The tourist heart of Hong Kong, Tsim Sha Tsui, is an easy place to find your way around. The Star Ferry Terminal, for ferries to Hong Kong Island, is right on the southwestern tip of the peninsula. East of here, along the south- ern shore, facing Hong Kong Island, are a number of hi-tech, modern muse- ums and galleries built on reclaimed land, while the main road just to tire north of these is Salisbury Road, dominated by the magnificently traditional Peninsula Hotel. Running south to north right through the middle of Tsim sha Tsui, and on through the rest of Kowloon, is Hong Kong’s most famous street, Nathan Road,jammed with shops and shoppers at all hours of the day and night. All the streets immediately 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 almost a miracle to find any- thing more than a few years old here. Nevertheless, there are a handful of relics surviving from earlier times, 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 from 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 as Tsim Sha Tsui’s desprate attempt to acquire a more cultured image. The distinctive winged, ski- slope roofline of the Hong Kong Cultural Centre, which occupies the for mer site of the Kowloon Railway Station, is unmissable. Inside there are concert halls, theatres and galleries including, in an adjacent wing, the Hong Kong 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 intrigu- ingselection 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 information 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) hous- es 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 chauffeur- driven fleet of the Peninsula Hotel. Before reclamation pushed the sh0rea 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 drop- ping by for lunch or afternoon tea in the foyer if you are not looking too scruffy Immediately east of the Peninsula, running north from Salisbury Road, is the neon-lit Nathan Road, which donminates 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 commercial 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”, p.721), 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 impenetrable 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-midnight) is marked at its southeastern corner by the white-domed Kowloon Mosque and Islamic Centre, which caters to the substantial Muslim population of the area - tourists are not allowed in without special permission (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 swimming 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 features the Hong Kong Story, a permanent b tory about the SAR’s life and times, as well as numerous history-related tem porary 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, although there’s also a good children’s zone. Yau Ma Tei and Mong Kok
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