Hong Kong City Highlights

Once you have arrived at Hong Kong International Airport, a private minivan transfer takes you to your accommodation in Kowloon, where your driver will be waiting to welcome you.

Please note: Pick-up is scheduled for 12 pm, with a maximum waiting time of 75 minutes.

Today, you join a local guide for a private three-hour food tour of Kowloon. It starts in Kowloon City, an area known for its neon lights, markets, street food and herbal medicine shops. Over around 45 minutes, you try six to eight street food tastings, with the option of a beer or soft drink to go with them.

Next, your guide takes you to their favourite cha chan teng eateries for another 45 minutes of Kowloon classics, including roast goose, snake soup, pineapple buns, fish balls and tofu pudding. You again have the option of a beer or soft drink.

The tour then moves on to Mong Kok Market for about 30 minutes, taking in the Flower Market and the Ladies’ Market, which stretches for a kilometre. It finishes with around 40 minutes at Temple Street Night Market, where stalls sell everything from caged birds to silk clothes.

You make your own way to the meeting point outside MTR Central Station, Exit K, for a six-hour group walking tour of Hong Kong Island. Your guide opens with the story behind One Country, Two Systems, introduced at the 1997 handover, how it works in practice and what comes after 2047.

Next, you hear how Feng Shui has influenced the skyline, including a tale of a rivalry that pitted Chinese against British. At the HSBC lions, you learn why they feature on the city’s currency and how the harbour shoreline and banking quarter took shape. Your guide then traces Hong Kong’s past, from a fishing community, to Britain taking over in 1842, to the return to China, adding their own family history to the telling.

You then ride the Peak Tram, which opened in 1888 as Asia’s first funicular, up 428 metres to Victoria Peak. From the highest viewing point, you take in the island skyline while your guide points out its main landmarks, and you then have 30 minutes to explore the Peak. A minibus ride takes you down the twisting Peak road and back to Central.

Back in Central, your guide explains how punishing rents have moulded the cityscape, including life in subdivided flats. Lunch is a bowl of wonton noodles, with shrimp dumplings in a broth of flounder and monk fruit, a refugee chef’s fresh take on a dumpling tradition dating back 2,000 years. You then ride the world’s longest escalator system, the Mid-Levels Escalator, completed in 1993, while learning about its origins and the engineering challenges it posed.

The walk continues to Tai Kwun, which served as a police station, courthouse and prison, before passing the murals and street art along the main road of Old Town Central. At Man Mo Temple, among Hong Kong’s oldest temples, your guide shows you how to visit properly, including making an incense offering and trying fortune telling. Hollywood Road comes next, once lined with refugees from China selling family antiques to get by, where you learn how the street has evolved and which trades remain.

Egg tart and milk tea follow, colonial-era flavours that Hong Kongers adapted with ingenuity when resources were scarce after the war. Your last ride is on the Hong Kong Tramway, in service since 1904, which outlasted its London counterpart and still carries over 100,000 passengers a day.

Today is free for you to explore Hong Kong independently. You might like to wander the shops and markets of Mong Kok, or take in the harbour views along the Tsim Sha Tsui promenade.

This morning, a private minivan transfer takes you from your accommodation in Kowloon to Hong Kong International Airport, where you will be met by an airport representative.

Please note: Pick-up is scheduled for 3 am, with a maximum waiting time of 75 minutes.