Victoria Peak

2017 July 22

Woke up in the morning hungry again for dim sum, so for breakfast, Zach, Maja and I went to the place I discovered on my first day. And this time we ordered the charcoal buns with the egg yolk filling that I was hesitant to try the first time around (see the black buns in front of me on the right). After breakfast I decided I was going to walk from our hostel in Wan Chai to Victoria Peak. I wanted to not take a bus or the tram that cuts straight up the mountain to the peak and instead explore some of the side streets and just see what I came across on my way up and back. It was a great decision. The walk started out relatively flat from central Wan Chai toward the mountain at around 41 meters above sea level, then seriously ramped up to streets that put San Francisco’s roads to shame and which eventually became a footpath of the same grade up to the peak at 524 meters above sea level. On the way, I walked through Hong Kong Park, an aviary, one of the tram stops, and an abandoned path wrapping around the northern side of Victoria Peak that I ended up doubling back from because it turned dangerous and sketchy. The entire route was so damn beautiful. I’m in love with how nature and the city intertwine and bleed into one another here in Hong Kong. The view from the top was breathtaking. Feeling good and energized, I jogged back down to the hostel from the peak, taking a more direct route through the center of the city, and passing through a small zoo on the way. After the best cold shower of my life, I went out to an early dinner with Zach, Maja, and Lise to a great restaurant a few blocks away that had earned a Michelin star a few years ago. Not twenty minutes after we sat down and ordered, the place swarmed with people, then lines began to form outside into the evening. After dinner, I took the metro blue line from Wan Chai Station to Admiralty, then transfered to the red line toward Tsim Sha Tsui Station in southern Kowloon. It was a super-urban, LED sign-riddled bustling nightlife, and I even got to see someone playing Pokémon Go on two phones simultaneously. Here, Winter and I spent some time exploring the area, including the pier with a view of Hong Kong Island from mainland Hong Kong. I slept well, but my body woke me up at 5:30am again, so I just decided to go with it and set up camp in the common space of the hostel to write this post in the peaceful quiet, overlooking still-sleeping Wan Chai.