5 Days in Hong Kong

Start the way a lot of the city does, in a cha chaan teng, literally a "tea restaurant". These Hong Kong diners grew up in the 1950s and 60s, when proper Western restaurants were out of reach for working people and cooks invented a cheaper "soy sauce Western" menu instead: macaroni in broth, fried egg and Spam, baked pork chop rice, thick toast with condensed milk. Lan Fong Yuen on Gage Street says it invented two of the city's signature drinks, yuenyeung (coffee mixed with milk tea) and the "silk-stocking" milk tea, strained through a cotton bag. Order the milk tea and something simple to go with it.

Walk up to Hollywood Road, the street that links Sheung Wan and Central, and look for the temple at numbers 124-126. Man Mo Temple was built in 1847 and is the largest of Hong Kong's Man Mo temples. It's dedicated to two gods: Man Cheong, the god of literature, and Kwan Tai, the martial god. Scholars and students prayed to the first for success in the imperial exams, so the temple pairs the pen with the sword.

It's a compound of three buildings: the temple itself, the neighboring Lit Shing Kung for all the heavenly gods, and Kung So, an assembly hall where community disputes were once settled. Since 1908 the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals has run it, and it has been a Grade I historic building since 1993. Go early, and remember that people are praying here.

Five minutes east along Hollywood Road is the former Central Police Station compound, three declared monuments in one block: the old police station, the Former Central Magistracy and Victoria Prison. After a long restoration it reopened on 29 May 2018 as Tai Kwun, a centre for heritage and arts. The heritage displays tell the story of the police station and the prison, and the old buildings around the courtyards are worth wandering through.

Entry to the site is free. The grounds are open from 8am to 11pm, the heritage exhibitions from 11am to 7pm, and the contemporary art galleries Tuesday to Sunday, 11am to 7pm.

Lunch is Cantonese roast goose, one of the dishes Hong Kong does better than anywhere. Yat Lok on Stanley Street, a short walk from Tai Kwun, is a small restaurant with a Michelin star, open daily from 10am to 8:30pm. The geese are marinated and chargrilled, and a good one has crisp skin over juicy meat.

The classic order is a quarter goose over lai fun, thick rice noodles, in clear broth. It's a small place and fills at lunchtime, so go at 11 or after 2.

The Peak Tram opened on 28 May 1888 and was the first funicular railway in Asia. It climbs about 400 meters in 1.4 kilometers from Garden Road to the Peak. For decades it served the people who lived up there, and from 1904 to 1930 an ordinance kept the Peak a residential area for non-Chinese. It reopened on 27 August 2022 after a long renovation.

The ride is steep enough that the skyscrapers seem to tilt past the window. It runs from about 7:30am to 11pm, but the queue at the lower terminal is worst before sunset, so go up around 3:30 or 4pm and buy the ticket online.

At 552 meters, Victoria Peak is the tallest hill on Hong Kong Island. The very summit is a radio station and closed to the public, so "the Peak" in practice means the parks, viewpoints and the Peak Tower complex around it. The view is the one on every postcard: the towers of Central, Victoria Harbour, Kowloon and, on a clear evening, the outlying islands.

The paid Sky Terrace 428 on top of the Peak Tower adds height, but you can get the same skyline for free from the flat path along Lugard Road, which is quieter than the main platform. Sunset in Hong Kong falls at about 5:45pm in the cooler months, which is when the towers switch their lights on. Stay until it's properly dark, then head down.

Hong Kong's trams opened in 1904 and have always run on electricity. They are all double-deckers, and the line runs along the north shore of Hong Kong Island from Kennedy Town to Shau Kei Wan, with a branch to Happy Valley. The fare is a flat HK$3.30 however far you go: board at the back, sit upstairs at the front window and pay with your Octopus (or the exact change) as you get off at the front.

Hop on in Central, ride east through Admiralty and Wan Chai, and get off wherever you see a good dinner. If you want goose for dinner, Kam's Roast Goose is on Hennessy Road in Wan Chai, open 11:30am to 9:30pm.

Dim sum began in the teahouses of Guangzhou: owners added small snacks to the tea they sold, and drinking tea with dim sum became yum cha, literally "drink tea". The traditional format in Hong Kong was "one pot, two items", a pot of tea with a pair of dishes, a cheap meal for working people.

Tim Ho Wan on Fuk Wing Street is a chain now, but its Sham Shui Po shop is a proper Hong Kong counter, open daily from 8am to 9:30pm and in the Michelin Guide. Order the shrimp dumplings (har gow), the baked buns with barbecue pork and the steamed beef balls with tangerine peel. For an old-style teahouse, try Lin Heung Kui in Sheung Wan.

After breakfast, walk the streets around Fuk Wing Street. Sham Shui Po is one of the densest neighborhoods in Hong Kong, a mostly lower-income area of street markets, electronics stalls, fabric shops and restaurants. Apliu Street is the flea market for cables, phones and secondhand electronics, and the Golden Computer Shopping Arcade sells bargain gadgets.

It's also a place where many people live in tiny subdivided flats, so treat it as a neighborhood, not a theme park, and ask before you photograph anyone. For a quick snack before you leave, Hop Yik Tai on Kweilin Street sells rice rolls (cheung fun) with a silky, slightly lardy texture and other street-food classics, open from 6am to 8:30pm.

The Hong Kong Palace Museum in the West Kowloon Cultural District opened on 3 July 2022, the 25th anniversary of the handover, and shows objects from the Palace Museum in Beijing's Forbidden City. Building it in Hong Kong drew criticism from some in the city, so it carries a political history as well as a cultural one.

It's open Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday from 10am to 6pm, Friday, Saturday and public holidays from 10am to 8pm, and closed on Tuesdays (except public holidays). General admission is HK$70 (about 8 EUR); check the site for exhibitions.

Next door is M+, the museum of visual culture. It covers art, design and moving image. The Grand Stair, the basement levels, the Found Space and the roof garden are free to enter, and a standard ticket for the galleries is HK$190.

It is open Tuesday to Thursday and the weekend from 10am to 6pm, Fridays from 10am to 10pm, and closed on Mondays. The last admission is 30 minutes before closing, and the museum restaurants stay open late. If Typhoon Signal No. 8 goes up, unused tickets stay valid for 60 days.

The Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront looks straight across Victoria Harbour at the Hong Kong Island skyline. The Avenue of Stars, modeled on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, honors the city's film stars, and the old Clock Tower stands nearby. If you have an extra hour in the afternoon, the Hong Kong Museum of History in Tsim Sha Tsui East is free and tells the story of Hong Kong (open every day except Tuesday).

The Symphony of Lights is a free show every night at 8pm. It combines lights on 43 buildings and two attractions on both sides of the harbor with a soundtrack broadcast on the waterfront, and it lasts about ten minutes. It has run since 2004, and a new edition is under review, so the format may change. The skyline is the real attraction.

The Star Ferry began as the Kowloon Ferry Company in 1888, and it still crosses Victoria Harbour between Tsim Sha Tsui and Central every few minutes. On weekdays the fare is HK$5 on the upper deck and HK$4 on the lower; at weekends and on public holidays it is HK$6.50 and HK$5.60. Boats from Tsim Sha Tsui run from 6:30am to 11:30pm.

It's a harbor crossing for pocket change, and the best way back after the show, with the towers lit up on both sides. The four-day tourist pass at HK$50 pays off only after ten rides.

Wong Tai Sin is the Taoist temple where Hong Kong goes to ask the gods a question. It's dedicated to the Great Immortal Wong, and it's famed for kau chim, a form of divination: you kneel at the altar, light incense and shake a bamboo cylinder of numbered sticks until one falls out. You then take the matching slip to a fortune-teller in the arcade, who reads it. People do exactly this every day, so you get the real atmosphere without any ceremony laid on for visitors.

It dates to 1921, when the founder said the god had told him through a spirit-writing ritual to build a shrine. It was private for decades and opened fully to the public only in 1956. The temple covers 18,000 square meters on the southern slope of Lion Rock.

From Wong Tai Sin it's a short ride to Diamond Hill and the Chi Lin Nunnery. It was founded in 1934 as a retreat for Buddhist nuns and rebuilt in 1998 in the style of the Tang dynasty, with statues of the Buddha and Guanyin inside. The halls and the garden in front are open to the public every day and entry is free.

It's calmer than Wong Tai Sin.

Next to it is Nan Lian Garden, a 3.5-hectare classical Chinese garden in Tang style, with artificial hills, ponds, rocks and wooden pavilions. It's a joint project of the Chi Lin Nunnery and the government and opened on 14 November 2006. It's open daily from 7am to 9pm.

Mong Kok has been described by Guinness World Records as the busiest district in the world, at about 130,000 people per square kilometer. On Tung Choi Street the southern stretch is the Ladies' Market, low-priced clothes, bags and souvenirs, and the northern end is Goldfish Street, known for goldfish, plants and pet supplies. The best way to see them is simply to walk.

The Ladies' Market is better for people-watching and cheap souvenirs than for serious shopping, so compare two stalls before you pay. Keep your bag in front of you.

One of the city's best-known wonton noodle shops is on Parkes Street in Jordan. Mak Man Kee is open daily from noon to 12:30am and is in the Michelin Guide. The signature bowl is wonton soup noodles: prawn wontons in thin skins sitting on duck-egg noodles in a clear, savory broth, with the noodles also available tossed in oyster sauce or shrimp roe.

Close by is the Temple Street Night Market. The street itself dates from the Qing dynasty and is named after a Tin Hau temple that stood here, and the night market has more than a hundred stalls. Traffic is closed off as people swarm into it from dusk; it sells cheap clothes, phones and watches, and snack and seafood stalls line the sides, serving rice hot pots and street food.

Treat it as a show with a soundtrack, not a place to find a serious bargain. Old Chinese medicine clinics still operate along the street.

The Ngong Ping Cable Car runs from Tung Chung, at the end of the MTR's Tung Chung line, up to Ngong Ping on the hills of Lantau. Before it opened, the only way up was a mountain road and a bus. The ride lasts about 25 minutes. The terminal is five minutes from Exit B of Tung Chung station, about 30 minutes by MTR from Hong Kong Station.

It runs from 10am to 6pm on weekdays and from 9am to 6:30pm at weekends and on public holidays. A round trip in a standard cabin costs HK$295, in the Crystal Cabin HK$365. If the service is suspended for weather, tickets can be exchanged or refunded. Book online and go early.

The Tian Tan Buddha is the Big Buddha of Lantau, a bronze figure 34 meters tall, weighing more than 250 tonnes and built from 202 bronze pieces. Plans began in 1973 after monks from Po Lin visited the Great Buddha of Kamakura in Japan, and it was finished on 29 December 1993, the day the Chinese reckon as the day of the Buddha's enlightenment. It's a modern monument, not an ancient one.

You climb 268 steps to the base. The right hand is raised to remove affliction, and three exhibition floors beneath the statue hold a relic said to include some of the Buddha's cremated remains. The statue is open daily from 10am to 5:30pm, access to the outside of the statue is free, and there is a fee for the exhibition inside. A big renovation ran from June 2020 to its reopening on 10 December 2022.

Below the Buddha is Po Lin Monastery, an active Chan Buddhist monastery open daily from 9am to 6pm. The Buddha was built on land granted next to the monastery, and Po Lin is still a working temple rather than a museum.

The monastery runs a vegetarian kitchen, open daily from 11:30am to 4:30pm. The food is meat-free in the Buddhist tradition, with tofu, mushrooms, vegetables and noodles; it is a plain, good lunch rather than a destination meal.

Ngong Ping Village next to the cable car has other places to eat, but a vegetarian lunch at the monastery fits the day.

A short walk from the monastery is the Wisdom Path, 38 wooden columns inscribed with the Heart Sutra and set in a figure of eight on the hillside. It has been closed for refurbishment since 5 June 2025, and the notice gives no reopening date, so check before you go.

If it's still shut, spend the time at the monastery or the nearby viewpoints.

Tai O is a fishing town on the western side of Lantau, known as a Tanka village when the British arrived. The old pang uks, wooden stilt houses, still stand over the tidal channel. A large fire in 2000 destroyed many of them, and fishing no longer supports the town, so the heritage is more fragile than it looks. The town is sometimes called the Venice of Hong Kong, which flatters it.

The Yeung Hau Temple dates to 1699 and the Kwan Tai Temple to 1741. Salted fish and shrimp paste are sold at storefronts along the lanes, and some residents take visitors out by boat along the river, mostly hoping for the Chinese white dolphins (pink dolphins). Counts in Hong Kong waters have fallen to a few dozen animals, so treat a sighting as a bonus, and agree the price before you board. Get there by bus 21 from Ngong Ping, and leave by bus 11 to Tung Chung; check the last departures.

There are two ways to cross. The ferry leaves from the Hong Kong-Macau Ferry Terminal in Sheung Wan in the Shun Tak Centre, and the TurboJET catamaran takes about 60 minutes to the Outer Harbour terminal in Macau. Sailings run roughly every 30 minutes from about 7:30am, and the timetable valid from 16 October 2026 lists boats back until late evening, the last at 23:00. Economy class is about HK$195-210 one way, a little more at weekends. Be at the terminal 30 minutes before departure.

The alternative is the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge shuttle bus, which opened in October 2018 and runs 24 hours a day, every 5 minutes at peak. It costs HK$65 by day, and the journey is roughly 40-50 minutes, but it starts from the Hong Kong Port on Lantau, not in the city. It only makes sense if you're staying near Tung Chung or the airport.

From the Outer Harbour terminal take a bus (MOP6, no change given) or a taxi to the center. Senado Square is the old town's main plaza, an elongated, triangular paved square of 3,700 square meters, and part of the Historic Centre of Macau, which UNESCO put on the World Heritage list in 2005. Macau is a former Portuguese colony, and you can see it in the architecture and the street names.

The Leal Senado building is open from 9am to 9pm, and St. Dominic's Church nearby from 10am to 6pm. The square itself is open at all hours and is crowded at midday.

Walk uphill from the square, past the stalls, to the Ruins of St. Paul's. The Jesuits built the church and college between 1602 and 1640, and it was one of the largest Catholic churches in Asia at the time. A fire during a typhoon destroyed it on 26 January 1835, leaving only the stone facade, which stands on a small hill, at the top of 68 steps.

Japanese Christian craftsmen who had been expelled from Japan in 1587 worked on it, and the facade mixes European and Asian imagery, including Mary stepping on a seven-headed hydra. The facade is open at all hours, and the Museum of Sacred Art and Crypt behind it from 9am to 6pm, closing at 2pm on Tuesdays.

Just above the ruins, the Fortaleza do Monte, the Mount Fortress, was built between 1617 and 1626 to protect the Jesuit properties from pirates, and it later became the governor's residence. It stands on a 52-meter hill, and it was crucial in beating off a Dutch invasion attempt in 1622, with 32 muzzle-loading cannon around its walls.

The fortress and gardens are open from 7am to 7pm, and the Macao Museum inside from 10am to 6pm, closed on Mondays.

The A-Ma Temple at the southern end of the peninsula was built in 1488, and it's one of the oldest in Macau. It's dedicated to Mazu, the sea goddess, who is A-Ma to the fishermen. The name of Macau itself is thought to come from this temple: when Portuguese sailors asked the name of the place, the locals replied "A-Ma-gok", the Pavilion of A-Ma. It is a UNESCO-listed site, open until about 6pm.

The temple is a series of halls and pavilions, and the Hall of Benevolence is its oldest part. A bus or a taxi is the way to get here from the center.

The Macau egg tart, the pastel de nata adapted by Macau bakers, is different from the Hong Kong one. It has a flaky crust, a creamy custard and a blistered, caramelized top, and it is less sweet than the Portuguese original. Margaret's Cafe e Nata on the peninsula is one of the shops a Michelin Guide article names for them. Lord Stow's Bakery in Coloane Village, open there since 1989, is the other famous name, though it is a long bus ride away.

Eat one warm, standing up, then walk back to the terminal or take a bus for the ferry. It is closed on Wednesdays and open about 10am to 6pm at weekends; check before you go.