.

Behold, Dragon Centre, in all its glory.

I believe that blue sign at the top says food court, lets go and investigate.

Thankfully the roller coaster is not running. I would fear for my personal safety if it was. I presume something bad happened to cause it to no longer operate.

The food court was legit, with a lot of great looking food, but it was a bit too squeezy and therefore a bit too sneeze and cough infested for me.

Instead I had pasta, again. But I decided to add a huge bowl of broccoli and mushrooms with enough garlic to kill the entire cast of twilight.
Tomorrow is a hiking day, I believe it is also a national holiday for tomb sweeping day, something I run into when I go to Korea too. Hopefully my hike is not too popular and or, I will be there before most Hong Kongers awaken.