A man looks out from the promenade across Victoria Harbour, where a lone ferry cuts through the water against the hazy concrete jungle of Hong Kong Island.
I’ve always prided myself on having a great sense of direction. I can easily navigate a place just after visiting it once, read an actual paper map, and masterfully follow Google and Apple Maps (AMap and Baidu Maps, too). Once, I found my way to my sister’s apartment in a country and city I’d never been to, at midnight, with zero internet, armed with nothing but the numbers of the S-Bahn lines and a photo of her building. It took three train transfers during the final schedule of the night and a very quiet walk around her very dark and very wide neighborhood to get there. Did I mention her apartment was also hidden by a wall of trees and only accessible via a small set of stairs no one told me about? So yeah, I was extremely confident in my navigation and survival skills.
Until I visited Hong Kong.
The city is like a giant, horizontal and vertical maze—a dizzying labyrinth of hidden passages, sudden dead ends, underpasses, overpasses, all kinds of passes. It was a lot to take in. The place moved as quickly as its frantic crowd, swiftly overtaking anyone standing in their way. The sight was both overwhelming and mesmerizing; a bustling energy so beautifully organized that it was almost cinematic.
However, that awe quickly evaporated when I found myself circling the same block over and over again, desperately trying to find my way back to HKIA for my flight that was leaving in less than three hours. The sun was still up when I first set out for the airport; by the time I broke free, the sun was already making its exit. During that distressing hour inside the loop, I stumbled into random bus depots and sketchy building entrances that seemed entirely off-limits for civilians like me. At one point, I was constantly coughing as I accidentally walked into a dreary smoking area filled with people who looked completely defeated—a look I knew I’d be mirroring if I failed to find my way back soon.
After a little over an hour, the city finally loosened its grip on me and I reached the airport just in time for my flight. To this day, I do not know how it happened, but I got out—and that’s all that matters.
On my following visits to Hong Kong, I gradually learned to speak its language. I guess getting hopelessly lost there is some sort of a rite of passage. When I told my friends about it, turns out they’d also all found themselves a bit dazed by HK’s maze at some point.
Regardless, the city is simply too beautiful to ignore. Here are a few of my favorites that I captured with my Fujifilm X-T5 paired with a Fujinon 23mm f/2.0 lens while exploring (and getting lost) in the city.
A thick fog rolls over the towering skyscrapers of Hong Kong from the vantage point of Victoria Peak.A man walks under a traditional bamboo scaffolding on a sidewalk in Tsim Sha Tsui.An iconic red and silver taxi passes by in Central.A line of the traditional red taxis waiting beneath a fading neon hotel sign along residential blocks.A woman crosses the narrow street of a commercial district.A taxi navigating the intersection of a dense residential and commercial street.A woman carrying a dog walks past a storefront with chaotic advertisements and colorful art.A pedestrian walks past a dense market stall lined with brightly colored bouquets.A man walks past the long electronic stock ticker on the glass façade of Exchange Square.Light trails streak down a wet overpass as nightfall settles over the corporate architecture of central.
