An afternoon in Hong Kong

Posted on 16 September 2013

I’m travelling to Australia to attend Savour Australia, the first edition of the country’s major wine trade event. It is looking to be a great trip. Flying to the other side of the planet will take me 30 hours so I’ve opted for an entire day’s stopover in Hong Kong to get some real life between flights.

I’ve reached from the airport to the city centre in 24 minutes via the remarkably efficient (and great value at 100 HK$ return) Airport Express. Had a walk on the waterfront and through the city centre, then caught up with with great street food to refuel. There were tables on the pavement on Stanley Street and stir-fries were produced in front of you with all sorts of exotic ingredients including pig intestines and bitter melon.

To the first-time visitor, Hong Kong looks a great deal like London. It has the same big brands of any major city today, huge hectic crowds of shoppers, hundreds of bars and double deck buses. If not for Chinese script it would be a perfect illusion.

One interesting story is wine. There are dozens of wine shops through Hong Kong’s city centre and buying a Bordeaux classified château or a 100-€ Burgundy is the easiesy thing in the world. One shop I visited even had wine from Hungary and Luxembourg. But when I wanted to have a good cup of tea – Chinese leaf tea, not Twinings tea bag – it proved impossible. Not a single downtown place was serving it and people I asked didn’t understand what I meant. The famous Luk Yu teahouse proved to a tourist trap. Eventually I found a traditional shop that looked like it didn’t change much since Japan occupied Hong Kong. Unluckily for me the shop was just closing and the owner didn’t speak English anyway. So I spent an afternoon in an 8-million city in the world’s largest tea-producing country unable to drink good tea.

You can see more of photos from Hong Kong here. Stay tuned for Savour Australia reports coming daily on my blog.

Disclosure: my trip to Australia including flights is sponsored by Wine Australia.