Spring Break 2026: Hong Kong (Part Two) – Wan Chai

(Part One here)

On March 20th we checked out of the Dorsett Mong Kok and took the MTR to…the Dorsett Wan Chai. We had booked our hotels well before our trip and I was a little nervous about booking two hotels in the same chain. Because if it turned out horribly, over half our vacation was going to be spent with this company. Fortunately, we had such a great experience with them and so we were excited to be moving to a second Dorsett hotel. The Wan Chai location is a little larger and fancier in some ways but still had all of the same amenities, including that fantastic buffet breakfast.

Our next three days would be spent on Hong Kong Island but with that awkward in-between time between check-out and check-in, we decided to drop our bags at the Dorsett Wan Chai and go back across the water to explore some more of Kowloon. We took the Star Ferry back across and spent the day in and around Tsim Sha Tsui, revisiting some of the areas we had seen the night before when we went to the lightship.

The Star Ferry is a Hong Kong icon and really something you have to do when you visit the city. Fortunately, it’s also a great way to get around. It wasn’t super busy any of the times we took it so we were able to sit up front and look out the windows. It was a lot closer to the Vancouver SeaBus than our typical BC Ferries experience.

After poking around Nathan Road some more, we headed toward Kowloon Park. Once we found out exactly where it was, we popped across the street into 7-11 to pick up food for lunch. We had a good time on our trip trying different flavours of chips and candy.

Kowloon Park has an entire aviary inside it so we found a spot to sit near some flamingos and enjoyed our food. We walked around looking at the birds for a while and admiring the tenacity of the Banyan tree roots.

In the afternoon we took the Star Ferry back to Hong Kong Island and checked in to our hotel. We were on the 5th floor this time, with two adjoining rooms. The hotel is located right across the street from Happy Valley Race Course and we had a glimpse of the track from our window though no races were going on while we were there. That night we had dinner at Mak’s Noodles, a spot famous for its handmade noodles and wonton – it was delicious!

The next day, Saturday, we explored Central more and decided to visit the World’s Longest Escalator. We don’t have a single escalator on the Sunshine Coast so this promised to be particularly exciting.

We took a tram (sometimes called “the ding-ding” for the sound its bell makes). The trams run all around the island on rails. They’re double deckers and quite narrow, passing each other on their paths surprisingly closely. They’re quite convenient and very cheaply priced. And of course we could pay with our Octopus cards.

The Central-Mid-Levels escalator was maybe not quite as exciting as we might have been imagining but it was an interesting experience, nonetheless. It starts out very crowded, full of tourists, as it takes you up the hill. Hong Kong Island is very hilly so an escalator does make a bit of sense. It’s not a continuous escalator, but one that you had to keep getting off of and then walking to the next section. Each side is lined with shops and restaurants, many of them clearly geared to tourists. The further we went along the escalator, the thinner the crowd got and the more we found ourselves passing by regular-looking apartment buildings. We decided to commit and go all the way to the top, even after we realized there was no escalator going the other direction. Turns out, it switches direction at a set point in the day.

On our way back down we hopped off at a couple of junctions to poke into stores or see what other people were looking at. At one spot we followed the crowd and found ourselves in a large, open courtyard. What was now an open public space with restaurants and even an outdoors movie theatre, used to be the prison yard at Victoria Gaol.

We did a brief self-guided tour through the former cells and then back down the escalators for some souvenir shopping.

That evening we decided to watch the Harbour Light show from the Island side. We went to a viewing deck on the top of the Star Ferry pier, which we had almost to ourselves. Probably because the show is not that impressive from that side, nor was that a great place to watch it.

On Sunday, it looked to be a clearer day than the last two and so we decided to aim for Victoria Peak. This is the iconic peak to summit and get the view of the whole of Hong Kong Harbour. It might be the most touristy thing you can do but you also kind of have to do it when you visit Hong Kong.

Now, there is a tram that you can comfortably take up to the Peak and back down. You could take a taxi to the tram station and barely have to walk at all. But if you know my husband at all, you can probably guess that we did not do that.

After another delicious Dorsett breakfast (with even more selection than our previous hotel, if you can believe it), we set out on our day’s adventure. We caught a tram and headed toward the Central area.

A little research had told us that the Peak is pretty simple to climb and there is a path that will take you all the way up, starting at Old Peak Road. We decided to find a taxi to take us to the start of the trail and walk from there. Whether it was a language barrier or simply that no one wanted to go there, we could not get a taxi to understand where we wanted to go. On our third attempt, we finally asked to be dropped off at the Botanical and Zoological Gardens, which wasn’t far from where we wanted to be.

We had intended to skirt around the Gardens but when we got there we realized it was yet another free and beautiful city park, so we made it part of our walk and meandered through. It had some lovely gardens as well as more aviaries and a few animals too. We spotted lemurs!

We had to walk a little ways along the road before we came to the dedicated Peak Road and were officially on our way up!

Spirits lagged some along the way. It was quite hot and pictures really don’t demonstrate how steep that path is. All of Peter’s hiking expeditions with the girls definitely came in handy and though they complained, they also knew they could make it and that they had hiked harder climbs.

In Canada, the top of this mountain would be all about the nature, with maybe a viewing spot. In Hong Kong, when you get to the top, you reach a mall. So we knew we could promise the girls air-conditioning and a 7-11 once they made it up.

Once at the top, we refreshed ourselves with onigiri and cold drinks and enjoyed the views.

We opted not to pay for access to the official viewing spot at the top but had read on-line that the views from Lugard Road were equally good. This was maybe a 20 minute walk from the main area on mostly flat ground and even though we didn’t go all the way to the end, it was worth it.

Once we were finished at the top, we took the tram back down. I’d read that it was cheaper to pay with Octopus card, which is what we did. I’m not sure that turned out to be true but it did mean we got to skip the ticket line-up. The tram is a neat experience. It’s not fast but it is a very steep ride down so feels very dramatic.

For our last evening on Hong Kong Island, we really wanted to try some local street food and Peter had his eye on a place we’d walked past. It was a small place called Kuen Fat that always seemed busy and had an abundance of food. It was a take-out restaurant where you chose the size of your container and then what you wanted it filled with. We watched what other people were doing for a few minutes and then made our attempt. (A little Google translate helped us too.) We had to pay first (cash only) and then make our selections. We got by with a lot of pointing and we chose 6 different dishes to try, along with two portions of rice. Once we had our food procured, we walked down to the waterfront and found a picnic table to eat at.

It was so good! We devoured it, enjoying every selection we had made, particularly the ribs. Our girls are not always excited to try new things but they ate so well in Hong Kong and ate things I didn’t expect them to enjoy. This was definitely one of our meal highlights.

The following day we moved on to our final section of our Hong Kong holiday…