Hong Kong - September 2025

When planning our second Japan trip of the year, we spotted a promotion being run by Cathay Pacific, sponsored by the Hong Kong tourism board, which offered discounted flights if you stayed in Hong Kong for more than 24 hours.

The discounts weren't that significant, but were enough to catch our eye. That, and the fact we've always wanted to visit Hong Kong too.

We didn't want to do quite the minimum and we didn't want to eat too much into the time for the main Japan trip. However given we were already stretched for time (available PTO), we settled on roughly 2 full days in Hong Kong. For a city of its size, we thought that'd be enough to get a taste of it. We didn't expect the complete experience, just a hint of what Hong Kong is.

I was going to do a day-by-day breakdown here, but I have roughly 15 minutes of video clips that I want to edit together in a chronological timeline video, so that can kinda serve that purpose when I get around to it.

I really enjoyed Hong Kong. It was very hot and humid, but it is such an interesting and unique city that we barely scratched the surface of. We'll definitely be back in the future.

Some observations:

• It was mostly pretty easy to get around, some places can feel like a bit of a maze (particularly big complexes around train stations), but Google Maps gets you around just fine.
• I can't say we had the most opportunity to really explore much unique Hong Kong food, we did a pretty good 'dim sum' tasting menu for our final main meal which was enjoyable - gave us an array of specialties. What we had across the board was good though.
• Hong Kong has an image of being dense and cramped, and in some places it can feel like that, but in others it has quite an impressive size and scale - with plenty of breathing room. Maybe it's my lack of experience in East Asia in general (having only been to Japan otherwise), but the scale of the modern shopping centres/hotel complexes/transport hubs were really impressive coming from Britain and Europe in general.
• Hong Kong is the only place I've ever been to as a tourist where on more than one occasion did locals spot us looking a little confused and, unprompted, approach us from behind and offer us help. We're usually ones to try and figure things out for ourselves, and we might have been lucky - but that gave a good impression in itself. But I also can't fault any of our other experiences with people in Hong Kong, all pleasant.
• Whilst I'm keen to avoid making any comment on the British colonial history in Hong Kong - it was an interesting experience as a Brit to see some familiar British things in this cultural context.
• Tokyo ranks as my favourite city, but Hong Kong is evidently a more international city and there are definitely advantages to that as a foreign tourist (depending on what you're into).
• Hong Kong International Airport is overall good. Massive, not as many 'convenience stores' that are accessible as I'd like, but everything (including the app) worked really well.
  • The facial recognition was novel. Once you've scanned your passport and boarding pass when checking your bag, you don't need it - all other checkpoints just scan your face and authorise you. Some raise privacy concerns about this, and I think part of that is just China-hysteria.
  • You're in an airport, they all scan your passport, most of them take photos or have video recordings, etc - big airports utilise this data anyway - this is just also putting it to use for your benefit also. If there's one place you can't reasonably expect much privacy, it's probably an airport.
  • I'm open to this being a naive take on probably a fairly nuanced topic though..