China; Sunday, 12 April, 2026

As breakfast was being served until late due to it being a Sunday, I had a bit of a lie in before heading back out and once again over to Kowloon, this time in search of one of Hong Kong’s most infamous missing structures.

The Kowloon Walled city was constructed by the Qing Dynasty when they were still in control of this part of the world. The land around the fort formed part of the New Territories which were leased to the UK in 1898, but the lease didn’t include the walled city. However, the Chinese didn’t take any jurisdiction over the site, so over the following decades the effectively lawless site became a sprawling complex of over three hundred interconnected high-rise buildings that, by the 1970s, were under the control of the Triad gangs and along with being a slum had become the most densely populated place on the planet with 35,000 people living in the 6 ½ acres the city occupied, an effective density of 1.2 million per square kilometre.

In 1987 an agreement was reached between the British and Chinese authorities to sort out the site with the Chinese transferring Sovereignty of the site over to the British Authorities (the fact that everything was due to be handed back to China 10 years later probably made that much easier), who then undertook demolition work between March 1993 and April 1994. In December 1995 a new park was opened on the site of the former walled city, which today houses the fragment of the historic southern gate to the fort, which was discovered during the demolition work, and the historic Yamen, the former administration building of the block, which was the only building to survive the demolition.

From the Walled City I hopped back on the underground a couple of stops to the centre of Kowloon to visit the Hong Kong Heritage Discovery Centre which, much like it’s counterpart in Macau, tells the story of the development of the city from both the Chinese and, in this case, British approaches.

By now the humidity had built to really unpleasant levels so after a quick check of timetables I decided it might be quite nice to head out onto the water, rather than stay in the heat sink of the city, so I headed down to the ferry terminal in Kowloon and caught the Star ferry back across to Central where I then waited for a ferry out to Lamma Island and the village of Sok Kwu Wan.

The reason for heading here was mostly that the ferry ride would be about 45 minutes in the fresh air with a pleasant breeze, and that there were ferries back to other parts of Hong Kong from here which meant I could turn it into a round trip. So I was very happy to find out that Sok Kwu Wan is a very pretty little village set in a small bay at the southeastern end of Lamma Island. Though once again it’s not a hidden gem – the whole of the waterfront is wall to wall seafood restaurants, despite the area only being accessible by ferry or on foot from other parts of the island.

I spent a little time wandering around this part of the island before heading back to the ferry pier and catching a different boat round to Aberdeen on the southern side of Hong Kong Island, and from there picking up the metro back into the centre of town.

I had a wander around central before grabbing a bite to eat and heading back to the hotel.