A basketball court in front of the pastel towers of Choi Hung Estate

Pearl River Delta

Autumn 2026

A week in the Pearl River Delta. Hong Kong first, then across the border to Shenzhen, a ferry to Macau, and a bus back over the sea to the airport. Three cities an hour apart, and my first time in mainland China.

Hong Kong

Hong Kong is a blend of two things. Finance and skyscrapers on one side, traditional Cantonese life on the other, with old housing blocks and small family shops a street away from the glass towers.

A glass footbridge in Central with people crossing between office towers
A blue double-decker tram at a junction
A man leaning out of the open window of a tram upper deck
Inside an MTR train at Yau Ma Tei
The Hong Kong flag flying between high-rises
A colourful wall reading Central Yards in an air-conditioned passage

The heat was stronger than I had expected. Late September is still hot and very humid, and the city is built around that. Air-conditioned footbridges connect one building to the next, the Mid-Levels escalator lifts you up the hill without a step, and the MTR is cooled end to end. You move through Hong Kong vertically as much as horizontally, and often indoors.

Looking up the Mid-Levels escalator between apartment blocks
A covered walkway running above a street in Central
A glass tower rising behind an old apartment block
Silhouettes in a covered walkway by the harbour
The Lippo Centre towers seen from below

The old city still lives at street level. Roast goose hangs in shop windows, hand-painted signs stack up on every facade, and bamboo scaffolding, a slowly fading craft, still climbs the new towers.

A cook chopping roast meat behind a glass counter
Roast geese hanging in a shop window with green neon signage
Hand-painted shop signs stacked on a street corner
Bamboo scaffolding around a tower under construction

The harbour is the centre of it all. We took the Star Ferry across for one of the best views of the skyline and then went up to the Peak for the view from above.

The empty wooden benches of the Star Ferry
A passenger on the Star Ferry looking out at the harbour
Two people at the Kowloon waterfront with the Hong Kong Island skyline behind
People sitting on steps at the harbour edge with the skyline across the water
Hong Kong Island and the harbour seen from Victoria Peak
The skyline seen through trees from the Peak
A Space Invader mosaic on a wall in Central

At night we sat on the Kowloon side and watched the lights come on.

The Bank of China Tower lit up at night
A red-sailed junk crossing the harbour at night
The lit facade of M+ at night

The most interesting day was away from the sights, walking through the parts of Kowloon where most people actually live. We walked past the public housing estates.

The yellow and green facade of a public housing estate in Kowloon
A street market under blue tarpaulins between tenement blocks
Housing towers against a blue sky
A housing tower behind a blue road sign
A ping-pong table in a park between housing blocks

A stumbled into a wet market in full swing.

Vegetable and meat stalls in a wet market seen from the floor above
A butcher at a market stall under pink lights
Fish and seafood on ice at a wet market stall
A tofu stall at a wet market
Live crabs in a wire cage at a market stall
A vegetable stall seen from the floor above

And finally ended up in the Nan Lian Garden, which sits between the towers as if it had always been there.

A wooden pavilion by a pond in Nan Lian Garden with towers behind
A delivery truck parked in a narrow Kowloon street
The basketball court at Choi Hung Estate with its pastel towers

Wednesday night is race night at Happy Valley, a racecourse in the middle of the city with towers on every side. The entire expat community seemed to be out that night, filling the stands. We put a few dollars on a horse for the fun of it and, of course, lost.

Jockeys walking their horses past the stands at Happy Valley
Horses crossing the finish line at Happy Valley under floodlights
The crowd at Happy Valley racecourse on a race night
Neon signs over a crowded street in Mong Kok at night
A couple walking home through Happy Valley after the races

Lantau

Lantau is the island next door to Hong Kong Island and feels nothing like it at all. Green hills, open water, and the first quiet we had heard in days. The cable car goes up to Ngong Ping and the Big Buddha, and we ate lunch at the monastery below it, a vegan meal in a very calm place.

Passengers on an MTR train to Lantau
The MTR logo on a station building at Tung Chung
The Ngong Ping cable car seen through a patterned window
Green hills and the sea seen from Ngong Ping
The main hall of Po Lin Monastery
Water lilies in a pond at Po Lin Monastery
The Big Buddha seen from below against a white sky

From there a bus took us down to Tai O, a small fishing village built on stilts over the water, about as far from Central as you can get in Hong Kong.

A red boat with a red umbrella moored below stilt houses
Stilt houses over the water in Tai O
Paper lanterns strung over a narrow lane in Tai O
A man moving boxes on a pallet truck at the Tai O waterfront
A covered market lane in Tai O with red awnings
A worker in a straw hat under paper lanterns in a Tai O lane
Dried squid for sale in a red plastic bag
Dried seafood in plastic bags at a Tai O stall
The shore at Tai O at low tide with boats on the mud
A boat crossing the bay off Tai O under grey skies
Green hills blurring past a bus window on Lantau

Shenzhen

You leave Hong Kong before you leave the station. Immigration for the mainland happens at West Kowloon, at a line on the floor with a Hong Kong officer on one side and a mainland Chinese one on the other, and it feels every bit like an international border. Fifteen minutes on the high-speed train later we were in Futian, in the middle of Shenzhen.

A high-speed train waiting at the platform
The arrivals hall at Futian station, empty marble under rows of red flags

Nothing carries over from Hong Kong, least of all your phone. Google Maps is too inaccurate to be useful, and the same goes for most of the usual apps, so we switched to the Chinese ones, Amap for maps and Didi instead of Uber, and got by with a bit of English and a translation app.

A glass pyramid on a plaza in Shenzhen
The Ping An Finance Centre rising into the evening light
Office towers and red flags against the sky in Futian
Shenzhen seen from the observation deck of the Ping An tower

I had not expected how new and clean it all feels, as if the whole city of twenty million had been built ten years ago. Almost every car is electric, from brands I had never heard of, and people ride electric scooters everywhere. We took a Pony.ai robotaxi across town, with nobody in the driver's seat and a screen showing us the route and what the car sees. Even on the highway, boxed in by traffic at speed with an empty seat in front of you, it felt more exciting than strange. A glimpse of an amazing future.

An electric car passing under red flags on a Shenzhen street
Electric cars at a junction in Shenzhen
The empty driver seat of a Pony.ai robotaxi, the screen showing the route and remaining distance
A couple on an electric scooter passing a bus stop
A woman on an electric scooter blurring past a bus

We stayed in Futian and went everywhere by metro and Didi. We saw the electronics market at Huaqiangbei and the food court next to it, and a lot of malls.

A metro map above the doors of a Shenzhen subway train
A new building wrapped in green scaffolding netting
The atrium of a shopping mall in Huaqiangbei

There are drone delivery stations in the parks, and out at the bay the new design museum looks like it landed rather than got built.

A delivery courier on an electric scooter
A drone hovering above a delivery station in a park
Two people on electric scooters waiting at a crossing
A man walking an alpaca across a pedestrian crossing
The Ping An tower framed by a white arch of the museum
A silhouette in front of a white cloud-shaped museum building
Design objects on lit shelves inside the museum
Rows of model cars mounted on a white wall
A visitor in a dark gallery lit by curved openings
A giant scorpion sculpture on an orange carpet in a store

Nantou Ancient City was the exception, a walled town older than everything around it and now full of small shops, lanterns, and local artists. It was the one place in Shenzhen that didn't feel new. I bought a print from a studio there.

The stone gate of Nantou Ancient City decorated with flowers
Lanterns hanging over a crowded lane in Nantou
A narrow lane in Nantou Ancient City
Two men eating at a wooden table in a food court
An illuminated sign above a noodle shop in a food court

Macau

From Shenzhen we took the ferry from Shekou over to Macau. Leaving the harbour you see the port, container cranes along the shore for as far as you can see. Shenzhen is the fourth-busiest container port in the world, which you would never guess from inside the city. The crossing takes an hour over the mouth of the river and under the Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macau Bridge, 55 kilometres of road over open sea.

An orange ferry at the Shekou terminal seen through the waiting-room window
The Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macau Bridge seen from the ferry window
Port cranes seen through the windows of the Shekou ferry

Macau is two completely different places. The Cotai Strip is an Asian Las Vegas, with a Venice, a Paris and a London built at massive scale. We stayed in the Venetian, which has canals and gondolas indoors under a painted sky, with the Londoner next door. Completely absurd, and a lot of fun.

The Venetian with its clock tower and canal bridge
The Grand Lisboa seen through a taxi windscreen
Glass office buildings on the Cotai Strip

The old town on the peninsula is the other Macau, and the part I'd go back for. Portuguese churches in pastel colours, black-and-white stone pavement, tiles on every other wall.

Two men in helmets riding a scooter past a hedge
A yellow arcade with people walking through the shade
The yellow facade of St. Dominic's Church with a palm tree
A narrow Macau street with the Grand Lisboa at the end
Tourists on the steps in front of the Ruins of St. Paul's
An old tea shop with a green counter and painted signs

It's beautiful, and a stark contrast after Hong Kong and Shenzhen. An hour away and it feels like an entirely different place, with a casino poking up at the end of every street to remind you where you are.

A man standing on Portuguese pavement next to a panda graffiti
A woman pushing a cart stacked with cardboard along a cobbled street
The weathered stone walls of Monte Fort
A narrow residential street in Macau seen from above
People climbing a tiled stairway under an arch
A tiled mural reading Macau with a passer-by

On the last morning we crossed the bridge the other way, by bus from Macau to Hong Kong airport, with the sea on both sides and the ferry route somewhere below us.

Above all, Shenzhen is what stayed with me on the plane. Spotless, electric, and futuristic, it impressed me more than anything else on the trip. I kept wondering what it will look like in fifty years. Will it keep rebuilding itself, or will a city built all at once grow old all at once?