Hong Kong - Waterfront

Sights and life along the harbour

(photos of 2005-2009)

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Victoria Harbour's Symphony of Lights

At night, Hong Kong's Victoria Harbour (map) is a riot of lights and colors. As if these were insufficient, every night at 8pm, Hong Kong stages a light-and-sound show called A Symphony of Lights (Wikipedia). For 15 minutes, the lights on many buildings change in unison with music broadcast along the waterfront on both sides of Victoria Harbour, as seen next with the AIG tower (map, rainbow of colors), and the two banks HSBC (map, crane-like structure) and Standard Chartered Bank (map, staggered towers), behind the colonial-style Hong Kong Legislative Council building (map, arches and dome).

In addition, spotlights illuminate the haze and laser beams race across the sky, as shown in the next group of six views. The triangular building is the Bank of China, designed by famed architect I.M. Pei (top left, map). The brush-like building is the Two International Finance Centre (2IFC, top right, map). The cylindical building is the Hopewell Centre (below, map).

Festivals

On special days, such as Christmas and New Year (western and lunar), Victoria Harbour provides the perfect setting for further illuminations or fireworks.

Shipping

As befits a world commercial center, Victoria Harbour is always busy with all sorts of ships and boats of all sizes (regrettably, there are only fake junks now, for tourists).

The blue catamaran above provides fast ferry service to and from Macau's casinos, about an hour away. There is stiff competition among ferries to keep Macau's gambling tables busy round the clock, using one of the world's largest fleets of jetfoils, foilcats, flying cats, turbocats, jumbocats, tricats, CotaiJets and the like.

Riding the Star Ferry for a few minutes across Victoria Harbour (Wikipedia) is a more traditional experience -- the scrollable panarama shows the inside view from one end of the upper level of such a ferry boat (the drunken sailor is just a panorama artifact).

The next photo shows the Shau Kei Wan Typhoon Shelter (map) with its modern fishing fleet, located at the distant eastern end of Victoria Harbour. By contrast, right across from this typhoon shelter lies the older Sam Ka Tsuen Typhoon Shelter with an old fishing village, Lei Yue Mun (map, Wikipedia), shown next and famous for seafood restaurants.

The fishing boat in the next photo is preparing to trawl through the outer harbour. The final view illustrates off-shore loading and unloading of containers in the outer harbour, using floating cranes due to Hong Kong's shortage of docks.