Wan Chai, Hong Kong Island

I’ve lived in Wan Chai for nearly two years now and although I’m planning to move location to somewhere else in Hong Kong at the end of 2023, I still enjoy exploring the neighbourhood and spending my weekends here. It’s a lively, convenient and actually quite a pretty place to live. (You just have to know the right places and areas to go.) It’s a perfect blend of old and new.

There is so much to do (and eat!) in Wan Chai so I want to gather some of my favourite activity ideas and share them with you in this blog post. This post will be showcasing a regular weekend day in Wan Chai.

Spend a day in Wan Chai with me!

Breakfast

Capital Cafe is hands down my favourite breakfast place in Hong Kong! (Not only just Wan Chai!)

The Hong Kong style, fluffy scrambled eggs and buttery toast is just UGH, so good. The beans. The hash brown. The corn. Just everything. The restaurant is also super cool. It has posters of canto pop singers and actors all around and has a retro feel to it.

Wander around and explore the pretty scenary

There are some famous “Instagram spots” in Wan Chai that include The Blue House and Lee Tung Avenue.

The Blue House is quite a historic building and of course, the walls are blue. It really stands out against the other buildings in the area and contrasts against the yellow building right next to it. Hello, photo opportunity!

Lee Tung Avenue is a walkway in Wan Chai that has cute cafe’s, a traditional sweet shop, a gorgeous ice cream parlour and lots of unique shops. It’s quite a fancy and expensive area, but most people pay it a visit for the beautiful decoration. It looks amazing all year round but during special occasions and festivals such as Christmas or Chinese New Year, they really go above and beyond. It’s definitely a must-visit for Wan Chai.

Wan Chai Market

Wan Chai’s market is also quite a popular place to go. I paid the market a visit after exploring the scenery around Wan Chai. There’s quite a few different market streets that sell a mixture of things from clothes, to food, to random household objects. If you wander around Wan Chai, you’re bound to stumble upon one of the markets.

Lunch time in hong kong

Next on my daily agenda, lunch! YAY. One of my favourite places to grab lunch in Wan Chai is a classic Char Sui restaurant called Chukfo Taipan Restaurant. It has lots of different Chinese BBQ meats and honestly, it’s the best BBQ Pork I’ve had. That’s a big statement. This comfort food hits just right.

Victoria Harbour promenade – Wan Chai Harbourfront

After lunch, I love walking off my food by strolling along the harbour. This is one of my favourite places in Hong Kong. It always makes me feel calm and it’s a good way to unwind after a long week. (Trust me, it’s good to slow down in Hong Kong every once in a while.)

Here you can find the Wan Chai ferry pier which is so handy to get around, especially when you take the Star Ferry to TST.

The decoration around the harbourfront is so pretty and you can also rent a duck paddle boat. So cute!

There’s even an old style ice cream van to get yourself a lil’ treat. 10/10 would recommend.

Shopping

After spending time at the harbour, I did a little bit of shopping. In Wan Chai there’s lots of budget friendly shops that sell pretty much anything and everything.

There’s a lot of high street clothes shops. Recently, Maple is one of my favourite’s for buying Korean style clothes. The computer centre is also a very famous shopping mall in Hong Kong to get anything tech related. (For decent prices too!)

Dinner

As I said before, there is so much choice when it comes to food in Wan Chai. As there’s three meals in a day (or at least two) I like to try and find a balance between Western and Chinese. But for this post, I decided to share one of a popular favourites, Samsen! This Thai restaurant is so yummy. You can’t book a table and there’s almost always a long queue outside (classic HK) but I’d say it was worth it. This is definitely a treat meal – and one I’d recommend!

I hope this blog post was a good insight to Wan Chai. I’ll definitely do a part 2 in the future because there’s so much more to cover! You can find more Hong Kong content over on my Instagram or you can keep up to date with my blog posts by checking out my previous post.

Claire x