Hong Kong: When the City Runs Out of Ground, It Goes Up & Up

I wasn't ready for Hong Kong.

Not in the "I didn't pack the right adapter" way, though I didn't. But in the way you think you know a place from Instagram and travel blogs, then you land and realize none of it prepared you for the actual feeling of it. The humidity hits you like a wet towel. The verticality makes your neck hurt from looking up. And somewhere between the airport taxi and your hotel, you start wondering how any of this is structurally possible.

The taxi driver navigated tunnels and bridges like he'd done it ten thousand times, because he probably had. Then suddenly: mountains. Real mountains with actual forests. And then, right up against those mountains, someone just built a city. Glass towers stacked so tightly it looks like a glitch in reality.

Day One: My Calves Weren't Ready

First morning, I left the hotel thinking I'd "explore Central" with the kind of naive confidence you have before Hong Kong humbles you.

Nothing here is flat. Streets curve upward without warning. What looks like a sidewalk turns into stairs. I thought I was walking normally until my calves started screaming and I realized I'd been climbing a hill for ten minutes.

Then I found the Mid-Levels Escalator. It's not an escalator. It's a whole system of escalators that just keeps going up through the city. You ride past people's apartments, smell someone's lunch cooking, see laundry hanging from balconies. It's public transit, sure, but it feels more like you're accidentally touring people's lives.

An old woman got on with her groceries, totally unfazed. This was just her Thursday commute. Meanwhile, I'm standing there thinking I'm in a sci-fi movie.

Finding Air at the Harbor

After a few hours in Central, where tall buildings turn sunlight into a limited resource, I needed to see the actual sky. So I walked down to Victoria Harbour.

The waterfront is where Hong Kong finally exhales.

I grabbed a bench near the Star Ferry terminal and just watched. The ferry moves slow. Like, aggressively slow for a city that does everything at 1.5x speed. Tourists take photos. Commuters scroll their phones. The ferry doesn't care. It's been making this same crossing for over a hundred years and it's not about to rush now.

Across the water, Kowloon's skyline is basically a mirror image. Another wall of buildings. But with the harbor between them, it doesn't feel crushing. The water gives everything room to breathe.

I stayed through sunset. In Hong Kong, sunset isn't really "golden hour." It's more like the city's neon signs warming up for the night shift. Buildings started glowing, the water caught the reflections, and for a minute everything looked almost unreal.

Before heading back to the hotel, I stopped at Chaat, a Michelin-starred Indian restaurant. The menu was modern Indian, dishes that respected tradition but weren't afraid to play around. Everything was excellent, but the Saffron Rabdi Kulfi at the end stopped me mid-conversation. Creamy, perfectly balanced sweetness, with saffron that didn't just flavor it but announced itself. The kind of dessert where you slow down on the last few bites because you don't want it to end.

The Two-Face Shopping Scene

Hong Kong takes shopping seriously. Like, really seriously.

On one end, you've got these massive luxury malls where the AC is cranked so high you need a jacket and everything is either marble or glass. I wandered through one in Causeway Bay wearing normal pants and immediately felt underdressed. Hermès. Rolex. Handbags displayed like museum pieces, which, considering the prices, maybe they are.

Then you walk fifteen minutes and hit the complete opposite.

Temple Street Night Market is organized chaos. Vendors crammed together selling phone cases, jade bracelets, and T-shirts with English phrases that almost make sense. The lighting is questionable. Haggling is mandatory. "Final price" means absolutely nothing. I watched someone buy a $20 watch that might keep time, might not, but definitely looked expensive if you squinted.

What's wild is that both versions feel completely authentic. Hong Kong doesn't choose between luxury and scrappy. It just does both, often on the same block.

Watch Heaven (For People Like Me)

Okay, confession: I'm a watch guy. And Hong Kong is basically Disneyland for watch collectors.

Central has more watch boutiques than I've seen anywhere. Not just one or two. Entire streets of them. Rolex, Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet, Omega, Vacheron Constantin. Authorized dealers on street level with security guards and perfect lighting. Pre-owned specialists upstairs with cases full of vintage pieces. Dealers in unmarked buildings you'd only find if another collector gave you the address.

I kept telling myself I was "just browsing." Then I'd see something I'd only ever seen in forums or auction catalogs and suddenly I'm inside, asking questions, trying things on.

The density here is insane. More than Geneva, more than Tokyo. It makes sense though. This is a city where precision matters, where people appreciate craftsmanship, where a mechanical watch that ticks at its own pace feels like a small rebellion against everything moving too fast.

Did I buy something? Maybe. Did I spend way too long in boutiques? Definitely. Do I regret it? Not even a little.

Life in Layers

The thing that got me about Hong Kong wasn't just how tall everything is. It's how everything stacks.

You take an elevator to a rooftop bar. Look down at a street market twenty floors below. Then remember there's an MTR station two more floors underground. Malls connect to subways that connect to ferries that connect to other malls. Someone's apartment sits above a Michelin-star restaurant that sits above a 7-Eleven that sits above a tailor shop that's been there for forty years.

Nothing spreads horizontally. Everything goes up or down. It's like the city is built in layers of a cake, except the cake is also a functioning metropolis.

My last night, I took the Peak Tram up to Victoria Peak. It's so steep it feels like the city is falling away from you. At the top, I looked down at Hong Kong Island and Kowloon. Two strips of light with the dark harbor between them and mountains behind everything.

From up there, it all kind of makes sense. Or maybe it doesn't, but it works anyway.

Leaving (But Not Really)

Night flight out. The plane banked over the city and Hong Kong turned into this glowing circuit board squeezed between dark water and darker mountains.

I kept thinking about random moments: the lady with her groceries on the escalator. The Star Ferry that refuses to hurry. The watch boutique where I spent an hour I didn't have. The night market guy who nearly sold me a jade bracelet I definitely didn't need.

Hong Kong doesn't feel like one city. It feels like ten cities stacked on top of each other, all running at the same time, somehow not collapsing.

I'm already planning the next trip.