Top 15 Hong Kong Attractions
What to See in Hong Kong
By Rory Boland, About.com Guide The Hong Kong attractions listed below are the best the city has to offer, from museums to theme parks. These are the best attractions in Hong Kong for tourists who want to spend a few hours at a single location. They’re also particularly good for kids.
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1. Ocean Park
The city’s best theme park by a mile, Ocean Park is packed with both high adrenaline, stomach churning rides, and some jaw dropping sealife shows. The selection of attractions makes the theme park a good day out for all ages and there is more than enough to keep everyone interested for a full day. Dolphin shows and sharks (not together) and a spectacular Jellyfish exhibition, which uses lasers and lights, are just some of the highlights. Hong Kong’s Giant Pandas also call Ocean Park home. Find out more in our full review.2. Hong Kong Heritage Museum
The unimaginative name might conjure up images of dusty pieces of pottery and random Skelton parts, but the Hong Kong heritage museum offers so much more, with interactive displays and exhibitions meaning there are plenty of buttons to press and videos to watch. Hands-down Hong Kong’s best museum, if you want to discover a little more about this often misunderstood city, and you don’t want to be bored, the heritage museum is a must. Find out more in our full review.3. Madame Tussauds
You know the story here; wax figures of all your favourite pop idols, politicians and sliver screen stars. The Madame Tussauds in Hong Kong is not one of the bigger franchises, but it does manage to squeeze a lot into a small space. International stars range from Elvis to Johnny Depp, with the likes of President Obama and Hong Kong’s former owners the British Royal family also in pride of place, but it’s the attractions Asian stars that set it above rivals in London and New York. Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and Andy Lau are some of the home-grown, blockbuster stars on show. Find out more in our full review4. Hong Kong Disneyland
Hong Kong’s second theme park is by no means as good as its first, but if you have small children, or someone who has never seen Mickey and Co in their natural habitat, Hong Kong Disneyland is still a must. Don’t expect the California experience, as Disneyland Hong Kong remains pretty sparse ride wise, and for anyone over eleven, there’s really only Space Mountain to hold their attention. Little kids, however, will love it, and with relatively small queues you get through just about everything in the park in a full day. Find out more in our full review.5. Hong Kong Wetland Park Hong Kong isn’t only the urban jungle; step beyond the crowded streets of Kowloon and you’ll find yourself is Hong Kong’s green back garden. The best place to explore the city’s wild side, is Hong Kong Wetland Park, a 60-acre nature reserve and visitors discovery centre set on the Mai Po Marshes. The massive visitor centre recreates different biodiversity regions from around the world, meaning you can get an up close look at frozen tundras and sweeping desserts. The real attraction, however, is the marshes themselves, which crawl with wildlife and can be explored along a number of set trails.
Looking for the best Hong Kong tourist attractions? Don’t know where to spend your time in town? Look no further. We’ve tried to pin down Hong Kong’s 10 best tourist attractions. We’ve picked a mix of some firm favourites as well as some often overlooked choices.
1. The Skyscraper Skyline
It’s what the tourists come for and it rarely disappoints – smog allowing. Hong Kong has the most skyscrapers of any city in the world and most of them are crammed onto the north shore of Hong Kong Island. The result is photography gold. This breathtaking gang of high rises is best viewed from the Avenue of Star in Tsim Sha Tsui, at night, when you can see the buildings at their dazzling best.
Dai Pai Dongs are street side food stalls – plus a couple of benches. Featuring basic, but delicious noodle and rice dishes, usually a great line in seafood and if you’re lucky, ice cold beers they’re the perfect place to fill up on a quick and tasty dinner. The government has clamped down on Dai Pai Dongs in recent years because it doesn’t chime in with their effort to make Hong Kong a squeaky clean city but their scarcity has only added to the attraction.
3. Happy Valley Racecourse
You don’t need to a bookie to have fun at Happy Valley. This grand race course, bounded by a wall of skyscrapers in the heart of the city - makes for an electric setting when lit up for the night time races. The horses are cheered on by a vocal crowd of thousands fueled by cheap San Miguel and bad hotdogs. Unmissable.4. Ocean Park
Hong Kong’s premium theme park – which is quite some boast when your rival is Hong Kong Disneyland – Ocean Park has been offering thrills and spills to the people of Hong Kong for nearly forty years and quite honestly it has never been better. From the Pandas and incredible Jellyfish spectacular to the 4g inverted loops of the Hair Raiser rollercoaster, Ocean Park’s mix of animals and action packed rides is a winning combination. Read our 7 reasons to visit Ocean Park to find out more.5. LegCo Building
The Hong Kong government is dedicated to knocking down just about anything that’s more than 20 years old. LegCo has survived because it’s where the government sat for much of the last hundred years and is now the Court of Final Appeal. The building is in grand British colonial style with sturdy granite columns and gilded verandas; a powerful statement by the men in mustaches that once ran the city.6. Ngong Ping Cable Car
Hong Kong sometimes feels like the home of the jaw dropping view, so it’s a confirmation of just how impressive the views are from the Ngong Ping Cable Car that it regularly makes top 10 lists such as this. Running between the town on Tung Chung and the themed village of Ngong Ping halfway up a Lantau mountain it affords wonderful views over the South China Sea and onto the lush greenery of Lantau Island.7. 10,000 Buddha's Temple
It’s hard to pick a single Hong Kong temple so many of them are impressive for their own individual reasons, but the 9 storey pagoda and nearly 12,000 miniature Buddha statues make the 10,000 Buddha’s temple in the New Territories worth the trip.8. Ping Shan Heritage Trail
Few people venture outside of Hong Kong’s urban jungle, yet Hong Kong’s green lungs – the New Territories – are one of the few places you can find some local history. Home to Hong Kong’s walled villages, these fenced in settlements were founded by migrating family clans and many still celebrate their traditional heritage, both in their buildings and clothing and in lifestyle. Along the Ping Shan heritage trail – which winds through a number of centuries old villages – you’ll find examples of traditional Chinese architecture in the ancestral halls, temples and pagodas.9. Mongkok Markets
While the Temple Street night market is probably Hong Kong’s best individual market, the combination of several markets all packed into one area makes Mongkok the place for bargain hunters. The flagship show is the Ladies Market, which mostly focuses on ladies clothes, souvenirs and knock offs from across the border in Shenzhen – Gucco handbag anyone? Better is the Goldfish Market – effectively a street side zoo – and best of all is the Bird Market – where you can watch owners parade their birds around in gilded cages.
source: http://gohongkong.about.com/od/whattoseeinhk/tp/Top-10-Hong-Kong-Attractions.htm
credit to Rory Boland
www.about.com Tourist destination in Hong Kong and Macau
credit to Rory Boland
www.about.com Tourist destination in Hong Kong and Macau
