Every year, I travels to Hong Kong to catch up with some of my good friends, enjoy the good food, do some outlet shopping and most importantly find new places to explore and run in Hong Kong. During the past few trips, I have always stayed around food haven of Hong Kong, Mong Kok (旺角）. This time round, due to my busy schedule developing the new Wongamania edition, Bad Bear did most of the leg work in planning the trip. He chose an extremely nice boutique hotel Victoria Somerset Hotel at Tin Hau (天后) which is nearby to Causeway Bay. Tin Hau is a residential estate with a good mix of commercial and residential buildings. One interesting tidbit which we heard from our Hong Kong friends is that the area is well known to be haunted, especially the residential areas. Personally, I think that this is a pretty nice area, much like Tiong Bahru in Singapore with quite a number of chillax cafes, pubs, eateries and desert shop all around the area. This place comes alive during weekend evenings when the residents hang around their favorite watering hole and chit chat till late night.
Separating the bustling commercial hub of Causeway Bay and Tin Hau is the Victoria Park. Victoria Park is named after Queen Victoria and is one of the more famous city park in Hong Kong for its festival and political events. Like many other parks in land scarce Hong Kong, Victoria Park is loaded with full of facilities, including tennis courts, basket ball and street soccer courts, a 600m running track, swimming pools, a pond and children play areas. The park is already bustling with activities early in the morning. It is a nice little place to work out if you do not mind jostling past groups of elderly folks taking a slow walk in this facility cramped park or keeping an eye on a stray basketball/soccer ball flying your way while you jog past the huge ball games area.
I enjoy running along King’s Road much better as there are much more interesting stuff to see. Markets, cafes, real estate agencies, cookie shops and a whole bunch of other interesting shops which you do not normally see in the more touristy part of Hong Kong.
I pretty much enjoy my run and stay at Tin Hau and I will recommend this area to anyone who is looking for a more local tourist experience in Hong Kong, and yet wishes to have the shopping haven of Causeway Bay a MTR stop away.
As you may have guessed, Bad Bear did not wake up for the morning run, although he did mentioned the night before to wake him up.
I did not bother to….
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