The Bruce Lee Guide to Tsim Sha Tsui

Walking tours are quite popular and there aren't many places where they are as easy as Hong Kong. Granted it's not the most pedestrian-friendly place you will have visited - any walk normally involves being hoisted above or below the roads so we don't interfere (heaven forbid!) with the smooth flow of HK's most precious vehicular traffic. Here is one of the walks I had cobbled together for the old blog, following on from the popularity of my original Bruce Lee’s Hong Kong post.

I also have a Yau Ma Tei walking tour article to re-post, but for the time being this is a nice easy-to-follow introduction to Lee fans. Given last year's 40th death anniversary celebrations and all the stuff that went with it (such as the eventual opening of the 5 year exhibit at the Heritage Museum) it seems a good time to put these up again.

The walk itself is about 3.5km in length and shouldn’t take too long unless you want to take full advantage of the locations and get snaps and generally admire the views and I have tried to be as direct as possible given the aforementioned ridiculous aspects of HK’s pedestrian flow - designed to take you past shopping opportunities rather than actually get you from A to B in the shortest time.

Tai Po Market development between 1892 and 1964

Although living in Kowloon for the past couple of years, I spent the first six (or so) years of my time here residing in Tai Po. I still love the place and feel it's a great balance between being able to conveniently reach the city and countryside. Okay, neither is a 5 minute walk away but Tai Po strikes a good balance and its much quicker to get into HK Island than most people realise. It was wandering around Tai Po that inspired the original form of this blog and as a result of my explorations and inquisitiveness I've developed a fairly good knowledge of the place.

However, it wasn't until I accidentally came across an old photo of my father-in-law's (taken probably around 1953 when he was a fresh immigrant from the Mainland) that I started to develop an interest in the history of the place. The photo itself brought the attention of a local historian, Dr Patrick Hase, who had been asked to write a history of the Catholic Church in Taipo for its 150th anniversary year, and he asked if it could be included in the book.

An Article for HK Time Out: Hong Kong’s Top Diving Spots

The weather is warming up slightly (although you'd be hard pressed to believe it given the massive rainstorms we had last weekend) and this means the local scuba diving season is beginning to rev up. To be honest, the more hardy folks have been diving all winter (sadly, I'm not one of them) and enjoying cooler clearer water and empty (of people) dive sites. So it's time to roll out an article I penned a couple of years ago (for Hong Kong Time Out again) that formed part of a larger stay/vacation piece. Once again this was a printed article only (not available online) but I was given permission by then editor - Jake Hamilton - to put it online. So many thanks to Jake (wherever he may now be) for getting me to write it and then allowing me to stick it up here as well.