Chinese New Year was this Saturday and we had a week off so we celebrated it the most tourist-y ways possible. One of the major events was the Flower Market. There are two main locations, Mongkok and Causeway Bay. I only went to the Mongkok one and it was crazy. It was located in Fa Hui Park and there were vendors selling stuff from traditional candy to giant stuffed animals to the expected flowers. The Flower Market is open several days leading up to Chinese New Year but it’s closed on the day itself.
Just casually posing with a stuffed fish
The next item on the itinerary was a parade through Tsim Sha Tsui on Chinese New Year starting from the Cultural Centre through Canton Road and Nathan Road. We went there an hour before it was supposed to start and we were barely able to get a good spot to view the parade especially when one of your friends is only 5’1″. xD I thought it was kind of disappointing. I was expecting more Chinese music and dragon dancing unfortunately. It felt more like a regular New Year’s parade than a Chinese one. We also saw a fight break out so that was interesting.
After the parade was fireworks on Sunday. Before the show started, we had Michelin Star recommended eggettes and they were delicious. The venue to watch the fireworks was so packed and we could barely see anything because of the architecture of the building. We basically missed the upper half of the fireworks but it was still fun. If I were to come back to Hong Kong again for Chinese New Year, I would probably just watch it from TV to be honest.
To conclude our Chinese New Year celebrations, we went to the Sik Sik Yuen Wong Tai Sin Temple. I didn’t think I would encounter an even bigger crowd than we have but we did. There were people and incense everywhere. The temple itself was breathtaking though. One thing I really like about Hong Kong is the unexpected green spaces right in the middle of the city. The temple had pagodas everywhere and they even had their own self sustaining ecosystem for koi fishes and turtles. There was also several waterfalls but we were only able to see one of them since the paths leading to the other ones were blocked off.
The air was filled with smoke from the incense