HK & Macau 2024 (2/9) – Move

I have grown to really enjoy different modes of transportation around the world and made it a point to experience them on each trip. Hong Kong and Macau, small chunks of mountainous land surrounded by water, had to devise ways of moving people without the luxury of placing cars on paved roads everywhere. They were an awesome destination to make a list like this.

Ding Ding

The Ding Ding Cars, or formally the Hong Kong Tramways, are a 125-year-old light rail system on the north side of Hong Kong Island. The technology may not be super special, but the narrow double-decker design is so uniquely Hong Kong. They have etched into my subconscious through HK movies from the 1980s to the 2010s, and I was very happy to finally try them out (twice!).

The view from the upper deck was simply incredible. Where else can you sight-see from the 2nd floor level while zooming through a downtown street? The breeze from the open window was great, too, and I can only speculate that people there have maintained a great record of keeping their heads and hands inside (it’d be quite easy to reach toward an oncoming Ding Ding… and lose a limb).

For what it’s worth, I love staircases aboard moving vehicles.

Peak Tram

The more famous tram in Hong Kong is the one that takes people up and down Victoria Peak. Compared to the humble Ding Ding serving common folks at HKD$3 per ride, this tourist attraction is rather ridiculous at HKD$62 each way (or HKD$88 round trip). I didn’t particularly care for waiting in line among a crazy hoard of tourists, but the engineering of tracks above and below roads up a steep hill was quite fascinating. My favorite thing about this tram was perhaps not taking it down the mountain, but walking up to the Peak with Phil and getting a close look at how the tram integrated into the landscape.

Mid-Levels Escalators

I very much enjoyed these hillside escalators when Hong and I visited Hong Kong for the first time. Ten years later, they still fascinated me. They also reminded me much of Genoa, where public transit included a number of elevators. While both cities had roads and driving certainly was an option, cars just wouldn’t be very efficient on such steep hills. People’s ingenuity brought these low-tech and usually indoor movers out into the public space, and turned them into a genius vehicle that helped the masses get up and down.

Ferries

We took two kinds of ferries. The first was the famed Star Ferry which, for a very affordable price, shuttled people between Hong Kong Island and Kowloon. It was a no-frills ride, but the view on both sides of Victoria Harbor was priceless.

The other was TurboJET, which took us from Hong Kong to Macau in an hour. It was similar to a flight in the sense that waiting to board took a while, everyone had assigned seating, and there was immigration on both ends. The ride was bumpy, but it was neat to see all the islands along the way.

Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge (HZMB)

On the way back from Macau to Hong Kong, we opted to ditch the ferry and take the shuttle bus over the world’s longest bridge. It was among the most memorable experiences of the week.

The awkward Special Administrative Region (SAR) status for Hong Kong and Macau made the logistics way more complicated than it could have been. First we had to take a local bus to “Macau Port” on a man-made island. After clearing immigration and security, we purchased tickets (MOP 65 each) and jumped on a bus ready to go. 45 minutes later, we arrived at “Hong Kong Port” on another man-made island adjacent to the airport. From there, we went through immigration again and found local buses connecting to different parts of Hong Kong. If HK and Macau hadn’t been separate countries for all those decades, this could have been a far simpler ride from one city center to the other. It’s unfortunate that remnants of the colonial past still plagues the experience today.

The bridge itself, though, was worth it. Whenever I drove across wide rivers and bays, I’d find myself in awe of the engineering of such massive structures over large bodies of water. The HZMB stretching over an open ocean was at a different level. It felt surreal to have endless blue-green water on both sides, and see no end of the freeway in either direction. Imagine how eerie it’d be on a dark rainy day! The craziest part was when the bridge, via two more man-made islands, went downward into an under-ocean tunnel! Like, the bridge is out! But not really!

Ngong Ping 360 Cable Car

This 5.7km cable car takes people from the shores of Lantau Island, via a turning point on the airport island, back onto Lantau and up a mountain to where Tian Tan Giant Buddha sits. While some cable cars in the world (looking at you, Yokohama Air Cabin) are purely a tourist attraction with little functional value, this one is a legit transportation vehicle connecting Tung Chung to Ngong Ping. The only road connecting these two places are super windy around the island, so the monastery wouldn’t get a fraction of its visitors without this cable car lifting people in.

This ride may have the best views among all the cable cars I’ve been on, even beating out the one in Chongqing.

Local Transit

We took the MTR (subway) every day while in Hong Kong. While not exactly unique or exotic, it was a much nicer system than anything you’d find in North America. The fare was unbeatably low, too.

Macau had no trains, so we had to get around using local buses. Needing to find exact change (MOP 6 per ride) was a hassle, but we made it thanks to Phil for being the keeper of coins. It was cool that both HKD and MOP were accepted interchangeably, as we definitely had relied on a mix of currencies at times. The buses were pretty much identical to those in Taipei so it felt nostalgic. Phil got major motion sickness from riding them.

HK & Macau 2024 Index

1. Visit
2. Move
3. Obsess
4. Pilgrimage
5. See
6. Watch
7. Shop
8. Eat
9. Play