Thursday February 26th - Friday February 27th, 2026 Queen Anne, Hong Kong
- Neil Wylie
- Dec 22, 2025
- 7 min read
Updated: Feb 28
Like Singapore, we visited Hong Kong a number of times during my working years – so our plans for the next two days are somewhat subdued. Hong Kong continues to captivate me. Though it is Chinese, it retains a unique identity, with its British legacy still visible despite gradually fading. The city exemplifies how humans adapt to some of the highest population density in the world. Above all, the vibrant energy of Hong Kong is palpable—it truly hums with activity.
For this visit the ship is docked at the Kai Tak Cruise Center in the east of Hong Kong, it is the site of the former Hong Kong airport famous for its hair raising flight approach. The terminal buildings are all new(ish) and they are gigantic; it took about 10 minutes to walk from the ship through the terminal to the bus area. Interestingly the local authorities would not permit the ship to use the StarLink satellite system so there is no wifi on board for the duration of our stay; luckily our cellphone service provider, AT&T, has an international day pass for Hong Kong so we can use our phones.
On our first day we took a ships tour to the island of Lantau, the biggest island in Hong Kong but with a very low population as it is largely set aside as a nature reserve – despite hosting the airport and Hong Kong Disneyland. We set off on our bus under an overcast threatening sky with cool temperatures, I much prefer this to the blazing heat we had in Singapore, for our 40km drive to Lantau Island in the west of Hong Kong. Our local guide immediately began her download, fact after fact after fact, which after about 10 minutes became a bit monotonous - all she was missing were the PowerPoint slides.
Despite being so densely populated the traffic for our trip west was quite light; Hong Kong has a good road system with many freeway bypasses over bridges and through tunnels. At a macro level Hong Kong can be dived into two areas: Hong Kong Island and the Kowloon Peninsula – our journey today took us across the peninsula from west to east with Hong Kong Island visible between the many high rise buildings to the south of our left.
It took about 30 minutes to reach our first stop, the Lantau Link Visitor Center – basically a viewpoint from which we could see two bridges: the Tsing Ma classic suspension bridge and the Ting Kau cable stay bridge, both constructed in the 1990s. A spiral walkway led up a small hillock with a viewing platform at the top. Both bridges were very impressive and a testament to Hong Kongs ability to take on very challenging infrastructure projects, I personally found the Ting Ma bridge to be more visually appealing.
What a surprise - a nice sandy beach in Hong Kong, who would have thought? The Upper Cheung Sha Beach was practically deserted as our bus disgorged its contents of aged troopers most of whom delighted in getting their toes in the sand for a few minutes. The beach was on the south side of Lantau Island facing directly out to the South China Sea. I imagine Cheung Sha would be very popular on holidays, a signed depicted a swimming zone protected by anti-shark nets but we could not see it and assumed it was only set up during busy periods. Another sign warmed against indecent expose, just when I fancied a naked swim!
The roads in the interior of the island were all very narrow and winding, due to the many hills, and so it took us about half an hour to reach the tiny fishing village of Tai O on the far west coast. Tai O is apparently referred to as the “Venice of Hong Kong” personally I found that a bit of a stretch, though it was a very interesting and photogenic village. We crossed a couple of small bridges and visited a small temple. The “streets” were actually narrow alley ways lined with shops and businesses, the smell of dried fish and incense lingered in the air. While there were a few cafes that catered to tourists mostly it was locals going about their daily tasks, I thought it was well worth a visit.
Twenty years ago we visited the Big Buddha on Lantau Island, taking the underground to the cable car station and then ascending to the Po Lin monastery complex before walking up the 200+ stairs to the 38M tall bronze statue. This time the bus took us all the way to the top of the mountain, and we only had to climb a short staircase to reach the platform surrounding the base. The sculpture's base is a model of the one in the United Kingdom. One of the five large Buddha images in China, it is enthroned on a lotus on top of a three-platform altar. Surrounding it are six smaller bronze images known as "The Offering of the Six Devas" that are posed offering flowers, incense, lamp, ointment, fruit, and music to the Buddha. The statue is very impressive though I found it hard to appreciate the scale from such close quarters, constantly craning my neck to get a look at the almost silhouetted statue. Looking back down the immense staircase, I marveled at how I’d been able to make the climb all those years ago. Down in the valley we could see the Po Lin monastery surrounded by cloud topped hills and off in the distance misty islands in the South China Sea – it was stunning. The three tiered base of the monument houses a shop (of course) and some historical artifacts.
Back down in valley, passing around a huge ceremonial gateway, we visited the Lin Po monastery for our vegetarian lunch; the monastery actually operates a large scale restaurant for visitors. Herded into one corner of a large dining room we were sat at large round tables; I was fairly starving and sat in high anticipation of a good lunch – even if it was vegetarian. We were so disappointed as it started with mushroom soup, well we assumed that it was as there was no explanation for any of the dishes we were served. There followed a series of mystery dishes that were delivered to the table and as these were passed around, we had to pick off what we wanted but had nowhere to put it as there were no plates, others who had consumed the soup used their tiny soup bowls. I had to scavenge some clean soup bowls from another table, but no napkins could be found - I hate not having a napkin when I’m eating. I ate some rice and a few nuts and some kind of omelet, I think. Sandra ate nothing, for which she was very grateful as, later that evening, I was pretty violently ill and spent the night close to the toilet.
Following lunch we toured the monastery which had two main prayer halls: one large and one immense with 1000 small buddhas. Beautiful flower arrangements could be seen everywhere, both inside and outside the prayer halls, many had a small label attached and I wondered if there was some kind of competition in progress - or maybe the labels just indicated which family had donated the arrangement. We always find it awkward when visiting places of worship as a tourist and try to be as respectful as possible around those who are attending genuinely there to pray, unfortunately this attitude is not pervasive. Below the main hall there was a beautiful koi pond with a small waterfall which is apparently a key element of proper feng sui design.
The plaza area in front of the monastery complex finally offered the best views for the buddha at the top of the staircase. There was also an area contain gigantic sand filled pots into which burning incense sticks had been inserted, some of the largest stick I’ve ever seen. A long walkway led to another ceremonial gate and this time we were able to pass through it and along to Ngong Ping village – basically a pedestrian street of quite modern shops winding its way down the hill. The guide gave us some free time and as we had no desire to shop, we looked for an alternative. We normally avoid Starbucks like the plague, but we were desperate and so took the plunge – the coffee was actually quite good, we were surprised.
The cable car station was located at the end of the street through Ngong Ping, this was the same station that Sandra and I had arrived at all those years ago. The final part of our tour today involved riding the cable car back down to the base of the mountain and it was a brilliant ending. The system had been upgraded a bit since we last rode it, the 4 person cars being replaced with larger 8 person models. Some of the cars had glass floors, as they did when we rode it before, but our tour did not include this “deluxe” option. The views from the cable car were amazing: we could see the raised roadway over the sea on its way to Macao suddenly disappearing, as it transitioned into a tunnel, and then reappearing. Our final images of the buddha on the mountain top became more and more distant as the cable car progressed, and on the downward side we got a great view of the “new” airport built entirely on reclaimed land to replace the Kai Tak airport where our ship was currently docked.
A long and somewhat tiring day but, other than the lunch, we really enjoyed this excursion.
The next day we opted to take the ship’s shuttle bus to the Tsim Sha Tsui area of Kowloon, a journey of around 30 minutes. The area at the southern end of the Kowloon Peninsula is dominated by shopping malls, hotels and museums – the famous Nathan Road runs from the bottom of the peninsula north to the Mong Kok area with many of the famous open markets located along the way. We just shopped and wandered, found a great coffee café and later I had my first Chinese milk tea which I enjoyed immensely. Not a lot to report.
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