HugoLim.com » Hong Kong

Getting a room in Hong Kong

Hugo Lim — Mon, 25 May 2009 13:29:39 +0000

view of Hong Kong island and Kowloon at its background from The Peak, taken using Canon 400D with Sigma 18-200

Hong Kong in brief

In Hong Kong, space comes at a premium. Hong Kong, as spectacular as you can see from the photo above, undoubtedly, it claims the Vertical City title standing side by side with New York City.

Statistically, more than half of Hong Konger stay in public housing projects as they can’t afford the high living cost there.

Hong Kong’s 7 million inhabitants live at an average density of 70,000 people per square mile, which is equal to Manhattan’s. However, Hong Kong is a mountainous territory that primarily “piles” people – in the words of the exhibit notes – on one-quarter of its land and reserves about three-quarters for nature or agriculture, while three-quarters of New York City is built and one-quarter is open space or parkland.

Parts of Hong Kong have densities of 90,000 people per square mile, vertical density in the extreme.

quoted from The Skyscraper Museum’s Vertical Cities: Hong Kong and New York

Mongkok

Mongkok is where I stayed during my recent backpacking trip to Hong Kong. Here’s a little interesting fact about Hong Kong.

Mong Kok’s population density is extremely high, according to Guinness World Records, Mong Kok has the highest population density in the world (mean 130,000 per km2)and with a development multiple of four.

quoted from Wikipedia

Mongkok comes alive both day and night. During the daytime, all the business retail stores are open for business. Whereas during the night, we can get to visit popular street market like Ladies Market, Temple street, Flower market, Goldfish market and many more!

Getting a room to stay can be real tricky at times particularly during peak season. We can always try to book online first at hotelscombined.com. I managed to book mine at Dragon Hostel, Mongkok for 290HKD per night for two persons.

As I quoted above, Mongkok is really a crowd happening area, not only boosting the highest population density in the world, it is a district that never falls asleep. I do wonder if Hong Konger ever need sleep as traffic on the road is equally heavy and you can see people walking around the streets all the time!

Credit: Mongkok aerial view is obtained from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IMG_8849_Mongkok.jpg

Hong Kong island at night

Hugo Lim — Sat, 16 May 2009 03:04:18 +0000

Flickr link

The city with the most sky crappers, Hong Kong.
With Bank of China tower, The Center, IFC and many more.

Technical note: Mounted on tripod to gain better stability for long exposure shot. It’s taken using Canon 400D with Sigma 18-200 (non OS) at Avenue of Stars. See exif data for more info.

Location of capture after the jump.

The Peninsula Hong Kong

Hugo Lim — Sat, 09 May 2009 14:58:25 +0000

Canon 400D with Canon EF-S 10-22 at 10mm with 8 exposures, combined using PTGui

Here’s a quick info about this magnificent structure that stands for more than 80 years already.

The Peninsula Hong Kong (Chinese: 半島酒店) opened in 1928 is Hong Kong’s first hotel and is also one of the most internationally recognizable hotels in Hong Kong.^[1] It is located at the junction of Nathan Road and Salisbury Road in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong. Founded by members of the Kadoorie family, the hotel today is part of the Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels group headed by Sir Michael Kadoorie, and it is the flagship property of the The Peninsula Hotels group. The Peninsula has been voted as the world’s best hotel on a couple of occasions, and is widely regarded as one of the legendary properties.

Quoted from Wikipedia

It was very difficult to get a wider view of the hotel that I needed to opt for panoramic approach to get the entire hotel in the frame. With my tripod set up with the help of Wendy, I was able to quickly snapped a series of photos without much human traffic. Having less human traffic would ease the pain of removing blurring subjects appearing in stitched photo later on. I won’t really call this as panoramic but technically it is (I suppose). It’s more like a fish-eye shot in my opinion. What do you think?

I preserve the dark background, unaltered so that we can appreaciate the result entirely, minus any cropping.

Location map after the jump! Thanks for supporting my blog!