Mid-range · 6-hour walk · Hong Kong
Kowloon's markets in six hours
Temple Street, the jade sellers, Mong Kok's stalls and the flower and bird gardens at the top.
Everything in the three-hour route is on Hong Kong Island, which is banks and hills. Kowloon is the other city — flatter, denser, louder and where most people actually live. This route is a straight line north through four markets that each sell one thing, ending at a garden where men bring their songbirds out in bamboo cages. Do the second half in the evening; Temple Street is a night market and half-dead by day.
The route, stop by stop
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Tin Hau Temple Yau Ma Tei
Dedicated to the sea goddess, with a banyan-shaded square outside where old men play chess and fortune tellers set up after dark.
20 min here Walk here → -
Jade Market
Four hundred stalls under one roof. Unless you know jade you will not get a bargain, but it is worth seeing the scale of the trade.
25 min here Walk here → -
Temple Street Night Market
Opens properly at six. Clothes, hardware, palmistry and dai pai dong seafood at the Jordan end, which is the part to eat in.
45 min here Walk here → -
Ladies' Market
A kilometre of stalls on Tung Choi Street. The name is historical; it now sells everything. Bargaining starts at about a third of the asking price.
45 min here Walk here → -
Flower Market Road
A whole street of florists and nurseries supplying the city, busiest before Lunar New Year and fragrant year-round.
30 min here Walk here → -
Yuen Po Street Bird Garden
Songbird keeping is an old Hong Kong habit and this is where it happens — carved bamboo cages, live crickets sold as feed, and men who have brought the same bird here for decades.
30 min here Walk here →
More in Hong Kong
Every walking route in Hong Kong, or the full Hong Kong guide for where to stay and what a day costs.