It Goes Up (and Down)

For me, almost everything in Hong Kong is based off of it's proximity to the ESCALATOR. In a city that is built on the side of what seems like a mountain, the escalator is a savior for commuters and travelers alike. I don't know of any other city in the world that has built a public escalator right up the middle of the road.

According to the Hong Kong Tourism Board the escalator is more than 800 meters long and is the world's longest covered escalator! To take the entire escalator up or down takes about 20 minutes. With only one lane of traffic, the escalator runs down hill from 6am to 10am every morning so that the people living above the Central District can have a speedy trip down to work. At 10am everything reverses for the rest of the day. In my daily routine of grocery shopping, I try to time my trips around 9:45 so that I can take the escalator down to the good grocery store and back up once I've bought all my stuff. Can you say lazy!

And even though the escalator is free, the city tries to encourage its use over buses or other forms of transportation so much, they will actually pay you to take it. All you have to do is swipe your transit pass at a card reader near on the escalator and they will give you HK$2 (equivalent to about US$0.30). Not a great hourly rate, but if you rode the escalator enough you might just make some spending money.



Photo 1: Don't trip. Although I haven't seen it written anywhere yet, this seems like the first rule of Hong Kong life. In this picture, I am looking down from a local grocery store which sits well above our apartment towards the heart of Hong Kong's Central district.



Photo 2: This picture gives you an idea of the height of the city and how often the escalator levels out at each street it crosses.



Photo 3: As the escalator winds its way up the side of Hong Kong, it darts back and forth above the steets. Here you see one of the interchanges in the escalator as it jogs east one block at a corner near our apartment. Also visible in the picture is the Pacific Coffee shop where Eric and I often get fresh squeezed orange or guava juice.