Tommie's Perfect 3 day Hong Kong Weekend

So you get land, get off the plane and get your luggage... what now, how to get into they city, always the first obstacle on a city adventure. The metro and all transport system in HK is amazing and so cheap. The metro service from the Airport to the centre of HK or HK Island is excellent. Around 150KHD (£15) which may seem expensive but considering it's an 40mins journey into one of World most major cities, it's well worth it.

Tommie's Tip - $10 HKD ~ £1 GBP

Day 1 - Explore and Chill

Get used to being in a different time zone, if you need to take it easy do it. Get your a tourist day pass 65HKD (£6.5), use the metro everywhere, take your time and have a wander.

Main places that are worth a visit to "mooch";

Causeway Bay = Great mixture of the privileged and unpriviledged. High end brands opposite your plastic chair local diners. This is where you have all the neon lighted streets that you associate HK with. Great places for food, go try something new and go to the local places, fraction of the price and so delicious
Kowloon = which is the other side of the bay from Victoria Harbour holds the most variety of things to do from Old Temples to Street Food Markets to Museums to Bars and clubs.
Mong Kok = the ladies market is something else. This is where you can get your knock off goods that are pretty good quality considering they are probably 5-10% of the normal price. You name they got it, drones, hats, bags, shoes, sex toys... I don't think there's any try before you buy with those though.

Ofcourse you don't have to do these all in one day especially on your first day. Take your time.

Day 2 - The Big Buddha (Lantau Island)

Get up when you want, get another Tourist Day pass and head to Tung Chung station. On the way back towards the airport on Lantau Island, takes around 30mins, straight off the train to the bottom of the sky rail to the top of the mountain to see the big Buddha... and it is big.

The Gondola up to the top costs ...., if you wanted to spend more and get a glass bottom one you can but to be honest there's not much to see underneath. 25mins to the top where you arrive at a makeshift old style village with shops and restuarants before making your way towards the start of the steps to the Buddha. At the bottom there is a great shrine of 100s of flags. The buddha speaks for itself, definitely well worth the 300 steps to the top, very impressive.

At the bottom of the site you have a number of monestaries which are so interesting. One is the monestary of 10,000 Buddha's. Inside there are 10,000 golden buddhas faces, immaculately shiny. The place is extremely tranquil and calm. Depending on how interesting you find Buddhism and the artitechture will determine how long you spend at the site. We stayed around 2/3hours and then made our way back down.

In the evening head towards .... which has a couple of streets where all the main bars and nightlife is. Don't get your hopes up for a crazy wild night out but it is pretty lively in the evening.

Victoria Peak

Now this part is up to you. You can either go for sunset or sunrise.

I would recommend getting up early and going for sunrise Day 3, but if you'd rather not definitely go for sunset. Sunset is much busier, we need try go up for both but for sunset it was too busy.

No matter if you go up Sunrise or sunset, instead of getting the peak tram up which will set you back 200HK each. Getting your a local red cab or even an Uber. It cost us 58HK to get to the top. You could also walk if you wanted to.

But the view is spectacular. We went up for sunrise on our final day and we were the only ones that apart from 1 local fella who runs up every morning to watch the sunrise.

Day 3 - Hungover and Instagram Spots

Go out and try lots of local food to cure that hangover. Ofcourse as a big city and with the massive western influences in Hong Kong, you can find anything that you'd be craving but there are still a lot of local and more eastern foods to try whilst you are here.

Breakfast - You need to have an egg waffle, if you are anything like me and love PANCAKES you go to go get these. Just like your waffles you'd get at home but "fancy" and you can have whatever you like on them, they cost about 50p, and they can be found on most streets usually with a little lady inside a small vender.

Lunch - One Dim Sum Restaurant

You will absolutely love it. About $20 HKD per dish and you can try so much. We love dim sum and tried so many restaurants.

Instagram spots

Try freshen that face up for the camera as there are lots of quite famous places to go get some edgey photos around Hong Kong to pop your Instagram and feel like you've just come out of an LMFAO music video.

Firstly, Choi Hung Estate, I'm sure you would have seen tonnes of photos, videos, adverts that were shot at this location even if you have heard of the name. The estate is famous for its multi-coloured levels of apartments and in the middle of the court yard is a extremely vibrant basketball court. Take any photo here and it looks like you are on a photo shoot for any independent clothing brand in the world. Choi Hung Estate is pretty easy to get to. You can see it on the Metro map just past the ladies market.

Next, another photo that I'm sure if you follow any big traveller instagramer like Doyoutravel or mikevisuals or sam_kolder, you would have seen photos from here. Montane mansion at Quarry Bay, again pretty easy to get to although a bit further out of the town. Here you have a dramatic quadrant of typical Hong Kong apartment blocks that go miles into the air, also named "the monster building". To get the best angle you got to climd up on the concrete blocks in the middle of the courtyard.

Then obviously you have the famous neon lights of HK, the best places to get that vibrant photo firstly is ofcourse at night, and then head to Tung Choi street or Jordan Road. You better hurry as apparently all these shops are changing to LED lights so the photos won't be as bright. On your camera, go for the low light settings, use a tripod so your camera is as stable as possible and increase your shutter speed to let as much light in as possible.