Because it was so expensive, I only booked three days for my first visit to Hong Kong last year. That meant when a two week pet sit came up over Christmas this year, I jumped at the chance. It gave me plenty of time to explore the compact island that piqued my adventurous curiosity last year.

I often plan a short trip to a place I’m unfamiliar with just to get an idea if it’s a place I want to spend more time, especially if it’s an expensive place to visit. It’s given me an idea for a title of a future story: Speed Dating the World.

The House Sit was located in Wan Chai, a neighborhood central to Hong Kong. The block outside the door of my building offered no fewer than 10 restaurants, and walking the neighborhood compounded that number. Every block had at least one pastry shop and 2 coffee shops. This made it a struggle to walk the dog.

Despite its dense population, Hong Kong has very narrow sidewalks making it difficult to get around even without a dog in tow. The other challenge was that Eli is a small dog so it’s hard for people to see him when we’re walking crowded sidewalks. For this reason I preferred to take him for a walk early in the morning or late at night. If I did walk him during the day, I headed straight for the hills.

Like my hometown of San Francisco, Hong Kong is built on hills. I had to walk only a block away from the water before being confronted by unrelenting staircases up the hillside. I could choose from several staircases to take me to the next level of the city, but Kennedy road, there was only one path leading to the park beyond.

As I mentioned in an early story, Hong Kongers don’t believe in switchbacks, and the road I took up was at such a steep angle that I could only trudge ahead slowly, relying a little on the energy of Eli to help pull me up the hill. It was fine; no matter how much exercise I gave him, he never seemed to tire. About 15 minutes later you arrive at Bowen road which is a fitness trail that follows the curve of the hills but remains flat. The path is 2 miles long offering sweeping views of the city around every curve.

I tried to give Eli a one hour walk every day, and I’d always return on a different stairway on my way down. Between these walks and my hikes … I got fairly sore after 2 weeks. Fortunately, the apartment building I stayed in had a sauna. It was an unusual sauna though in that it was on the 42nd floor of the building and had windows so you could look down over the city.

Aberdeen

Once the dog had been walked, I felt free to go out and explore the city. With only 2 weeks, I had to work quickly. My first excursion to the south side of Hong Kong island was for a Meetup hike. The route we took offered views of the coastline that inspired a return visit with more time. I decided to spend an entire day exploring the towns that dotted the coast. The first was the floating village of Aberdeen.

I’m not sure I’d go so far as to call it a floating village as I have seen full villages spread across floating platforms that included shops, mosques, and even a floating soccer pitch. Aberdeen was more of a marina where all the boats were tied together in the middle of the channel. The boats were all shapes and sizes, most of them intended for fishing. Instead of paying for the tourist boat excursion, I took the local ferry that connected the mainland to an island. For a fraction of the price, it followed the same route and left me in a new neighborhood to explore.

I opted to leave the island via a bridge so that I could get a perspective of the floating village from above. Once on the mainland, I caught a bus to the town of Stanley. Originally, I was hoping there would be a bus that did a loop of the whole island, but it turned out that I had to daisy chain my way from one town to the next. That was fine since each of the terminals was at one of the towns I wanted to visit.

One thing I observed on my journey is how challenging it was to drive around the island. The narrow winding roads required constant attention. I was impressed by the way these drivers managed their giant double decker buses like a jockeys running an elephant.

Stanley

Stanley wasn’t much from the bus terminal but a five minute walk down the road to the water revealed a waterfront walkway that reminded me of Europe. There were restaurants lining the sidewalk and a modern multi story mall at the end overlooking the water. The mall took advantage of the warm weather by providing several outdoor spaces to eat or take in the view.

Shek O

Since I was neither hungry nor in need of anything, I headed back up to the bus terminal for my next leg. The journey to Shek O required an unusual transfer. You get off at a fork in the road and have to walk up one of the forks around a blind corner with no shoulder. It was hard to believe they separated the bus stops in a way that forced you to risk your life in order to make the transfer.

The town of Shek O was much less impressive than Stanley, and its only real highlight was the beach. The restaurants in town were equally unimpressive, and only one took advantage of the waterfront location. The food prices showed that they were aware of their unique location. I’d decided I would be willing to splurge a little for the waterfront view but when I saw the restaurant was four times the price of the ones in town, I turned around to burn the view into my memory and headed to one of the unimpressive eateries in town.

Big Wave

The trip to the town of Big Wave Beach was only 15 minutes, but the bus only made the trip every 2 hours, and I’d have to wait an hour and a half for it so I decided to walk it since it was a nice day and still early in the afternoon.

The town reminded me of Muir Beach, a tiny town just north of San Francisco, except this beach produced surfable waves. The only business in town was a surf shop, which suggested surfing was the only reason to come here. I’m not a surfer, but I’d talked to my friend Jemima, who told me she walked from here to the more populated side of Hong Kong island. I decided to give the trail a try, but I was a little dismayed by the endless steps climbing the mountainside since I was still sore from my New Year’s Day hike.

About halfway up the mountain, I saw a side trail that traversed the mountain instead of climbing. It required a little bit of bushwhacking, but in the end I found myself at a prison overlooking the sea. I’ve always wondered why some prisons have better views than most of us enjoy. Both Alcatraz and San Quentin overlook San Francisco Bay. This prison overlooked the beautiful South China Sea. Perhaps the view was just to remind the prisoners of what they had given up as a result of their transgression.

The trail ended at the entrance of the prison, and I was forced to shimmy along the cliff side a bit before I could drop down on the road due to the razor wire topped fences around the entrance. Apparently the trail I’d chosen was a bit more unofficial than I’d realized. What I then discovered is that the road was a prison itself as there was no way to get off of it even though I could see the town below.

I spent about 40 minutes walking along the prison road before I finally came across a staircase to the town below. By now, my legs were aching, and I was ready to catch any taxi I saw. Unfortunately, since the road only led to the prison, there was no traffic whatsoever. Locals took advantage of this by using it as a walking trail similar to the Bowen road near my apartment.

The staircase I found turned out to be a brand new set of escalators they’d built up the cliff. My legs were grateful for the relief, and even though the escalator moved fairly slowly, I made no effort to use my legs any more than I had to when switching escalators between landings.

One funny thing I encountered was a sign at the head of one of the escalators warning that wheelchairs were not allowed. I found the sign placement comical, because I’m not sure how they thought someone who’d made two flights in a wheelchair would be deterred from going any further!

Because it was Hong Kong, there was a bus terminal at the foot of the escalator, and I was able to complete my island loop by catching a bus back to the city center. While there isn’t a bus that follows the ring road, it can definitely be done with Hong Kong’s excellent public transportation system, and for under $10 dollars, I was able to tour the entire island in a day. It’s good to know there are some things you can do on a small budget in Hong Kong.