Pat Sin Leng from Tai Wo Station
Many people say the Pat Sin Leng trail is the best hike in Hong Kong.
I have not done every hike in Hong Kong (yet), but I think it is the best hike I have done in Hong Kong.
The trail was fantastic, going up and over many small mountains with great views in all directions, even with the grey skies today.
As per a very specific request, the temperature today was about 20c, but on the top of the mountain in the breeze, more like 14, some people were putting on plastic jackets on downhill stretches.
I expected the trail to be very busy, but it was not, there were 30 minute stretches where I saw no one. Busy-ness (business?) was expected because today is a national holiday for tomb sweeping day, and despite seeing some tombs early on, I saw no one hiking with a broom.
Now for the very important and not to be missed stats -
15.09km - slighting more than alltrails suggested
4 hours and 55 minutes - but I did take a work phone call for 15 minutes
1,061m vertical ascent - quite a lot as the highest peak was only 659m
1,460 calories burned
23,928 steps, but the walk to the trail start from the train was quite far, I have 34,300 steps hotel to hotel
There are of course, too many pics, so lets go.
I was already excited because it was a hiking day, now I am really excited.
The first part of the hike was up a semi abandoned road past a recycling depot. I was worried at first that it might be a private road and I was about to hit a gate, once I saw this I knew I was on the right path.
A low down view, and still kind of sunny. It would get cloudier as the day went on.
After wandering through the jungle for a while, I arrived at an abandoned village, very interesting.
The village has been consumed by forest.
I will now head towards that series of small mountains, and climb over them all from left to right.
The path along here is quite tropical.
Getting closer to the mountains.
Deep in the forest. There were a lot of loud insects.
This is the Hok Tau reservoir. The path I was taking joins the Wilson trail here.
The dam. A small dam.
After the dam I left the jungle, and joined some steps. But the trail would soon become awesome.
So awesome that a silly sign has been put up. Completely ridiculous. I had a bottle of water and a muesli bar.
That mountain in the middle is where I was on the rainy day a on Monday.
Looking back towards Tai wo / Tai Po.
The views started to get great.
Some of the path ahead. I will go up to the left first.
I will go along all of those ridges.
This is the style of path along the ridges, it was excellent.
It is me. I look sweaty here, but it was not a particularly strenuous hike.
No steps! A rarity in Hong Kong.
I will end my hike today by that causeway.
The white statue is Buddha or Buddha related.
That is some of the path I had come along, and behind it, Shenzhen from yesterday. You can see Ping An tower.
Excellent trail the whole way.
More view, running out of things to say.
I will continue down those smaller peaks. All of those little islands are kind of joined together and part of Hong Kong. All of them have hiking trails.
Those buildings in the distance are a different city in China, Yantian.
Time to head down, but you cannot go straight down, you have to spiral around the back of the last small mountain.
Many more hikes to go on... but hard to get to.
The final descent was again staircases.
Almost down.
There were no picnic spots on the trail, this is the first sitting area I came across, and it is right at the end. Again I think this would be a rare thing in Hong Kong where generally every hiking trail has seats every 10 metres.
My bus stop, with the small mountains traversed in the background.
3rd hike over, this one gets the 'featured' tag.
Admiralty to Wan Chai
Tonight I went to Wan Chai, not to be confused with Chai Wan which is a different place further along the same subway line.
Wan Chai is apparently where the nightclubs are, I recall that being the case from the first time I was here, Lockhart road specifically. From what I can tell, they are mostly gone, and replaced with British pubs, full of old British guys watching rugby who were very drunk at 7pm.
The contrast between Lockhart Road and the next road over is high, where there are a bunch of boutiques and flower lined streets and pink coloured buildings, but that is how Hong Kong works.
Tomorrow I might actually stay in Hong Kong for the day, rather than ascend mountains on the outskirts of Hong Kong or go to another country. I shall call it, my rest day.
A giant monolith of a building, I am not not sure what it is.
Wanna buy a slave? Who gets uncomfortable when I say that? That's the idea.
The purple scam grapes are everywhere now that I know to look for them.
I do not think this is actually a typo as I do not see the Chinese nan character for south anywhere, but I bet most western tourists think it is a typo. As it turns out it has an entire lengthy wikipedia page, which reveals 'It was named in 1934 after Sir Wilfrid Thomas Southorn, the Colonial Secretary from 1925 to 1936'.
So both his first and last names suffered from bad spelling.
The Southorn playground provides a nice plateau to see the buildings behind it.
It was time for a healthy dinner, poke bowl, vegetarian version. It was expensive as the place was very hipstery and probably exists for female white office workers, but I enjoyed it anyway. If you see the QR code on the receipt, at many places when you sit down to eat in Hong Kong they give you one of these, and you scan it to order. You still pay at the register though.
Here is the fluffy area just one street over from what used to be the red light district of Hong Kong.
Wan Chai market. No matter the market there are always bras for sale, it is the one constant at every Hong Kong market.
Now for 2 almost identical photos taken from the same place. This first one is handheld 1/25 of a second at f/4 ISO 1600.
Where as for this one I rested my camera on the overpass and took a 3 second exposure at f/8 ISO 100. I actually think the above handheld one looks better.
Now to figure out what to do tomorrow, probably not much!