By pure coincidence I had booked my original flight back to Hong Kong on the eve of the Chinese New Year. Egged on by the 21 year olds in Taipei I had moved my flight home back by another 4 weeks but liked the idea of experiencing my first Chinese New Year in Asia, especially in Hong Kong with it’s famous New Year’s Parade and Fireworks display. Rather than everyone going home for quiet family time as is common in Taiwan, Hong Kong celebrates and it’s easy for tourists to join in. Extending the flight meant I got a full 6 days in Hong Kong. Except my original accommodation was fully booked for the rest of the week. This meant after the first 3 nights in the only good rated proper hostel in the city, The Mahjong, I’d have to leave and find somewhere else.

The Mahjong is in the To Kwa Wan district which is an older, quite authentic feeling part of the city and only a few stops on the metro from the Tsim Sha Tsui pier and Hong Kong Central area. Transport is so easy in Hong Kong – again there was a direct and cheap bus to my area.

The Mahjong is also a social hostel, with one free proper coffee provided each day and a little lounge. Space is at a premium all over Hong Kong and the building is old, but I really liked it. It was easy to meet people and a few of us made our own WhatsApp Group to try to meet up later for the New Years Parade.

There are New Year events all week in Hong Kong starting with the Night Parade on 17th Feb, the first day of the New Year. Huge crowds gather around the Tsim Sha Tsui area, which the police cordon off from the early afternoon. I knew there would be crowds with 500,000 people in attendance but I wasn’t prepared for the extent of it. Heading down to the harbour area in the early afternoon I could hardly cross the road. I eventually made it to the tourist information to enquire about the best place to stand, and just like with the golden train ticket in Taiwan, my travel luck kicked in and the lady helping me said they *might* have just one ticket left for a seat in the viewing area where you can watch the entire parade of 9 floats and 46 performance troupes go by. It was too good a chance to pass up. £40 got me another golden ticket and at 6pm I took my seat in Area C.

I passed the time waiting for the gates to open by looking at a selection of people’s photos that were pinned up on a sort of notice board. I thought they might have been the organisers or related to the parade in some way. Every so often people would come and take a look at the board. Only after using Google translate did I find out they were in fact mug shots and this was a police Wanted poster, with most of the descriptions of the crimes being social or journalism type activities. Probably best not to post the photo I took.

The parade is organised by the Hong Kong Tourism board and sponsored this year by Cathay Pacific Airlines. On the seat was a Horse themed goody bag full of treats including a horse stuffed toy, gold chocolate coins, magnets, cookies, stickers, tote bag … and a bizarre plastic lightbulb that lit up different colours automatically with the parade, for audience members to wave to show our support for the performers.

Here is a video of the opening parade: https://youtube.com/shorts/mxCPkwio2Yw?feature=share

It kicked off with two Eurovision type hosts getting the crowd going by asking random people to say a greeting from their own country which was quite awkward when all anyone said was “Happy New Year” and the number of languages were exhausted fairly quickly. This was followed by a long speech from someone on the tourism board.

I was expecting some dragons and dancers but it’s much more than that. It was a bit like a bigger, international and obviously a million times better version of Britain’s Got Talent. I have never experienced anything like this and loved every minute of it.

The highlights for me were the beautiful white horses in the Hong Kong Jockey Club’s performance and the “Cromosauro” featuring a 5-metre-tall mechanic dinosaur, although the Emoji Parade from Turkey were funny! The groups ranged from the Spanish Ballet Victor Campos, to the Australian cheerleaders and a European trio of skaters who spun around on a tiny spinning disc doing the headbanger. Not to mention some people on huge bouncing pogo sticks to “you’ve got to move it move it”. The McDonalds and Disney floats not so interesting. All kicked off by the Cathay Pacific airline crew doing their version of YMCA.

Afterwards I walked around the harbour with the rest of the crowds soaking up the atmosphere and caught the Emoji Parade up close at the end of the procession before hopping on the metro back to the hostel for a good night’s sleep in my pod.

On the second day of the New Year there is the annual fireworks display. There are events on all week. With 6 full days in Hong Kong, there is still so much to do even without the special events. I should have taken the warning from the hostel that it would be very busy everywhere more seriously and got a much earlier start. Instead I set off for The Peak mid morning with another girl from the hostel who also wanted to go there. Victoria Peak is the highest point on Hong Kong Island, overlooking the city and Victoria Harbour. You can choose to hike the 550m up, take the bus or most traditionally ride on the Peak Tram, which everyone wants to do.

When we got to the ticket entrance, we saw the hundreds of people ahead of us. You have to buy a ticket via a QR code. By the time we tried and failed to find anything close by for a coffee or breakfast, or to get any mobile signal to buy the ticket the queue had got even longer. We waited in this queue for two hours in the sun, starving, but at least there was someone to chat to which passed the time. After all that, people were still pushing and shoving to get a seat. We managed to get a seat with a view – I’d have been pretty annoyed to have waited all that time to be standing in the middle of a packed tram and not even see out the window. The tram goes steeply up the mountain and only takes about 10 minutes. The view is nice but was it worth the 2 hours queuing? I’m not sure!

By this point the crowds were becoming annoying, not so much the volume of people but the pushing and shoving that entailed. Take the Star Ferry for example- there is a limited number of seats and a limited amount of tickets sold for safety reasons. Therefore if you have a ticket, it’s very likely you’ll get onboard. If you’re standing at the front of the queue then there really isn’t any need to run when the gangway opens or to push me from behind or step on my feet despite me being a foot taller than everyone around me. I actually felt like punching someone but managed to just glare sufficiently for one single person to say sorry.

It was a great day weather wise and the view from the top was really beautiful. Hong Kong can be quite hazy so you do have to grab the chance to go up on a good day. We were starving by now so had some overpriced dim sum, coffee and ice cream at the top in The Peak Galleria shopping centre then covered the circular ‘hiking’ route that runs around the top. I say ‘hiking’ in inverted commas because the ‘hikes’ are more of what I’d call a stroll.

There isn’t that much to do at the top of The Peak … you can pay to go even higher but the view is almost the same so didn’t justify the extra cost. When it was time to go down in time to find a spot to see the fireworks, we naively thought taking the bus was an option. The queue for the buses was even longer than the tram, snaking around the bus station and down the road. I couldn’t face another two hour queue and more pushing and shoving so we walked the 45 minutes back down instead. It’s a beautiful walk and much faster, although at times it was so steep we had to almost run and it did both of our knees in.

The road takes you down through the central streets, through a sort of zoo in a park and past the serious hikers on their way up. It’s very cool to go from mountain scenery to skyscrapers within half an hour’s walk. We had a total fail at finding anywhere open for food with a veggie option – I ended up with a wrap from Pret a Manger and the other girl ended up at McDonalds which we decided not to tell anyone about.

There was another fail at finding the other hostel people but a win at finding a brilliant spot to watch the fireworks right on the harbour at the front. Hong Kong knows how to put on a firework display – with fireworks going off from several boats in the middle it was a spectacular ten minutes. It was also incredibly well organised, with no drinking in the crowds or trouble getting home after. In fact I saw a news report a week later with the headline “5 wanted for eating on the metro” along with a CCTV picture of a group of young people sitting on the floor in the underground after the fireworks having a snack. I will leave the rest of my week in Hong Kong to a separate post…