108 Thoughts I Had When I Was At The Peak

Shirley Lee
17 min readNov 16, 2023
Photo by Krzysztof Kotkowicz on Unsplash

The Peak. The place that has the best view of buildings and the best night view in the world — or so I was told since I was a child. I had always known it as a tourist trap — they’ve got a Madame Tussaud Wax Museum there; it seems pretty obvious. Although I have lived in Hong Kong for 28 years, I had never actually been to the place.

Whoever was in charge of naming this place was not creative with the naming either — even in Chinese, the name of the place literally translates to “hilltop” (山頂), which sounds pretty unfun.

Other places in Hong Kong that offer a nice view also have pretty unfun names, but they are all easier to reach compared to the Peak. I have even had the chance to visit those places multiple times for free. Not so easy when it comes to the Peak — the roads that lead up to it are so limited and narrow that they had to build a special tram just for getting people up and down this specific hill. It’s hard to get there and even harder to leave. Such a setup makes The Peak a perfect corner to siphon money out of tourist’s wallets.

All textbooks introducing The Peak always use a photo of the watermelon-shaped Peak Tower, which looks like an architectural mistake.

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