Tips 👏
- People speaks english.
- It more expensive than China, but not that much.
- It’s very easy to move around in the city via the tube or Taxi/Uber.
- We went there during the big demonstrations but didn’t had any problem. Stay away from the university.
🏠 Accommodation
We stayed at the Lap Shun Hostel in the center, north part for 40£/night. That was the only one available, very small but functional, but very small. It’s ok for one night but try to book in advance to get better places.
🚲 Getting there
Flight from Kunming with Cathay Dragon, one hour.
⏱ Duration
We stayed 24h in total, one night layover, and we think three days is the best.
Airport to the city 🚂
It’s more a tip than anything. When you arrive at the airport, you can buy tickets for the speed train to Hong-Kong central station. Once there, you can take the tube from the central station to your hotel. To facilitate this, you can use CityMapper, helping you to know which lines you need to take.
One thing to note is you will need to buy your ticket with cash. So when you are at the airport, withdraw some cash and change it in small notes. We didn’t knew that and had to do it in an odd places where the ticket machine is at level 0 and cash at level 1.
That doesn’t sounds like a problem, but the second thing you need to know is it’s packed at rush hour (5PM to 8PM). We arrived Friday at 6PM and this little surprise costed us 2 extra hours of queuing.
A walking day in the city 🚶
We didn’t stayed long, and for sure this city offers a lot, but we tried to get the most of it in 24h, so here’s our highlights:
- Peak Tram: Little train on the island bringing you up on a very steep railroad to the top of a mountain. You’ll find a lot of shops, restaurants and amazing view once there.
- Longest Escalator in the world: Been there, didn’t find that that cool, but worth passing by this it’s in the city center.
- Star Ferry Cruise: A three hours cruise on the Hong-Kong bay, where we learned some history of the city and shot some nice pictures for 11£/person.
- Ozone Rooftop Bar: Really pricy and located at the top of the Ritz-Carlton hotel. Nice place to get a cocktail and enjoy the view, and get ripped off too (20£ for a gin). Go to the Ritz-Carlton and ask for the Ozone bar. Also dress up.
Restaurants 🍚
- Luk Yu Tea House: Fantastic place and very traditional, where you orders buns with no ideas what’s inside.
- Mak’s noodle: Ideal to score wontons and dan-dan noodles, but to be fair, way less good than the ones in Chengdu.
- Din Tai Fung (Silvercord): Really good dumplings for a fair price with a michelin star in the city center.
- The Bridge Lounge at the airport: If you’re lucky as us to have a Silver Status in a one-world airline, you can enjoy the Cathay Pacific lounge at the aiport, which serve amazing Dan-Dan noodles and wontons, with booze as much as you want. Ideal to get tipsy before a 12 hours flight. Best lounge we ever been.
Read Next ⏭️
That’s the end of our trip to China. You can go back to the main China post, check again Kunming, or check-out other trips from the main page.