Causeway Bay is the commercial engine of Hong Kong Island. Times Square, SOGO, Hysan Place, and Fashion Walk create a density of retail that rivals any shopping district in Asia, but what makes Causeway Bay interesting beyond its malls is the Japanese food scene that has grown up around it — a concentration of restaurants, izakayas, and specialty food shops that reflect decades of Japanese business presence in Hong Kong and produce some of the best Japanese cooking outside Japan.
The Noon Day Gun is one of Hong Kong’s most charmingly anachronistic traditions. A 160-year-old cannon is fired at exactly noon every day from a small garden behind the Excelsior Hotel, facing the Typhoon Shelter. The ceremony takes three minutes, is completely free, and is one of those stubborn colonial-era rituals that Hong Kong has never quite gotten around to abolishing.
Victoria Park occupies 19 hectares of the Causeway Bay waterfront — Hong Kong’s largest urban park, complete with sports facilities, tennis courts, a swimming pool complex (HKD 19 entry), and enough open lawn to remember that open space exists. On weekday mornings, groups practise tai chi on the eastern side in a scene that unfolds in slow motion while the city accelerates around them.
Happy Valley Racecourse sits in a natural bowl in the hills immediately behind Causeway Bay, surrounded on all sides by high-rise apartments whose residents look directly down onto the track. Wednesday evening race meets from September to June are one of Hong Kong’s great social occasions — the public stand is free, the betting windows accept minimum HKD 10 wagers, and the atmosphere of several thousand people watching thoroughbreds under floodlights while towers of apartments glitter overhead is utterly unique.