Hong Kong Island Western District Travel Video Guide

Hong Kong Island Western District Travel Itinerary

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West of Central lies a district rather older and more exotic in character than other parts of Hong Kong. An almost entirely Chinese-inhabited area, its crowded residential streets and traditional shops form a characterful contrast to Central, though the atmosphere has been somewhat diluted by the building of the road network for the Western Harbour Crossing , the third cross-harbour road tunnel from Kowloon. Sheung Wan is the largest sub-zone within this area, and like Central it comprises straight east-west roads near the shore, and increasingly meandering roads up the hill away from the harbour. Kennedy Town in the far west is squeezed up against the shore by sharply rising hills and served by tramlines which extend from Central along Des Voeux Road, Connaught Road West, Des Voeux Road West, and finally Kennedy Town Praya.

Sheung Wan , immediately adjacent to Central, spreads south up the hill from the seafront at the modern Shun Tak Centre, which houses the Macau Ferry Terminal and the Sheung Wan MTR station, for the time being still the last stop on this line. You can reach the Shun Tak Centre by a pleasant fifteen-minute walk along the elevated walkway from Exchange Square in Central, though you'll get more flavour of the district by following the tramlines along Des Voeux Road, west from Central Market. A number of interesting lanes extend south from this stretch of Des Voeux Road, such as Wing Sing Street, which specializes in preserved eggs, and Man Wa Lane very near the Sheung Wan MTR, where Chinese character chops (name stamps) are carved from stone or wood. Another couple of minutes along Des Voeux Road from here brings you to the back end of Western Market (daily 10am-7pm), a delightful brick Edwardian building on the outside, and since 1991 no longer a stinking market but a mall full of small kitschy kiosks and fabric shops.

A short walk south, up the hill from the harbour, is Bonham Strand , which specializes in Chinese medicinal products, teas and herbs. This is a fascinating area for poking around, with shop windows displaying items such as snakes (alive and dead), snake-bile wine, birds' nests, shark fins, antlers and crushed pearls, as well as large quantities of expensive ginseng root. You'll find medicinal shops scattered along an east-west line extending from Bonham Strand to the small Ko Shing Street - the heart of the trade - which is adjacent to, and just south of, Des Voeux Road West. This section of Des Voeux Road boasts another long line of extremely exotic shops specializing in every kind of dried food, including sea slugs, starfish, shark fins, snakes and flattened ducks.

A short but stiff walk up from Bonham Strand leads to the scenically located Hollywood Road , running west from Wyndham Street in Central (immediately south of Lan Kwai Fong) as far as the small Hollywood Park in Sheung Wan, where it runs into Queen's Road West. Bus #26 takes a circular route from Des Voeux Road in Central to the western end of Hollywood Road, then east again along the whole length of the road. The big interest here is the array of antique and curio shops , and you can pick up all sorts of oddities, from tiny embroidered women's shoes to full size traditional coffins. The antique shops extend into the small alley, Upper Lascar Row, commonly known as Cat Street , which is immediately north of the western end of Hollywood Road and due south of the Sheung Wan MTR. Here you'll find wall-to-wall curiosity stalls with coins, ornaments, jewellery and chops all on sale. There's even an air-conditioned mall, the Cat Street Galleries, offering more serious antiques in more salubrious surroundings.

Another attraction in the Cat Street area is Ladder Street , which runs north-south across Hollywood Road and is, almost literally, as steep as a ladder. This is a relic from the nineteenth century when a number of such stepped streets existed to help sedan-chair carriers get their loads up the steep hillsides. On Hollywood Road adjacent to Ladder Street, the 150-year-old Man Mo Temple (daily 8am-6pm) is notable for its great hanging coils of incense suspended from the ceiling. The two figures on the main altar are the Taoist gods of Literature (Man) and the Martial Arts (Mo). Located as it is in a deeply traditional area, this is one of the most atmospheric small temples to visit in Hong Kong.

You'll find a group of smaller temples a few minutes southwest of Hollywood Road on Tai Ping Shan Street , which you can reach by climbing a little way south up Ladder Street and taking the second lane on the right. This was one of the first areas of Chinese settlement in Hong Kong, and the temples are still very much part of the fabric of the neighbourhood, and so are in daily use.

Kennedy Town , oddly named after an early governor of the colony, is the farthest west point of the built-up area on the northern shore and was for many years a busy town of crumbling old streets facing an old harbour jammed with green and red painted barges. There are still traces of character in Kennedy Town, though land reclamation and development has removed the old markets and the junks which used to moor in the harbour. The final terminus of the tramline from Central is here.

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