- Support Checkerboard Hill on Patreon!
Subscribe via email
Tags
- advertising
- Australia
- aviation
- buses
- China
- China Railways
- construction
- depots
- Disneyland
- driving
- East Rail
- history
- Hong Kong
- Hong Kong International Airport
- Hong Kong Tramways
- KCR
- Kowloon
- Kowloon Canton Railway
- Lantau Island
- light rail
- line guide
- locomotive
- Macau
- mainland
- maintenance
- Mass Transit Railway
- MTR
- mystery
- New Territories
- Octopus card
- on the road
- on the water
- Outlying Islands
- rail operations
- railway
- railway archaeology
- railway signalling
- scale models
- television commercials
- tourist trap
- trains
- trams
- tunnels
- Victoria Harbour
- West Rail
Photos from Flickr
Archives
Recent Posts
- 25 kV AC railway electrification in Hong Kong
- Powering the MTR Light Rail network
- Driverless baggage tractors at Hong Kong International Airport
- The evolution of MTR network maps over time
- Shrinking East Rail line trains from 12 to 9 cars
- Extending the MTR using a tunnel *dismantling* machine
- Souvenir sales on the Hong Kong MTR
- Hong Kong’s archaic English and ‘Litter cum Recyclable Collection Bins’
- Television commercials for the MTR Airport Express
- Hong Kong’s most useless road – Airport Tunnel on Chek Lap Kok
Monthly Archives: January 2011
Hong Kong’s monkey hill
Up in the hills above Hong Kong are a number of wild monkey colonies – not something you expect if you only spend your time on the city streets. But how did the monkeys get there?
Breakfast cereal, and the Yee Shun Milk Company
Milk seems to be a difficult product to track down in Hong Kong. During my stay I felt like having a nice bowl of corn flakes with milk: finding breakfast cereal wasn’t too hard at the local supermarket, but the milk aisle was a bit different to what I am used to seeing in Australia.
The oddness is also seen at the Yee Shun Milk Company – they specialise in steamed milk puddings… Continue reading
A touch of Australia in Hong Kong
To mark Australia Day, here is a collection of Aussie things I found in Hong Kong during my trip: it is a surprisingly long list.
The easiest to find was Australian beer: a six pack of Fosters will set you back $48.90 HKD, or just under $7 AUD.
From then on, things just got weirder. Continue reading
I’m looking for a model plane…
When I was planning my trip to Hong Kong, the only shopping I planned for was camera equipment, and possibly some model trains. One of the hobby stores that I found online was 80M Bus Model Shop, with a number of branches throughout Hong Kong. While looking for one of them, I came across another interesting looking shop across the aisle.
Once stepping inside, it was an Aladdin’s cave of diecast model aircraft. Continue reading
Wu Kai Sha: a suburb of contrasts
During my time in Hong Kong, I spent two weeks staying in Ma On Shan, a new town located on reclaimed land on the shores of Tolo Harbour, in the central part of the New Territories. My Aunt and Uncle’s apartment was 30-odd storeys up in the air, in an building that was 40 storeys high – in other words, a typical Hong Kong suburb.
However, a short walk from the busy town is the beach front village of Wu Kai Sha: which presents a complete contrast to what the average tourist expects.
How can this peaceful scene be less than a 10 minutes walk for the hustle and bustle of modern Hong Kong? Continue reading