On deliveries

The thing you don’t notice when you live in a city with a normal ratio of people to space is constant flow of deliveries which all go on in the background. In Hong Kong, the tight squeeze means that all this secret background work is pushed very much to the foreground: the streets are so tightly compact that there are no alternative side roads to off load large stock piles; shops and restaurants often occupy such small spaces that there are no side doors or back doors to use for sneaky deliveries. No, in HK It all happens right there, very much in the way of things.

The biggest feat seems to be delivering water. Since it’s not advisable to drink the tap water in HK, bottled water is big business here. Households buy sturdy 5.5 litre water bottles, while offices and public buildings offer 10 or 15 litre water cooler/ heater systems so that staff and visitors have easy access to hot and cold water around the clock. These massive bottles need to be constantly delivered and collected and refilled. They bottles arrive in large lorries which men promptly jump out of and into the back of to lift out and carry to their destination. Since offices throughout HK regularly tower up to the 30^th or 40^th floor, these bottles have to be carried then trolleyed up to these heights. Meanwhile, down below, streets block as the water lorries sit waiting for their men to return, unable to park due to the which results in honks and horns from all the aforementioned until the delivery men run back with the empties and they can move on.

One way to get a piece of the Honky pie is to put together your own private delivery service - ideally one which cuts out the delays caused by stationary and stalling cars, taxis dropping off and picking up, buses pulling out and coaches pulling up. And every day I see folk cycling around the city streets doing just that. When I found out I was moving to Hong Kong, I was living in Copenhagen where cycling was my main mode of transport. Half joking, half hoping I asked Jane, a Cantonese friend from Danish class if there was any point in taking my bike out to HK. “Yes. If you want to die,” she replied very straight faced. So I sold my bike and came here without wheels, but despite Jane’s warning, I do regularly see people on bikes.

Granted, nobody in the city really chooses to commute by bike, but for deliveries it’s a popular choice. In the Hong Kong travel guide which my Mum gave to me before I moved, there’s a photograph of a man cycling a very old school bike with a front basket filled so full with chicken feet that you could hardly see his head. Everyday bike baskets brimming with whole chickens, trays of frogs or fresh fish and bags full of herbs and greens weave their way through the taxis and buses and trams to deliver whatever they’re carrying. Some of the more extreme cyclists carry gas canisters which typically weigh between 12 and 15 kilos. I’ve seen cyclists balancing up to three of those on one bike: two strapped onto each side and one sitting in the basket, or if the basket’s past it, the cyclist holds one of the canisters by hand and steers with the other, much like a bike riding circus clown (just with serious amounts of pressurised gas instead of water squirting plastic flowers).

Those who understandably prefer to have both feet firmly on the ground whilst delivering, favour the metal framed cart method. Walking around the city you see these foldable carts chained to metal rails, patiently waiting for their owners to come on duty and start collecting and delivering all manner of things from recycling, food, and water to household rubbish, DHL style deliveries and stacks of freshly printed newspapers and magazines. The carts are pulled and pushed through the pavements and streets, but since both are almost always already packed with large scale delivery operations, the cartloads are often taken by train, bus, tram or boat to ensure timely arrival by avoiding as much of the HK street chaos as possible.

Deliveries come on foot a lot too. As far as I know, Hong Kong is the only place in the world offering free McDonald’s delivery, so you often see well dressed McDonald’s recruits running around the city with their insulated, saturated fat full back packs, ready to make some desperately hungover gweilo’s day. They even bring out coffees as the minimum spend is only $50 (£4). Many of those offices and workplaces that need daily water delivery also go the full stretch and order breakfast and lunch to be delivered. If you work near a substantial sized office or commercial area, you will be surrounded by restaurants, but at dead on twelve every lunch time, 50% of the population abandons their normal position and goes to a restaurant to feed on noodle and rice bits. The 50% who can’t squeeze themselves around a table, either queue for another sitting (you have never seen real queues until you see people waiting in line in HK), or order food to be delivered. As you have probably gathered, this is a busy time around the city; taking a taxi or public transport or a bike or even a cart will only slow down the delivery speed, so delivery people simply carry the food. Up to four plastic bags packed with steaming boxed up rice and meat mixtures and cartoons of ice cold soy milk are wrapped around the wrists of these delivery people who run from restaurant to office block, still wearing their aprons and sweating under the heat of the midday sun and the suffocating humidity.

For those like me, standing back on the pavement to let the carts past, watching the delivery chain unravel is a constant reminder that so many people here sweat and shout and strive to get deliveries delivered on time. Delivery people of Hong Kong, we salute you. You get things moving, and you add, in a big way, to the constant buzz that is the electric current of this city.

On Pampering

From personal experience, there are a few basic things that I need to ensure before deciding to move to a new place, notably: can it offer safe and sufficient services for the removal of the hair on my head and the hair on my legs? After a few short strolls around Hong Kong, I was confident I’d moved to a city that could cope with my beauty requirements; there were treatment centres and salons everywhere! Giant fluorescent feet hung in the streets, declaring discount foot rubs and pressure point massages; my toes tingled at the tiny prices written on the posters of the numerous nail painting parlours; even the most rundown buildings had flashing signs encouraging you to make your way to the 11^th floor for a full body oil massage. Yes, this looked like a city that knew how to keep its people looking prim and purty.

My first venture to a hair salon went reasonably well considering that most HK hairdressers are trained to deal with straight, smooth, sleeky hair, while mine is wavy, frizzy and bouncy. For the two hours I was there, my stylist and I communicated using only hand signals, and every 15 minutes her assistant inexplicably pulled me away to the sink for another rinse, massage and general scalp rubbing session. Hong Kong made for a challenging place to find a cheap leg wax too because, as I soon realised, the average HK woman- and man for that matter - has less hair on their legs than I have on my hands, so waxing is not in dire demand. In my first weeks, I found a small Chinese salon which accepted my half leg wax request, but as my rather rough handed beautician was mid way through, she started shouting and pointing: “Like a man! Like a man!” This was all rather unnerving until I realised she was pointing at my forearms, which clearly had more hair on them than any lady she had ever encountered before. She screeched the same phrase at me repeatedly until I finally gave in and allowed her to remove the offensive hair from my limbs.

Fortunately, these initially off putting experiences have not held me back from exploring more of the beauty treatments on offer in pamper happy Honkers. The first time I stepped inside what was to become my go-to massage place, the word seedy was certainly among those that sprung to mind: the very dimply lit space, the heavy red velvet curtains and the even heavier scent of citrusy sweet oil hanging in the air, all made for an interesting first impression. But I was soon made to feel warm, if not welcome, by the masseuse who stood on my back and proceeded to walk up and down it, laughing in response each crack from my crying bones. Shortly after that she insisted on trying to untie my neck knots, at which point I tensed up and had an internal panic attack about the fact that I’d knowingly allowed one of my most fragile body parts to be frisked by a small Thai lady. Why didn’t ask to see her ‘I’m qualified to do this’ badge before lying down? As I started wondering how likely it was she could break my neck, everything in my body resisted her rhythmic movements, whereupon she applied more pressure, and I resisted more. This went on for the remaining 45 minutes until one of us, exhaustedly, gave in.

A similar Catch 22 clause applies to wearing summery footwear in HK. It’s hot, so I want to wear feet freeing shoes to let my feet breathe, but the more I do so, the more my feet are open to the elements and the worse they look. Thank the Lord for the Shanghai Pedicure! This treatment is designed to remove dead skin from underfoot, and when I say ‘remove’, I suppose the accurate terms are ‘shave’ and ‘scrape’.  The idea is that you sit there for however long you have deemed necessary and watch a razor wielding man or woman remould your blocks of hard dry skin into human looking feet once again. The first time I did this, I innocently asked the man for a 30 minute session. On reflection, that was very wishful thinking. He genuinely worked away on my feet for 50 minutes nonstop only looking up to mop his brow and even apologise for the delay, pointing and the lapful of foot scrapings he had removed as his defence for running over time. I looked back, completely cringed out, but still willing him on, encouragingly.         

After the Shanghai Pedicure, eyebrow threading is my latest HK beauty experiment. For those who don’t know, threading is a swift and nifty, but not entirely painless, hair removal technique for the face and neck area. It uses a simple thread and scissors technique- often with a little help from the beautician’s teeth. And it works! Obviously, there is a red, raw rash for a few hours, but then things settle down and look pretty good. So far, the only awkward stage has the post- eyebrow -threading -conversation when the beautician scrupulously examines the rest of my face and asks if she can thread my forehead or my cheeks or my upper lip. Each time, I look back at her, as cluelessly as I can, as if to say: ‘Obviously I don’t have any excess hair in any of those places. You must be confusing me with someone else’. But she knows, and I know, that there is still work to be done. Next time, maybe...

On Health and Safety

One might assume that there might be some logistics issues when millions of people are packed inside ridiculously tall buildings, and crammed into this small corner of China. But despite Hong Kong being a giant building site where each new days sees more than 7 million people coordinate themselves into 15,000 buses and 18,000 taxis and then disperse themselves around 8,000 skyscrapers including the 4^th and 5^th tallest office buildings in the world, the main priority for the HK Health and Safety Dept. is to stop people toppling over whilst sneezing.

The speed at which buildings are torn down, scaffolding put up; the speed at which buildings are replaced and then newly unveiled, is quite frankly frightening for a small town girl like me who is used to seeing vacant, boxed up buildings sit and wait to be wanted again. Of course, the reason why Hong Kong is doing so well must be connected to this constant rotation and refurbishment, but there are down sides too. One is that lodgers have very little say in what will happen to their building - and therefore their apartment. Recently, two HK friends were told they had one month, and two weeks respectively, to pack up and move out of their current abodes which were going to be demolished and rebuilt into more expensive apartments. The other teeny problem with having construction work spread every five yards, is that there are constantly holes in the ground, cranes in the air and hundreds of construction workers dangling from long thin ropes. At simple stroll around HK feels like you are participating in the ‘before’ sequence of a health and safety video for the construction industry. The only problem is, there is no ‘after’ video. Big bad noisy machinery, and workers without harnesses who scale the 23^rd floors of crumbling buildings, certainly make for some scary sights.   

To make things a little more nerve-wracking, bamboo is the material of choice for scaffolding in Hong Kong. Clearly there are some advantages in terms of sustainability, cost, and yes; when you get bamboo in your stir- fry it’s pretty tough to chew through. But does this plant really qualify it as the most durable product to hold the weight of teams of construction workers and their equipment? Two architect friends I have met here remain unconvinced. They are especially dubious of the thin plastic ties which hold the bamboo poles together. When the workers are done with the renovation, some brave chap climbs to the top, snips the plastic ties, and throws the bamboo down to another guy waiting on the street (who shouts and waves at you to watch out). Surviving HK tip #34: beware of falling bamboo or read more about it here.

While most street level citizens seem nonchalant toward this precarious scaffolding process, there are other Health and Safety issues on ground level which get more attention: signs in toilets show a 10 stage step- by- step aid to hand washing; cartoon stickers stuck to bus windows remind you to "Maintain cough manners" whilst travelling. Essentially, the key to all these announcements is to stop germs spreading around the city. It doesn’t take long to notice people walking around wearing face masks. Initially I assumed that people were covering their mouths to limit the intake of hazy HK air; in fact, they are trying to limit infection. The masks are made of strange powdery paper, cover 70% of the face and are kept in place with elastic straps pulled tight around the ears. Needless to say, in the sense that they scream “stay away”, the masks succeed in stopping some germs spreading. Despite the pretty off putting appearance, the masks are incredibly popular.  Sometimes, when you're following the MTR subway route, the bright white corridors filled with people dashing around in medical masks makes you feel like you’re on the set of the HK version of Holby City (minus the snogging). I did once see a lady wearing a customised denim mask with diamante detail. It just goes to show that while the Cantonese do follow rules; they do put style above most things.

Certainly this mass mask wearing seemed a little obsessive at first, but the longer I’ve spent here, the more I understand about the city’s insecurities with the SARS virus. Hong Kong was hit by the epidemic in 2003, and it killed 300 people in total (actually a very small number considering how densely populated these parts are). So, to avoid something similar happening again, medical masks are taken very seriously (a little less so by the expat community, need I add).

Other HK public safety warnings fail to earn the same level of understanding on my part. One particular campaign on the underground features a cartoon penguin cut out who stands by the escalators and reminds HK residents to hold onto the handrail. While we’ve all imagined the dreaded domino effect, starting from the back and wiping out the entire escalator line, but in most cases people work out a way for that not to happen. Always ready with a Health and Safety solution, the HK MTR has introduced Smiley the friendly penguin mascot who, it is hoped, “will not only put a smile on your face, but also remind passengers how to ride escalators safely”. The annoying penguin voiceover lady repeats over and over to: "Hold the handrail and stand still" or "Stand still and keep away from the edge”. There are even bight green footprints painted onto the escalator steps, guiding you on where you should place your feet. Apparently the most outrageous thing that a HK citizens could possibly do on the escalator would be to wear flip flops or, heaven forbid, crocs. Yes, croc clogs are ugly, and maybe they do fail risk assessments because they expose the toes, but does this extra risk really require another extensive billboard, poster, banner and digital advertising anti crocs campaign? And why doesn’t anyone want to warn us about construction men falling from the sky instead?

The best way to appreciate HK’s bizarre schizophrenic attitude to Health and Safety regulations is to go and visit another country in South East Asia for a few days and then come back. Recent trips to Philippines where tens of people pack into crowded Jeepney’s with limited seating and Thailand where whole families travel on one scooter with maybe a helmet between them. To come back to Hong Kong and notice the sheer abundance of signs which lead you almost by the hand out from the airport and into to the city, ensuring you hold on to everything available and keep your eyes firmly ahead to avoid slipping. Perhaps all this over the top parenting is a deliberate ploy to ensure you focus on your journey instead of looking up and around and noticing the real dangers looking above.

On old people

Before I moved to Hong Kong, all I'd really seen of the city was from watching Martin's non stop google streetmap searches to find out where everything was in relation to the few street names he knew. When I finally arrived, I learnt that what I'd seen on the screen was pretty accurate: the architecture, the transportation, the shopping centres and the toilets are all fantastically futuristic, and neon flashes at you from every possible direction. I recently read that HK "feels like somewhere that came into existence only yesterday, or if such a thing were possible, that came into existence tomorrow", and for the most part, I have to agree. But contrary to popular belief, evidence of the HK's past is easy to find: just look at the faces of the old folk, wayfaring from fruit stalls, to tea shops to noodle soup style holes in the wall. Old people are everywhere and seeing old people has become something of the norm in Hong Kong, whereas in other places I've lived, seeing old people felt more like a novelty; something that only happened on Sundays. There are many factors which contribute towards this phenomenon, from low birth rates, low levels of saturated fat, good healthcare, and gallons of herbal tea to the simple fact that limited space means there isn't the possibilty to build new homes to hide the aging HK population. And if you think I'm exaggerating about age, just check the statistics: Hong Kong holds 2nd place (after Japan) on the UN's national life expectancy chart with women living for an average of 85.1 and men living for an average of 78 years- and it's expected that by 2039, life expectancy at birth will increase to 90 years for women and almost 84 for men. So when I say old people, I mean really old. 

The area we live in -Hollywood Road- is well known for its abundance of antique shops, selling Chinese furniture, art and ornaments. Maybe it's because older people are more attracted to older things, or because they have a greater authority on such subjects, but there seems to be an above average amount of elderly activity in these parts. Old men and women run souvenir shops offering bookmarks, mugs, paperweights, postcards and all unimaginable household items in the form of the twelve Zodiac animal signs. Old men and women sit and wait for tourists in tiny room-cum-shop spaces stacked with shelves and cabinets displaying jade made buddas in every shape and size you didn't think possible. Old men and women sit on the fresh veg stalls, selling the the brightest sprouts and the longest spring onions to the locals while trying to offload pale unpungent tomatoes to the unconvinced expat community. 

Those oldies who aren't sitting and selling are out carrying and collecting. It's something I noticed within the first few days of being here and I haven't stopped noticing it since: old faces and bent bodies throughout the city, earn what's left of their living as recycling pushers: scavenging around for recyclable goods and earning money by trading what they find for cash. It’s particularly popular with older folk because many of them don’t have an alternative source of income as they were probably already far into their retirement when the HK state pension scheme was first introduced in 2000. Ten years on, they earn their keep, and keep themselves fit, by exchanging old boxes and bottles for bunse. But old people paced work this is not: it means walking for hours, stacking, pulling and dragging carts piled high as the collect cardboard from recent deliveries at shops and restaurants; scoop newspapers from rubbish bins and stretch their arms inside the designated recycling containers to grab donated plastic bottles and metal cans. The work is difficult to maintain, not to mention manoever, so many of the recyclers rountinely ditch the paved pedestrian areas and trawl their carts through the streets instead. Unsuprisingly, this earns them honks from bus drivers and bells from tram drivers who remind them in their own fast paced ways, that perhaps people of their age should find a safer way of transporting themselves and their treasures around town. 

Of course, not all the old folk work - but those who don't work, walk. or stretch. Old people nearly always wear trainers; they walk up and down steps and take the same steep route home that they always did and find spaces in the city to stand and swing their arms back and forth. During the Christmas holidays, as expected, our local park was overflowing with children wrapped up ridiculously warm to play on swings and slides - but there were also quite a number of old people playing in their own corner of the park: an outdoor fitness area for simple exercises and stretching. One older gentleman stood using a machine to rotate his arms around and around, at his own gentle pace. Another man sat a little further away, kneeding then punching then massaging his legs conducting some sort of self acupressure to improve his circulation during the colder months. An old lady stood next to a bar on the other side of him and caught my eye as she circled her ankles, holding her helper's hand to keep steady. Once her ankles were warmed, they made at couple of slow but steady laps of the park, followed by a round of steps. The session ended with them sitting next to me, where the old lady covered her head with a scarf to hide the sun from her eyes while her helper carefully massaged her delicate hands. And so that's how it goes in Hong Kong: this ultimately urban environment is actually full of lively old folk, who look remarkably healthy and continue to keep remarkably active and generally just keep on living.   

Old man sorting his souvenirs

collecting recycling

old man , fresh fruit

The ankle circling lady doing a lap of the park

On smells

Hong Kong is funnily familiar. Of course buildings are unimaginably tall, people are ever so small and the weather is wonderfully warmer than any climate I've lived in before but generally things feel fine and as I walk around every other person seems to be chatting in English and chomping on sandwiches. At least things seem familiar, until I breathe in. It smells really different over here, and I suppose it should: Hong Kong is the 'Fragrant Harbour' after all.

It doesn't really smell dirty because everything is immaculately well kept: household and commercial rubbish and recycling are collected routinely; litter isn't an issue and it's even illegal to eat or drink on public transport. But having lived in Switzerland and Denmark (I'll leave France out of that list for obvious reasons), I must say there is something comparatively unfresh about the HK air - and it looks pretty hazy too. But perhaps hazy air is unavoidable in one of the most densely populated places in the world - and in fact the haze isn't overly noticeable on a daily basis because the sky only peaks through the gaps between the high rises and sky scrappers very occasionally. What is noticeable are certain smells...

The smell of soup evaporates into the streets and lingers steamy and salty like a big thick vat of stock is constantly bubbling away on a hill above us. Whenever I leave our apartment, the little man who 'looks after' our building (we're not really sure what he does apart from wearing blue overalls and occasionally pressing the button to call the lift when we arrive) is always slurping away at a bowl of soup. When I walk out onto the street the soup smell gets stronger and stronger as the aromas from all the kitchens and chinese restaurants and cafes along the way come together to create a cacophony of congee fumes (a popular cantonese dish which is basically porridge made from rice cooked in a lot of water).

Another distinct smell is moth balls- or at least some of the pungent chemicals used to produce moth balls. It hit me when I entered the lift in our apartment building for the first time and I was immediately taken back to a memory of me at about eight years old at my Grandmas then new house, helping her to unpack boxes of excessively moth balled clothes. In Hong Kong the smell lingers around the main entrances and lifts to most buildings, as well as in the markets and local clothes shops in the city. The Moth ball pong was particularly present last weekend as we trailed from market stall to clothes store searching for cheap items to create the perfect Bollywood costume for Martin's Christmas party. We put a pretty decent outfit together in the end but not without exposing ourselves to some highly -stinky not to mention toxic - smells.

Star Anise is another key player on the Hong Kong aroma front. A rather dominant member of the spice family, it appears to be an essential ingredient in chinese medicine and in most chinese cooking, especially where meat is concerned. Whole (and partial) grilled/ steamed chickens and ducks hang for sale in windows almost everywhere and while the smell of cooking meat can be overpowering, it tends to be sweetened by the star-anise marinade shining and crisping around it as it cooks. Star anise for medicinal purposes is sold in small stores of which there are literally thousands, all seemingly selling exactly the same produce stocked in huge jars or barrels and can only be compared to Olde Worlde Chinese versions of Holland and Barrett. They have nuts and dried fruit, dried mushrooms, endless spices and most surprisingly (and smelly) dried seafood bits. I could often smell fish as I walked past these shops but it took me a few days to realise that some of the barrels and bags at the shop fronts were actually filled with shriveled up dried prawns, dried sardines and packs of what I now recognise as freeze dried shredded cuttle fish. The range- and stench- is endless.

Incense is another very popular - much more pleasant- HK scent. It burns almost constantly in Buddhist temples- two of which are located on our street: one is quite big and bling with statues and altars and offerings while the other is much more subtle and it took me over a week to realise it was a temple, not a scruffy little cafe. What both temples have in common is that their ceilings are covered with huge incense spirals which hang down, burning for days on end and perfuming the streets below. You can also find many small scale hand made Buddhist shines which people put outside their shops and apartments on street level. Every evening as night sets in, the locals light the little red lamps inside the shrines and set alight to incense sticks which they tuck inside them. For me, this gentle evening waft of incense is perfect because it helps disguise some of the more disagreeable notes which also intensify at this peak time when the shop keepers push around the buckets and bags of dried fish stock and move them inside for the night and fill up the meat racks with peking duck to sizzle and attract the punters on their way home.

Smelly sticky chicky 

Dried fish bits

Drying fish bits

Sweet smelling incense shrines

On getting lost

People often say that the best way to explore and discover somewhere new is to go off and get yourself lost. I'd say that those people probably haven't tried getting lost in Hong Kong: it's literally impossible. There are directions everywhere, written in (almost) perfect English; there are signposts to stop you getting lost between the directions; the city is held together by an incredibly efficient transportation system, not to mention an abundance of the cheapest, safest taxis I have experienced in any capital city. All this is very well but means that the somewhat attractive problem of getting lost in Hong Kong has already been solved so it never takes very long to work out where you are, where you've come from and where you should be going.

My first attempt at getting lost was on my second day here. I got out of Sheung Wan MTR station and decided, quite delibertely, not to take my well- memorised -4- minute- route home, instead swinging a right and another right and a couple of lefts. I deliberated with the idea of buying some hot street food which looked a lot like tofu bits - but chickened out, deciding it was probably chicken anyway, and wandered on. I crossed a couple more roads until I saw the big green sign I didn't know I'd been waiting for: Vegetarian Food. In I walked, ordered myself a take away 'Budda's delight' box and accepted the little lady's offer of soya milk to- go. I helped myself to chopsticks as instructed and left, efficiently soon after entering, with my polystyrene box and polystyrene container, both wrapped in a tightly knotted warm plastic bag. Once outside, I chose a route that I thought would lead me homewards, but after about five minutes I came across a little square outside a big chunky building labelled Sheung Wan market. It didn't look like a bad option so I perched myself on a wall where other people were starting to gather and open similarly packed plastic polystyrene packages and pick away at the contents. An older gentlemen budged down a bit to give me more space, his face wrinkled as he observed my difficulty transporting slippery, mishapen bits of cabbage and mushroom from box to mouth. Personally, I think I did alright for my first PDCU (Public Display of Chopstick Usage).

When I got up to leave, I wasn't sure which way would take me home so I entertained that thought a little longer and climbed the steps towards the market, a three storey building in the centre of the square boasting meat and fish on Level 1, Vegetables and Fruits on Level 2 and Clothes on Level 3. Surely the perfect opportunity to get lost a little more? I took the escalator to the second floor where men and women sat behind displays of beautifully pruned bean sprouts in all shapes and sizes and bags and barrels of dried fish bits, which I have since decided must be used for stock and soups. I didn't intend to buy anything, I just wanted to get tangled up in the noodles and shrooms for a while. But, as happens in HK, even the market was tidily arranged- and after a well directed circuit of the stalls, I ended up back where I had started, sooner than i'd hoped. I decided it was time to brave the crowded streets again and attempt to get home. As I descended the stairs I noticed an already familiar MTR station sign facing me from across the road and I realised I must have wandered down to the next MTR station. But any hope of an adventurous trail home, up steps and back down steep paths, was soon dashed by a sign post pointing to our street "Hollywood Road". The MTR station sign was simply indicating an alternative entrance to the very same station I had walked out of 2 hours earlier. The city planning in Hong Kong is so spot on that almost everywhere is reachable from underground as well as overground. Most train stations have at least 6 different exits which are connected by miles of safe, well lit subways with toilets and shops and constant signs and signposts leading pedestrians to the nearest exit/ main street/ tourist attraction above ground. Needless the say, I wasn't lost, not even nearly: I was exactly where I should have been and from there it took me exactly 4 minutes to walk the already well memorised route home, checking the signs all the way.

Just follow the signs...

MTR signs: they're everwhere

A fine sign