Hong Kong Island

One power-snooze in our shoe box hostel room later, it was time to cross Victoria Harbour onto Hong Kong Island, the business centre of the city. We rode the quaint Star Ferry for the princely sum of 30 Aussie cents each.

Hong Kong seems to have been built with a motto in mind - "Upwards at all costs". The vehicles, buildings, infrastructure and even the countryside is impossibly tall to increase the amount of Hong Kong that can be squeezed into each square metre of land. Hong Kong is built on such steep terrain that it has the world's longest escalator - a public walkway which sits above the streets and stretches on for block after block after block.



After a stroll through the Zoo we decided to ride the cable tram up to Victoria Peak. The ride is astonishingly steep and climbs 400 vertical metres in a couple of minutes. At the top is a ridiculous number of shops and some very impressive viewing platforms for gawking at the city below. Unfortunately we chose a poor day to go to the Peak as the smog in the air made viewing particularly poor. You can see in one of the photos the difference between what we would be able to see on a clear day and what we actually saw. We stayed until the city turned on all its lights and then returned to our hostel.