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street, Nathan Road,jammed with shops and shoppers at all hours of the day and night. All the streets innnediately to the east and west of here are likewise chock-a-block with small traders. Given the brash speed of change in this area, it’s ahnost a miracle to find anything more than a few years old here. Nevertheless, there are a handful of relics surviving from earlier: tinwes, one of these being the Clock Tower, about 100m east of the Star Ferry Terminal. The tower is the only remaining piece of the original Kowloon Railway Station which was demolished in 1978. In the old days, you could take a train from here all the way back to Europe, via Mongolia and Russia. The seafront promenade runs east fi’om here, giving fantastic views over Hong Kong Island, particularly popular at night when people come to stroll, sit, roller-skate and fish. Between the western section of the promenade and Salisbury Road to the north, is a series of buildings which cynics might regard asTsim Sha Tsni’s descrate attempt to acquire a more cultured image. The distinctive winged, skislope roofiine of the Hong Kong Cultural Centre, which occupies the formersite of the Kowloon Railway Station, is unnaissable. Inside there are concert halls, theatres and galleries including, in an adjaceut wing, the HongKong Museum of Art (Mon-Wed, Fri & Sat 10am-6pm, Sun l-6pm; $20),which is definitely worth a visit. As well as calligraphy, scrolls and an intriguing selection of paintings covering the history of Hong Kong, the museum houses an excellent Chinese antiquities section which has far more informative English labels than comparable museums in China. For’ up-to-date infor mation on events in the Cultural Centre, pop into the foyer for a brochure.
Immediately to the east of the Cultural Centre, the domed Hong Kong Space Museum (Mon & Wed-Fri 1-9pm, Sat & Sun 10alu-9pm; $10) houses some highly user-friendly exhibition halls on astronomy and space explo-
tation. The highlight here, however, is the planetarium, known as the Space Theatre, which presents amazing wide-screen space shows for an additional fee ($32, concessions $16; call 2734 2722 tbr show times).
Salisbury Road, running east-west immediately north of the Cultural Centre, is patrolled by Rolls Royces, many of them belonging to the chauffeurdriven fleet of the Peninsula Hotel. Before reclamation pushed the shore a couple of hundred metres south, the Peninsula commanded a view directly across the harbour to the island. By way of compensation for having lost its view, however, the Peninsula became the first building in Kowloon to exceed the old twenty-storey height limit imposed on development, with its new wing towering up at the back. Needless to say, rooms are pricey, but it’s worth dropping by for lunch or afternoon tea in the foyer ifyou are not looking too scruffy Immediately east of the Perunsula, running north from Salisbury Road, is the neon-lit Nathan Road, which donfinates the commercial heart of Kowloon.
While by no means a beautiful street, it’s one you’ll find yourself drawn to again and again for Hong Kong’s most concentrated collection of electronics shops, tailors,jewellery stores and fashion boutiques. The variety of goods on offer is staggering, but the southern section of Nathan Road, known as the Golden Mile for its conmrercial potential, is by no means a cheap place to shop these days, and tourist rip-offs are all too common (for more details, see "Shopping", p.757). One of the least salubrious but most exotic corners of Nathan Road is the gigantic Chungking Mansions (see "Accommodation"), a couple of hundred metres north of the junction with Salisbury Road.The shopping arcades here on the two lowest floors are a steaming jungle of ethnic shops, curry houses and dark corners which seem to stretch away into the inapenetrable heart of the building, making an interesting contrast with the antiseptic air-conditioned shopping malls that fill the rest of Hong Kong.A few hundred metres north of Chungking Mansions, Kowloon Park (daily 6am-nridnight) is marked at its southeastern corner by the white-domed Kowloon Mosque and Islamic Centre, which caters to the substantial Muslinr population of the area - tourists are not allowed in without special pernrission (call 2724 0095).The park itself provides welcome green respite from the unremitting concrete of Tsim Sba Tsui, though strangely you can’t see it from the street and have to climb steps up from Nathan Road. There’s also an indoor and outdoor swinmfing pool complex, with Olympic-size facilities (daily 8am-noon, 1.30-6pm ex 7.30-10pm; $19), plus an aviary, sculpture walk and piazza in the grounds.A few blocks to the east of Nathan Road at no. 100 Chatham Road, you’ll find the Hong Kong Museum of History (Mon& Wed-Sat 10am-6pm Sun 10am-7pm, $10), which fcattn-es the Hong Kong Story, a permanent history about the SAR’s life and times, as well as numerous history-related temporary exhibitions.Beyond Chatham Road, the area known as Tsim Sha Tsui East is built on entirely reclaimed land and comprises exclusive hotels and shopping malls From the Star Ferry Terminal an excellent walk follows the seafront prome nade east and then north past this area as far as Hung Horn, which is the site of the Kowloon-Canton Railway Station. The Hong Kong Science Museum can also be found in this district, at 2 Science Museum Road (Tues-Fri 1-9pm, Sat, Sun & public holidays 10am-9pm; $25). Opened in 1998, its best feature is probably the twenty-metre Energy Machine, althou there’s also a good children’s zone.
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