I am researching a return visit to Hong Kong. The name means fragrant harbour. Its nicknamed Hong Kongcrete. The skyscrapers are built to make use of land in this overcrowded area, and to attempt to prevent more landslides, which in the past have killed people, notably in 1972, according to an article on landslides and landslide prevention in Wikipedia.
A government site has a succinct summary with pictures and headlines in English and Chinese.
http://www.edb.gov.hk/attachment/tc/curriculum-development/kla/pshe/references-and-resources/geography/history%20of%20landslides.pdf
The websites you can find offer you:
Top ten attractions.
Top Twenty Attractions.
Discovery tour (for first time visits).
Hop on hop off bus, with commentary, choice of one or two days plus an optional add on evening tour and three routes.
On previous visits I have
1 Done the escalators up the hillside,
2 rushed all over Hong Kong spending more on transport and taxis than I was saving on souvenirs, silk and clothes - no longer in the market for oriental clothes unless I spot a bargain
3 Theme parks - our Singapore based friends, a Chinese-Western couple with a five year old rated Disney in Hong Kong as less exciting than the two Disney theme parks in the USA.
4 The Police museum - half way up a hillside - the taxi was much more than the museum entrance - was a place I visited last time.
5 The Peninsula hotel. Having seen it previously when it seemed a bit faded, with nothing to see or do except have tea in the huge ground floor central lounge - would like to know if it strikes as exciting now. Probably better to stay in it than look in it. No point in visiting a hotel unless it has artworks, waterfalls, statues, or stunning architecture or a museum.
6 I have seen the hilltop view, Victoria Peak. Observation Deck. (Everything is designed to take money off you.) Views depend on weather, even more so if you are a keen photographer.
7 Big Buddha. Tian Po. Not to be confused with the Po Lin (Precious Lotus) monastery.
For my return visit:
1 A grand hotel: my family when working in Hong Kong used to like the Mandarin Oriental hotel, for breakfast, Caesar salad in the upstairs bar, but this was a long time ago.
2 Dim Sum - snacks. A huge choice. We'll be staying with friends so we'll go with our host's suggestions.
3 Peking/Beijing Duck. Either Western style with meat on it, my preference, or local style with only crispy skin served as a separate side dish.
Sorry, but however delicious the skin may be, I feel cheated if I'm deprived of meat. To me duck skin without meat is like being served crisps instead of potatoes. I want duck meat, soy-plum sauce, pancakes and Western cucumber which is much juicier than the local cucumber.
Looks like the only thing on my list is the Science Museum. Everybody else will be trekking from Causeway Bay or Central and expecting me to meet them at Stanley by taxi.
The challenge is that taxi drivers don't speak English and I don't speak Cantonese. The solution is to go to a hotel, have lunch or coffee and/or use their souvenir shop, then ask them to call me a taxi and write my address in both English and Cantonese on the hotel business card with the hotel's phone number so that if the taxi driver gets lost I can phone the hotel reception and ask them to reiterate the directions to the driver or explain to me the problem (such as one way street and he wants to drop me at the nearby corner).
Now would be a good time to start finding a Cantonese translation I can hook up to on a mobile phone. I went into Google translate and typed in Google translate into Chinese and of course up comes pinyin (English or Western alphabet phonetic spelling) Mandarin.
I re-try using the word Cantonese and get assorted sites including
bing
babylon - translation.babylon-software.com/english/Cantonese
lexilogos.com/english/cantonese_dictionary
English Cantonese Translation Free
Here's my final checklist:
1 Big Buddha
2 Science Museum
3 Disney
4 Peninsula / Mandarin Oriental Hotel
5 Dim Sum restaurant
6 Peking Duck restaurant
7 View from the Peak + Trick Eye Museum. (150 HK adult but !00 HK$ age over 65. 10% discount for online booking.) Shop 1, Level 3, Peak Galleria, 118 Peak Road, Hong Kong.Open 10 am to 10 pm. Website at end of this post.
8 Hop on hop off bus
9 Hong Kong Museum of History
10 Flagstaff House Museum of tea ware
If you are on your own the hop on hop of bus organises you so you don't sit around jet lagged too tired or scared to confused. Solves both the organising and translation problems, picks a place to visit, and maybe introduces you to other tourists if you make an effort to arrive early and chat to others on the bus.
Now I shall look at TripAdvisor. First the hop on hop off bus:
https://www.tripadvisor.com.sg/AttractionProductDetail?product=5817HK&d=2228870&aidSuffix=tvrm&partner=Viator
Costs
I see that the hop on hop off bus basic cost is about 81 Hong Kong dollars. According to the online calculator there are about 10 Hong Kong dollars to the British pound, which online is more usually called pound sterling. So the bus tour is about £8.
Hong Kong includes the main island, Kowloon on the mainland to the north, the New Territories beyond that, Lantau - the large island where air;ones land, plus some smaller islands popular for water sports. The airport has a shuttle bus costing about £10 (about 100 Hong Kong dollars single).
A visitor from Britain says: "Hong Kong is not cheap. You can spend a thousand pounds before you turn around. That's why we stay with friends."
https://www.google.com.sg/?client=safari#q=hong+kong+dollar+to+pound+sterling&gfe_rd=cr
trickeye.com/hongkong
http://wikitravel.org/en/Hong_Kong
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer.
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