Hong Kong used to be a British colony between the years 1842 to 1997. Now it belongs to China, although they have been allowed to continue to be quite independent from mainland China until the year 2047.

In Hong Kong they speak Cantonese, but most also master Mandarin since that is the official dialect of China. It gets better; everyone speak English! At least those who work in shops, restaurants or any similar profession. That is, everyone that you are likely to talk to as a tourist, can speak English.

The currency in Hong Kong is the Hong Kong dollar, and the exchange rate is currently (February 2009) 1 HKD = 0.13 USD, or 1 USD = 7.75 HKD.

As a fairly experienced Beijing-traveler, I felt a great feeling of relief after a few hours in Hong Kong. Nobody stared at me. People queued up in a straight line, rather than one big chaotic bunch. Few tried to cut in line. No one smoked indoors. It was clean on the streets and on the roads everyone seemed to follow the rules quite okay. It felt just like an unusually orderly western city, despite the fact that Hong Kong now actually belongs to China.

Weather

We visited Hong Kong in early October and it was about 30-33 degrees Celsius (86-91 degrees Fahrenheit) every day. At midnight it was just a couple of degrees cooler. Personally, I like it but if you want to avoid the heat, you should visit Hong Kong during the winter months instead. The temperature rarely drops below 15-20 degrees Celsius (59-68 Fahrenheit). The summer should be avoided if you do not like the heat and a lot of rain.

Read more about Hong Kong

There are more articles about Hong Kong, please read the following:

Attractions in Hong Kong

Shopping in Hong Kong

Food in Hong Kong

Transportation in Hong Kong

Nanjing Road is Shanghai’s most famous shopping street. Here are all the famous brands, and all the unknown as well, everything you can imagine. All the neon signs make it look really cool at night. The prices here are obviously higher than in other places but it’s nice to just walk around and look at things and people.

Shanghai Old Town

Old Town in Shanghai is also known as Yuyuan Market and is the best place for shopping in Shanghai. There are a lot of small shops that sell a lot of various things, such as Chinese traditional ornaments, Chinese traditional medicine, fans, silk in various forms, bamboo furniture, pots and so on. There were also much food we could test, and some local specialties were actually really good.

Victoria Peak

Victoria Peak is also simply called The Peak. The Peak is a viewpoint situated high on the mountain on the Hong Kong Island, in the Central district. From there you get a great view over the city and you can see all the big skyscrapers from the top.

To get there you can take the metro to Central and from there follow the signs to the tram that goes to the top (Peak Tram). A return ticket costs HK $48 for an adult including entry to the viewpoint called Sky View Terrace. You can pay with your Octopus card if you want. It may be a long queue for the tram, a half-hour waiting period, both up and down, is not unusual.

The stretch of the tram is only 1.4 kilometers but the height difference is almost 400 meters, so it is very steep. Try to get a seat on the right side of the tram on the way up, and on the left side on the way down, and you will get the best view.

If you are a real Hong Kong fan, you probably would like to visit The Peak in both daylight and at night, and why not during sunset as well?

Ocean Park

Ocean Park is an amusement park on the southern part of Hong Kong Island. Here you can find roller coasters and everything else that is commonly found in amusement parks. Admission is just over HK $200 per adult and then all the attractions inside the park are for free. Expect long queues for everything.

To get there, get on bus number 629 from the metro station Admiralty. The bus will go directly to the park and it costs HK $10.6 per adult, using the Octopus card.

Go to their website: Ocean Park in Hong Kong

Disneyland

Disneyland in Hong Kong opened in 2005 and is located on the island of Lantau.

Disney’s famous characters are running around in the park, and they also have staff to help with the photography. They can use their cameras for a fee, or they can use your own camera to take a picture of you, without charge. Everyone is nice and the characters really act as if they were the real cartoon characters.

Disneyland has their own train that goes from Kowloon to Lantau Island. Admission for the park is HK $295 per adult.

Mid-levels escalators

A rather strange sight used by Hong Kong residents to get to and from work. It is very hilly on Hong Kong Island so it is nice to have escalators. It is a long system of escalators, a total of about 800 meters (half a mile) long. In the morning until 10 they go down and at 10 they change direction and goes up.

Although it does not sound like much fun, it was actually very interesting. The residential area next to the escalators is very dense and it is interesting to see how people really live, in contrast to the luxurious skyscrapers. Even if the buildings here look quite worn out and low level, it is not cheap at all to live here.

The escalators can be reached from the metro station Central, and then just walk a few blocks to the west and you should see it.

Star Ferry

Star Ferry is the passenger ferry service that can transport passengers between Kowloon and Hong Kong Island. I write this in the attractions section rather than transportation, since there are more efficient ways if you just want to transport yourself (MTR and taxi). The Star Ferry line is however a nice change, and you cannot argue that the view from the boat is way better than from the metro. Prices are low, from just over HK $2 and up.

The Bund is probably Shanghai’s most famous tourist attraction. The Bund is only a piece of street along the western shore of Huangpu river. The houses located along the Bund are of European new classic style and it doesn’t look like China, maybe with the exception of the colorful lights that decorate the buildings at night. You can walk along the water and it is extremely popular among both Chinese and foreign visitors to stroll around there, especially in the evening when all the lights on the buildings are turned on.

Sales people

There are also hundreds of vendors on the Bund. When we were there at the end of April 2008, they sold mainly three things. 1) Kites. You can always find kite sellers in China. 2) Roller skate “add-ons” for ordinary shoes; the sales people rolled around on their skates and asked, “skates?”. I heard that questions about twenty five thousand times a day. I never asked how much it cost, though. 3) A kind of plastic ball that was spinning on the ground while glowing in different colors. Unbelievably exciting for everyone of age 5 or less I guess. What surprised me was that most of the vendors that were selling the same toys were all gathered in the same place.

Food

Up on the walk, there were no restaurants, only small mobile street stalls, where they sold everything from sugar cane, barbecued corn, different kinds of fruit, to barbecued squid (three skewers cost 10 RMB).

Below the walk, towards the street, there are several restaurants, ranging from small independent Chinese to American chains like KFC and others.
KFC is everywhere by the way; sometimes you can see two at once.

Kowloon

Nathan Road

Nathan Road is a street, about 3 km (2 miles) long that goes north from the southern tip of Kowloon. Here you can find everything when it comes to shopping. Not just on Nathan Road itself, but also on the parallel streets on both sides. It would certainly take several weeks just to go through all the shops on and around Nathan Road.

Ladies Street

Ladies Street is located in Kowloon, at the metro station Mong Kok, parallel to Nathan Road. It is an outdoor market where they sell clothes, watches, bags, toys, and a lot of junk. It is not only for ladies though; you can find products for everyone here. Bargain hard, but do not spend too much time on a single vendor, try another one if they do not accept your price (and perhaps raise it a little). If the price is acceptable to them, they will call you back when you start to leave. If you stand there for a long time to bargain, they will just try to get as much from you as possible since they know you are very interested.

Fa Yuen Street Market

Located parallel to and just east of the Ladies Street. Here you can find all kinds of sporting goods. Mostly clothes and shoes though, not so much equipment.

Sai Yeung Choi Street

Located parallel to and just west of the Ladies Street. Some block of electronics stores. Cameras, computers, etc…

Hong Kong Island

Hong Kong Island is much more modern than Kowloon and here you can find very shiny and luxury shopping malls. Prices are generally higher than in Kowloon but they also mostly have famous brands.

Li Yuen Street

Two parallel streets located just west of metro station Central, squeezed between the buildings. Clothes, watches, bags, toys, and so on. It was quite hard to bargain here and in general not as cheap as Kowloon.

More shopping

Except all of the above, there are certainly hundreds of places you should visit. There are probably thousands of shops just nearby every metro station in the central areas. Just keep your wallet ready and shop till you drop!

There are three levels of the tower that visitors can reach. The lowest lookout is in the biggest sphere of the tower, at 90 meters up. The next level is in the middle-sized sphere, 263 meters above the ground level. The highest level you can reach as a visitor is the smallest ball at the top which is at an altitude of 350 meters. As a visitor, you cannot come up any further. Left is only the antenna that extends another 118 meters up in the air.

Hotel and Rotating Restaurant

In the second sphere, there is a restaurant that rotates around the tower’s center axis. You can sit, eat and have an overview of the city at the same time. Between the pillars of the two larger spheres, there is actually a hotel with 20 rooms.

Security check

Before you go into the tower you must go through a ridiculous security check. It looks like the same as at an airport, with X-ray machine, metal detector and security guards with harsh appearance.

The only rule, however, is to check if you have liquids with you. Water bottles are absolutely forbidden!

They did not look for anything else at all. I had my big camera around my neck, and wallet and keys in my pocket when I went through the metal detector. It was beeping like crazy but no one cared about checking me or anyone else who made the detector beep. Instead they screamed at my empty water bottle and wanted me to throw it before I could come in. Oh well.

I was there on a Sunday and it was a big crowd. It took about 20 minutes to get through the security check and then another 20 minutes in the long queue to the elevators.

Boring job

In each elevator there was a girl who spoke more like a robot. Her job was to press the right button and then tell us a little about the elevator while going up, including how fast the elevator was traveling up and at what altitude we were. She spoke both in Chinese and English. It seemed to be an incredibly boring job and it must be purely painful for her to stand there all day and read the same line all the time.

The eternal haze

In China’s large cities, it is usually always very foggy. There are few days that the sky is really blue and you can see far. The day when I was up in the tower, was foggy as usual and visibility was at most a few kilometers. If it is clear, one can definitely see really far from 350 meters up.

Expensive

It was expensive to go up to the top sphere, it cost 150 RMB per person, but I think that it would feel foolish to be at such a high building and not go up to the top. To go only to the first level is cheaper.

It was actually quite many restaurants that did not have menus in English, and I thought that was kind of surprising, considering the very English influenced history of Hong Kong. In some places, I got a special menu for westerners, which only had pictures on it. Quite convenient.

I took pictures of most of what we ate during the four days we stayed there. I cannot remember what everything is now, but please look at the pictures and use your imagination.

The subway is called metro or MTR in Hong Kong, it actually works really well and the trains run frequent, about one per two minutes during daytime. The price depends on where you are going and range from under HK $4 to HK $26. You can buy a ticket from cash machines at every station, but it is much easier to have a card, a so called Octopus card. You can charge it with money so you do not need to think about buying a ticket every time you want to take the metro.

With the Octopus card, you can also pay in some shops, parking meters, vending machines and so on.

Taxi

It is quite cheap to take a taxi in Hong Kong. The starting price is HK $15 and for that you can go 2 km. Thereafter, it costs HK $1.40 per 200 meters.

The cars are all Toyota Crown, quite large and can hold 5 passengers (three in the back seat and two in the front seat next to the driver).

The first day in Hong Kong, we were ripped off by a taxi driver who charged us HK $5 extra for a receipt. No major loss, but quite annoying. Dishonest drivers know that newly arrived tourists are an easy prey.

Besides that first time, it worked fine. Everyone I met could speak English, so there was never any problem getting anywhere. A big advantage is that most places in Hong Kong also have English names, so you rarely need to worry about the Chinese.

Bus

I myself didn’t take the bus so much in Hong Kong, but it seems to be well developed and work well as far as I could see from the streets. If you do not have the Octopus card, you must pay the exact amount in cash on the bus. You will not get any change back.

Shanghai is China’s largest city and also one of the largest cities in the world. About 18 million people live in Shanghai, if you include all the suburbs, and 10 million if you only count the city itself.

Shanghai is large, that is for sure. If you go by car from the center and out, it feels like the city will never end. And there are high-rises everywhere.

Shanghai is different from Beijing. In Shanghai there is really not so many cultural attractions to see. Beijing has a lot of those, a lot of old temples and palaces. In Shanghai, they have much less of that.

Shanghai is usually called the economical capital of China, while Beijing is the political capital.

To do in Shanghai

There is still a lot to do in Shanghai. They have a lot of interesting attractions that are well worth a visit. Here are a few examples:

Oriental Pearl – the TV tower in Shanghai

The world’s third highest TV tower, 468 meters (1535 feet) high, and as a tourist you can reach the highest observation deck at 350 meter (1148 feet) called the Space Module. The view from there is great!

The Bund

An entire street of houses in European-style along the Huangpu River. You can walk along the river and have a very nice view of the skyscrapers on the other side.

Shopping in Shanghai

Yuyuan Market, or Shanghai Old Town. A paradise for those who love shopping. But do not forget to bargain!

Prices in Shanghai

Shanghai is about as expensive / cheap as Beijing, but for those who live there, it is actually a bit more expensive. Apartments cost more, and a cheap one can be 3000 RMB per month (and then the condition of the building is… not so good)

Rich and poor

There is an extremely large difference between the rich and the poor in China, not only in Shanghai. In the west you can in many cases be a simple factory worker and still afford to have a car and a descent house. In China, that would be impossible. But the managers probably make as much money as their colleagues in west.

There are plenty of extremely wealthy, and they really like to show others how rich they are. For the luxurious restaurants you can find dishes that cost 10,000 per serving and even more than that. Such restaurants are rare in the west; there is simply no market for such extreme luxury here.

That is also the reason why a good apartment in Shanghai can cost as much as a good one in New York.

The Great Wall of China was built in the year 200 BC by the first emperor of China, Shi Huangdi. He built it to protect himself from enemies. The wall was reinforced during the Ming dynasty, between the years 1400-1600 and was in all about 3700 miles long.

Most of the wall is more or less decayed and gone today, but there are several sections north of Beijing that is well preserved and even restored to new condition.

Badaling

Most tourists visit Badaling, which is located about 50 miles northwest of Beijing. It was renovated during the 50’s and was the first section of the wall which was made available for tourists. It is quite easy accessible from Beijing, which means it gets flooded by tourists. It can be quite annoying to continuously defend oneself from approaching sales persons, which always appears where tourists go. Yet, it is a nice stretch of the wall.

Mutianyu

Mutianyu is located about 45 miles northeast of Beijing and is also renovated. Not as many people go there as to Badaling, but almost.

There are also a lot of sales people here, but it is probably not the right place to shop if you want to make a good deal. They don’t have anything unique there that can’t be found everywhere else.

Simatai

Simatai ought to be the best part of the Great Wall, and is located about 80 miles northeast of Beijing, where the landscape is very dramatic. The wall is at times very steep, almost vertical in places. It was originally built in the 6th century, but was reinforced in the 16th century. It has not been renovated since then, and you can still see damages from wars on the wall. A lot of people choose to walk on top of the wall between Simatai and Jinshanling, but you need to have in mind that it can be very strenuous due to the steepness of the wall. The wall is built on top of the mountains, and it can be quite hard work just to get to it. However, a healthy person could do it without any bigger problems. There are stairs with railings all the way up, so you don’t need to walk on trails. For the lazy one’s, there is a cable car from the valley all the way to the wall.

Is it possible to see the Great Wall from the moon?

No, it is not. The wall is only about 12-24 feet wide and it would be impossible to see it from the moon, without a very strong telescope. If any of this website’s visitors go to the moon, please report to us if you saw the Great Wall or not.

However, it might be possible to see the Great Wall from space. Space actually begins just a few miles above the Earth’s surface. From there it might be easier to spot the wall, but you would also see all the roads, and what is what… But you would still need a telescope.