We spent spring break in Asia, which means it’s time for a trip report! Join us on part 6 of this adventure, which covers our time in Hong Kong!
About This Post
A version of post originally appeared in the newsletter. Subscribe to see the latest ASAP. This is part 6 in our report on this trip:
Spring Break in Hong Kong, Beijing, and China Part 1 - Planning and Booking
Spring Break in Hong Kong, Beijing, and China Part 2 - Heading to Hong Kong
Spring Break in Hong Kong, Beijing, and China Part 3 - Afternoon at Hong Kong Disneyland
Spring Break in Hong Kong, Beijing, and China Part 4 - Day at Hong Kong Disneyland
Spring Break in Hong Kong, Beijing, and China Part 5 - Wrapping Up Hong Kong Disneyland
Spring Break in Hong Kong, Beijing, and China Part 6 - Hong Kong (you are here)
Outside the trip report format, we also have:
Over the next…many weeks, I'll be sharing my trip report for our recent trip to Hong Kong (w/ Disneyland), Beijing, and Shanghai (w/ Disneyland). These won't be just two entries, one about each of the parks we visited. Rather, they'll be extensive and cover from booking the trip to getting home, including plenty of non-Disney content (for more recent non-Disney stuff, visit Emjoyable Explores). This post covers our time in Hong Kong.
Our Time In Hong Kong
Having wrapped up our time in Hong Kong Disneyland, our trip shifted in focus a bit. We still had Shanghai Disneyland at the end, but the middle of the trip consisted of short stints in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Shanghai.
We weren’t in a rush leaving Hong Kong Disneyland Hotel at 2PM, so we took the bus from the hotel to the Disneyland Resort Station (8-minute trip). The train to Hong Kong Disneyland is Disney-themed, which makes for a fun 7-minute journey to the Sunny Bay Station.
The Hong Kong transit authorities were rather adamant against bringing luggage on escalators, which resulted in a lot of elevator waits for us on this journey.
We were finally in our room at The Langham, Hong Kong just before 4:30PM (an Uber from Hong Kong Disneyland Hotel was estimated at something like 30 minutes…so maybe that would have been a better choice).
Our time in Hong Kong would be short—just this evening and the bulk of the following day—and the forecast called for a lot of rain.
As always, we were right to it and headed to the Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront to enjoy the views, and then up and down Nathan Road with no particular purpose, grabbing dinner and Mister Softee ice cream on the way.
With plenty of rain in the forecast, our planned itinerary for our day in Hong Kong got cut down to the essentials. We had been hoping to hike Peak Trail, but that was totally out of the question now.
After a treadmill run and hotel breakfast (yum!), we dropped our bags off, checked out, and headed to the Star Ferry Terminal. There are plenty of Star Ferry routes, but the most basic is just the trip between Tsim Sha Tsui and Central, which is what we were doing today.
Zoe was thrilled to get this cool pic before we boarded:
Once in Central, we popped into the IFC Mall, a huge shopping mall that happened to have an Arabica coffee shop.
For people who drink a lot of coffee, and who met in a coffee shop, we are most definitely not coffee snobs. That said, we understand Arabica to be a well-regarded chain even by snobs, and we simply love the chance to visit a location any time we can.
After a short walk around the area, we headed to the Central–Mid-Levels Escalator. This is the “longest outdoor covered escalator system in the world,” according to Wikipedia. The escalators only go one direction at a time, so we waited around while it took its time switching directions (it was set to change at 10AM and actually changed at 10:18, which makes sense if it stops boarding at the top around 10AM).
I don’t love to be on my phone as much as I was during the ride to the top, but I spent a ton of time reading about the highly vertical design of Hong Kong. Even having lived in Chicago and New York my whole life, it’s amazing to ride up the escalators in Hong Kong and see so many restaurants and shops in 3rd, 4th, 5th… story windows.
Upon reaching the top, we saw a sign for the Hong Kong Zoological and Botanical Gardens. This maybe wasn’t the best of ideas with so much rain in the forecast, but we didn’t have plans to fill all the time, and there was no significant rain yet. The gardens wound up being a delight, and while we got delayed by a brief downpour it didn’t derail our day at all.
We’d already locked in a lunch plan…about nine years ago. No joke. During our last visit to Hong Kong, Emily had been charmed by fast casual chain Ebeneezer’s Kebabs and Pizzeria. Besides kebabs and pizza, Ebeneezer’s also serves Indian food.
Emily has not stopped talking about the dal makhani since 2017, and she can now confirm it remains her favorite dal makhani even after all these years. (I enjoyed my paneer dish, and Zoe was more than satisfied with pizza and watching a cricket game.)
As the rain died down the activity in the streets picked up a bit, and we grabbed some fun beverages from a small stand and hung out just taking in the scene a bit.
Inside, the Central Market had plenty of crowds and energy. Everyone was taking photos of this stairwell, which I still don’t quite understand.
The claw games were out of control, and Zoe loves claw games. As much as I wanted to make a point of “you need to stop asking!”, I felt like there was a good chance that the next time we came back to Hong Kong, we’d have a kid with little interest in claw game culture.
Up to this point, Emily and I hadn’t mentioned to Zoe that we’d had our eye on a fun bonus activity for the day—a movie! With the rain (still on and off) having knocked us a little off-course, we felt fine indulging a little bit and bought tickets to The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. We can be intense travelers, sure, but we definitely take breaks when we need them. I wasn’t at all happy with some of the story choices, but it was a fun movie.
After the movie we still had a little bit of time to fill, and we happened to be not so far from the Hong Kong Observation Wheel. The queue was really long, but there was a reasonably priced skip-the-line option I was more than happy to pay for, so we walked right on.
It was a fun ride and nice to see some good views, but with the weather it didn't overwhelm.
After the Ferris wheel we transited back to The Langham for our bags and headed to West Kowloon Station for our overnight train to Beijing.
I love travel by train, but I’ve generally found any train trips that involve passport control (i.e. most international trips other than those in Europe's Schengen Area) to be about as stressful as flying.
We were scheduled to board around 8PM, so we got to West Kowloon station just before 6PM. We figured we’d get some quick dinner and then make our way through security, passport control, and so on.
During the quest for dinner (we eventually found noodles without meat), I took Zoe to peek in the stores, and we wound up with a small train toy, because I can’t say no to a train toy.
At about 6:45PM we headed toward our gate. I'll spare you the details, but it took us over an hour to get through passport checks, completing an entry form I wish I'd known about ahead of time, and customs inspections.
Through all that with 20 minutes to spare, Zoe still had some noodles left, and since we’d managed to juggle them through this whole process we were rather insistent they get eaten.
I try and remember how lucky I am to have a traveler kid who is perfectly happy to sit on a train station floor and eat noodles with practice chopsticks and a suitcase for a table.
We boarded the train just after 8PM. Zoe and I share a love of sleeper trains, and this was Zoe’s fourth such train, having previously slept on trains in India, Finland, and Italy.
As I noted back in the first part of this trip report, I’m happy to design trips around sleeper trains. As a group of three, we often have the awkward component of sharing a room with a stranger, but that’s just something we accept when we have to (we’ll book a three-bed cabin when possible).
When I’d booked this train through the very helpful ChinaHighlights.com, I hadn’t really thought about the specific bed locations, so we’d wound up with two top bunks and a bottom bunk. This meant Zoe would either be at ground level with a stranger, or in a top bunk they very well might flop out of.
It worked out okay, as the safety rail on the top bunk was more extensive than expected. Zoe loves a top bunk, so we were especially happy this worked out. (None of us remembers anything about our cabin-mates on this journey, but we did have two at separate times.)
Our beds all came with amenity kits and snack boxes, and the car had both squatty potties and seated toilets. It was overall one of the nicest trains I’ve been on, which makes sense because it only recently entered service.
The route we were on was G898 on the CR400AF-AE train, which has been called the world’s fastest sleeper train. Nothing about the speed blew me away, but that’s probably a good feature when you’re trying to sleep on a train. Emily reviewed the entire journey here.
Before heading to bed, I had one mission to complete—confirming my Alipay worked. Mainland China relies mostly on Alipay and WeChat for financial transactions.
We’d both set up Alipay on our phones before leaving the United States, but it was still a thrilling experience to finally confirm it all worked seamlessly.
I got this tea from the cafe car. Having managed to board a train and buy an iced tea, I took a second to remember one of the reasons I love China travel—even the smallest wins can feel like humungous victories.