Hong Kong

Hong Kong is an amazing city and one of our favorites so far. It is hard to beat this skyline…a forest of skyscrapers with a backdrop of mountains. The view of the city from Victoria Peak is hard to beat. With four days we were able to tour part of the city as well as take day trips to Disneyland and Macau. What we missed out on were some of Hong Kong’s hiking trails. Believe it or not, Hong Kong has some great hiking trails and this is a reason for us to return again someday.

We're taking a look through our archive of travel writing to highlight all the ways the world has changed, as well as some of the ways it's stayed the same. In this piece from 2009, journalist Fergal Keane returns to Hong Kong 12 years after the end of British rule and finds a city perpetually in flux.

It's hard not to fall in love with Hong Kong at first sight, a disarmingly high-rise metropolis in the dreamiest of island settings. Then you start to discover just how memorable the food scene is, how vibrant the nightlife is, how incredible the shopping is – and game over, you're smitten.

Hong Kong is one of the world's great urban playgrounds, but this place has another side to its personality beyond the gleaming skyscrapers and shopping malls.

Hong Kong is a mercurial city, where up-and-coming neighborhoods seem to emerge overnight, fully furnished with edgy galleries, hip cafes and cool boutiques.

Food is all-consuming in Hong Kong. Asia’s most dynamic megacity boasts a mouth-watering repertoire of restaurants, from down-home barbecue joints roasting crisp-skinned goose in Hong Kong’s diverse neighborhoods to Michelin-starred hotspots where chef-owners dazzle with creative riffs on Cantonese classics.