A Voice in Hong Kong: Part 1
Dukling junk boat in Victoria Harbour from Tsim Sha Tsui side, HK. Photo taken by author (22/06/2026).
Howdy! Sorry, I haven’t updated this blog in a long time. I would say I have been busy, which is true, but I have also just been neglectful and lazy. I finally have some time to try getting back into the habit of writing. This is more of a personal diary-style blog post (actually, there will probably end up being more than one!) about my most recent holiday. It will likely be more of a photo dump at times but hope you enjoy it nonetheless.
After a long and hard academic year, I needed a holiday. So, I booked a 2-week trip to Hong Kong after the end of my teaching contract. And I mean immediately after - I officially finished on the 14th of June, and I flew to HK on the 15th. I couldn’t really explain why I picked Hong Kong. Whenever anyone asked, the best I could say was ‘I just got it in my head to go’. After reflecting, I think it was probably a cumulative thing. I have a close friend from HK. I have recently become more interested in Chinese culture and, in particular, in Chinese digital culture. And as an academic trying to find his ‘forever home’ university employment, I have been scouring job sites where ads for HK and Chinese university positions are frequent. Whatever the reason, I watched a bunch of HK travel videos on YouTube and got excited about the sights, the atmosphere, and most definitely the food!
This was my first ‘big trip’ alone, barring my experiences studying abroad (in Amsterdam and Windsor, Canada) and an international conference in Toronto. I never really ‘got’ the whole travel thing. Of course, intellectually, I know travel widens perspectives and deepens appreciation for other cultures, but I am also well aware of my own personality, which has always been rather anxious and introverted. I have no doubt, a younger me would have rationalised myself out of doing the trip. So, the whole thing was very unlike me. Maybe it still is unlike me? We’ll see how the experience will change me in the long term. Maybe I’ll now get the travel bug.
15.06.2026 - Journey Begins
My flight was at around 7pm and it was recommended to arrive 3 hours before. I decided to get a National Express bus from Nottingham to Heathrow T5. On the plus side, it was cheap and direct. I didn’t have to worry about changing anywhere and navigating trains with my luggage. However, in the negative column was it was a 4 hour and 40 min bus journey. My aforementioned anxiety meant I wanted to build in a buffer in case there was traffic on the way, but everything went smoothly and I ended up arriving 5 hours before the flight🤦♂️. I sat and read the book I brought with me, Ben Lerner’s Transcription. I almost finished it so bought another book, Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood, just in case I needed another for the plane. But, as it happens, I never actually needed it until the return journey.
As an aside, I have been thinking about designing a kind of ‘Digital Tech in Literature’ module. But it’s not just literature that has digital media in it, but rather where digital tech forms a significant part of the plot. Would be ideal for a interdisciplinary collab with an English department. I think Transcription would be a good text for a session on digital tech & memory. I was also thinking, Hanna Boevoerts’ We Had to Remove This Post or maybe Elaine Castillo’s Moderation (although I haven’t read that yet) would be good for a session on content moderation. RF Kuang’s Yellowface for digital pile-ons and cancel culture? Eggers’ The Circle for social media platforms? I’m definitely going to think more about this.
Anyway, the flight was 13 hours. I watched Hamnet. What a brilliant film! Incredible performance by Jessie Buckley. I mostly tried sleeping given it was an overnight flight, but couldn’t get any decent rest. It was too noisy and too uncomfortable to sleep, but I was too tired to watch any other films.
16.06.2026 - Arrival
The flight arrived in at about 15:30 HK time. Mercifully, I went through passport control and baggage reclaim rather quickly. I had bought an Octopus card with 50HKD preloaded onto it, so picked that up. My friend, J, very kindly met me at the airport. I was so grateful! I was so tired and it really eased the stress of that final leg of the journey.
A big cat art installation called "A Moment to Purr” at Hong Kong airport. a.k.a. ‘Catzilla’.
We took the A11 bus to HK Island. My hotel was in Sheung Wan. I had originally booked a hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui, but after sharing the info with J, she recommended I change hotels as it was far too small. I had been so focused on the price and the location that I wasn’t paying attention to the size of the room! I used to stay in what were essentially small windowless boxes quite a lot when I was working in Manchester and Sheffield, but that was only for a night or two at a time. For two weeks, I definitely needed more space. The hotel in Sheung Wan was much better. While not massive, it was definitely big enough. Besides, I wasn’t going to be spending a lot of time in the room during the day anyway. I also paid a bit more for a harbour view. I’m so glad I did. There were some lovely views.
To combat jet lag, I had read you should try to stick to the local clock and routine so I tried to stay awake as long as I could. I unpacked and ironed all the linen clothes I had brought with me. I was far too tired to go ‘out out’ for dinner, so just bought a load of snacks from the nearby 7-Eleven to tide me over until the morning.
17.06.2026 - In a state of limerence with a city-state? 😍 (Sheung Wan; Central)
Overslept! I slept for about 12 hours. I guess I really needed it! Unfortunately, jet lag would hit me pretty hard after this, and it would take me the best part of a week to get my sleep pattern back to relative normality. But on this first full day, I woke up feeling refreshed and went out to explore Sheung Wan and Central. It was a beautiful morning (OK, very late morning).
View of the harbour from hotel, morning 17/06/2026.
After eating breakfast/lunch in a cha chaan teng, a typical Hong Kong-style cafe, I got caught in the rain. I’d forgotten my umbrella. Being British, I actually quite like the rain but it wasn’t a refreshing or rejuvenating rain. It was a really warm day, and maybe this was just my mind playing tricks, but the rain felt warm as well. I went back, changed clothes, grabbed an umbrella (but by then it had mostly cleared up), and headed back out.
In my planning of the trip, I had come up with a plan to see a bit more of HK. I decided to go street art hunting. I figured walking around trying to capture as many as I could (Pokémon style - “gotta catch ‘em all”) would be a great way to see parts that might otherwise be missed. Sure, there are the murals that attract tourists looking for the great Instagram shot, but there are also murals down little side streets and alleyways that help showcase another side to the city. I think I’m going to do a separate post with all the murals and street art I found, so will just add a few here:
As silly as it may sound, one of the attractions I wanted to see was the 800m long Central-Mid-Level escalator system, which is one of the longest outdoor covered escalators in the world. (Apparently, it is now the second longest, after one opened in China earlier this year.) I knew Hong Kong as really hilly. This impression was initially made when my friend showed me the music video for the really cool Galactic Repairman song by Dear Jane, but was solidified when I was planning the trip. I thought the escalators were such a cool and elegant solution for traversing the levels in Central. The escalator runs downhill in the morning to help take commuting workers down to the business district, and then it reverses direction from 10am-midnight to take people back uphill. So, I rode the escalators all the way up. and then walked down stopping at places along the way. I stopped at Vission Bakery for some amazing pastries (Yum!) and then at a nearby bar to rest and quaff a couple of refreshing beers. Maybe it was just the effect of the couple of pints, but I definitely felt I had a little shine in my eyes and had a deep exhalation escape me as I reflected that I was finally here. I then Googled ‘best restaurants near me’ and found Wang Fu, which specialises in Beijing-style dumplings. It turns out this is a Michelin-recommended restaurant, but I am not surprised. I had vegetarian dumplings and noodles. Added some chili sauce! chef’s kiss 😙🤌 So good I went back again a couple of days later.
It’s fairly safe to say that I had been rather smitten with HK. When I got back to the hotel on that first full day, I was feeling even more certain in my affection. One of my favourite philosophy podcasts, Overthink, had an episode on Limerence that I had listened to recently. Limerence is that “mental state of being madly in love or intensely infatuated when reciprocation of the feeling is uncertain. This state is characterized by intrusive thoughts and idealization of the loved one”. That evening, I distinctly remember musing out loud ‘can you be in limerence with a city?’. I’m pretty sure an obsession with a romanticised and idealised version of a city brought me to HK but maybe, now here, I was falling deeper? Then I looked out the window at one of the scrolling LED messages on the HK skyscraper across the harbour…
Love HK? View from hotel (17/06/2026)
18.06.2026 - Tsim Sha Tsui; Sham Shui Po
After a cracking sleep the night before, jet lag had now hit me fully and I didn’t sleep well at all. Despite this, I was excited to explore parts of Kowloon side. But first. I trekked to Bakehouse on Staunton Street in Central for breakfast. I got a lychee ginger soda, a croissant, and a couple of famous sourdough egg tarts. I would later inhale quite a few more of these tarts over the course of the trip. Soooo good!🤤It was raining but I found a little playground/‘rest garden’ to sit and eat this breakfast of champions.
I took the MTR for the first time, taking the Tseun Wan Line from Central to Tsim Sha Tsui. It was a very wet day, with black storm warnings throughout the day, so I sheltered for the majority of the time by wandering around shopping centres. I like book stores, and despite most of the books being in Chinese, I browsed eslite in The ONE. I liked the art and photography books, especially the ones on Hong Kong. Also, went though a bit of an existential crisis due to tough questions being posed to me from the book display:
Same, my guy. Same. That is the question. - eslite, The ONE (18/06/2026)
I went to have fluffy Japanese soufflé pancakes at Flipper's (yum!). Then I went to Uniqlo in The Mira mall. I’d heard that Uniqlo was really popular in HK. Even though I could have got them in the UK, I bought a couple of t-shirts as I think they were cheaper here. I met J there as well. We had arranged to meet one of her HK friends (A) and explore the Sham Shui Po neighbourhood, which is a bit less touristy and feels a bit more like the ‘old Hong Kong’. So we took the MTR to meet him. By the way, I was so impressed with the MTR system. It just works! It’s quick, efficient, air-conditioned, you can get wi-fi, and it’s so affordable. We all met up and then went to the Dragon Centre shopping centre, which was so cool. It’s a shopping centre with a roller coaster inside (although, it’s no longer operational), and an ice rink! We explored the food court and I had some bubble tea.
We walked around the Sham Shui Po neighbourhood. A was such a good tour guide! We went on a bit of a food tour. J and A took me to get fish siu mai and fishballs from a small ‘hole-in-the-wall’ style food places (I’m vegetarian, but I had decided to be more flexible on this trip and was open to eating fish). Both were delicious! We then went to get some incredible egg bubble waffles!
We also went to Nam Shan Estate. Alongside the so-called ‘Monster Building’, which may or may not make an appearance in a later post, this public housing complex has become a bit of an Instagrammable location.
Nam Shan Estate, Shek Kip Mei (18/06/2026).
19.06.2026 - Repulse Bay; The Peak
Friday the 19th of June was the Dragon Boat Festival. In the morning, J, A, and I all met up again to go to Repulse Bay in the south of HK Island. I love the name Repulse Bay! There were lots of people enjoying themselves at the beach. Although, I was expecting even more people given it was a public holiday. We went to the Tin Hau Temple and the Pavilion of Longevity on Repulse Bay Beach.
I read on a plaque on one of the statues the reason for the name ‘Repulse Bay’. Apparently, ‘in 1841 the bay was being used by pirates causing concern for merchant ships trading with China, but they were repulsed by the British fleet’ with repulse meaning to ‘repel’ or ‘push back or fight off an attack’ here rather than disgust. From the same plaque, I read that in Chinese ‘Hong Kong’ means ‘Fragrant Harbour’, named so because it produced and sold fragrant wood (I think agarwood). That’s just a cool fact I didn’t know.
Next, we drove up to The Peak, which has incredible views of Hong Kong's skyscrapers and Victoria Harbour. I think it’s best to let the view speak for itself:
We then went to Happy Valley district. Another great name! We went to Cheung Hing Coffee Shop, one of the oldest traditional cha chaan tengs in HK. It’s been open since 1951. There, I was able to have the ‘Holy Trinity’ - all 3 of Hong Kong’s iconic treats: egg tart, pineapple bun, and HK-style milk tea. I got the pineapple bun with butter. The warm sweet bread with a slab of cold butter inside was absolutely delicious!
The ‘Holy Trinity’ of pineapple bun, egg tart, and milk tea (19/06/2026).
20.06.2026 - “That’s a No No Yes Yes”: ITZY @ AsiaWorld-Arena, Chek Lap Kok
On the first Saturday of my trip, I went to a K-pop concert at AsiaWorld Arena on Chek Lap Kok island (same island as the airport). I went to see ITZY, a five-piece Korean girl group. I’m going to write a separate post about the concert with a more academic/media scholar spin. So, I will just do a bit of a photo dump here, and say it was a lot of fun!
