As an informative, responsible blogger I want to make sure all potential visitors to Sai Kung Town and Sai Kung Country Park know what it's really like.
Essential Information for Visitors
If you are an overseas visitor to Hong Kong or a long time resident and considering a trip to Sai Kung, then you need to be aware of the following:-
The Shops...
Sai Kung has no shops of any interest unless you want BBQ items. Sometimes, and only for short periods, a creative person comes along and spends money on fancy shop fittings and interesting stock; such as speciality chocolate (for humans not dogs), New World wine, beautifully scented candles, original art or hand crafted furniture. These are usually doomed to failure and in the blink of an eye disappear again. They are subsequently gutted, presumably to help with the landfill crisis. Once that happens no one can remember what the hell was there before when it returns to a concrete shell with random concrete gap in the street.
Once gutted these well appointed shops are then replaced by shops who don't bother with actual fittings but prefer to have piles of tat for sale, sometimes no attempt at display at all, certainly no name or customer service training.
One explanation of such open-and-quickly-closed shops is usually greedy landlords who see a business doing well, put the rent up to a painfully high rate, forcing the business to move somewhere else or close down completely. Another explanation is that no market research was carried out to see if the residents or visitors to Sai Kung have an interest in a particular product. The other is that visitors to Sai Kung never actually spend any money and merely come to hog the pavements. I suspect it's a mixture of all these things.
I am constantly perplexed by the amount of visitors filling the pavements on weekends and pubic holidays. Perhaps they merely stroll around, presumably enjoying pavement life, and never buying anything as their their dollar makes little difference. Businesses still disappear in the night.
Restaurants and Coffee Shops
A similar fate happens to restaurants and hot beverage vendors. They come and go all the time in the same way as the shops. Money is spent on new decor, nice tables and chairs. Menus are printed and ingredients are brought in from far away exotic places. They then disappear and a sterile white tiled atmosphereless noodle place appears and subsequently seems to do a roaring trade throwing food at their customers who get to sit on plastic stools at formica tables with toilet rolls provided instead of napkins.
Obviously, this never happens to the big corporate coffee vendors or toiletry/pharmacies or the shop that opens in the morning and stays open til way past everyone's bed time OK! They continue to trade and pay their rent to their greedy landlord who might actually be one in the same person.
Alfresco is a crime
Even though eating outside in nice weather is extremely popular all over the world and is in fact a particular attraction to many tourists in, say, Paris or Florence, it is not allowed in Sai Kung. Well, when I say it's not allowed, it is allowed some of the time and outside some of the eating places but depending upon the mood of the Fun Police, sometimes it is totally forbidden and tickets and fines can be issued. Again I am perplexed by this pavement activity and why it is a heinous crime.
Sai Kung Specilizes in Big Queues
If it's queuing you're after then Sai Kung is the place for you. You have a myriad of choices when it comes to queuing. Queues to leave Sai Kung are particularly popular especially on Sunday afternoons or throughout the day on public holidays. If you really enjoy a good wait then come to Sai Kung during a hot weather warning. They really are the best days when the red or green taxi queue, the 101 mini bus to Hang Hau MTR or 1A mini bus to Choi Hung MTR queue are absolutely massive and generally shadeless.
If queuing is your thing you could also join the queue coming into Sai Kung down Hiram's Highway in your own car. During the hours spent in the queue you can be happy in the fact that you are entering the 'Back Garden of Hong Kong' where there are green hills and plenty of hiking trails. While you sit in your air conditioned car, moving at a snail's pace, gradually getting nearer and nearer your Country Park destination, you can contemplate your carbon footprint, disposable lunch boxes and plastic table cloths, which you can conveniently leave behind in the Country Park rather than take them home with you. Be aware that you won't be able to find a parking place in the tiny car park at the gates of Sai Kung Country Park any way and will probably have to illegally park on the pavement and end up with a ticket.
My theory is, therefore, that visitors to Sai Kung don't have time to go shopping because they are either in a car in a queue or they are standing in a queue waiting to leave Sai Kung and are afraid to leave the queue to go shopping fear of losing their place in the queue.
It's all about the money
Having lived in Sai Kung for almost 15 years I have become deaf to the wild talk of a new road which will ease the traffic jams. I no longer listen or read or sign anything to do with road widening, cycle lanes or permits for residents because I just don't believe anything will be improved. Apart from the constant building of more and more residential buildings, the powers that be have no incentive to improve or ease the congestion on the roads or on the pavements because they don't increase in value and cannot to be sold for a massive profit.
It has to stop
Something has to change. Short of building a large wall which can be seen from space (or has that been done before?) to keep out the marauding hordes, I can only suggest the residents of Sai Kung start putting the word out that it is a horrible place to go. It is full of snakes, mosquitoes, dangerous cows and wild dogs.
For the sake of your health and well being I urge you to stay away.
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