New Territories

Location: New Territories, Hong Kong

Lonely Planet recommended visiting a museum in the New Territories. I think it was the Hong Kong Heritage Museum.

This was before smartphones, and the only information Lonely Planet provided about how to get there was which bus to take and which stop to get off at. I assumed that would be enough. Otherwise, it seems like they would have written more.

The bus ride was half an hour long. It started out in downtown Kowloon, which is as built-up as Manhattan. As we entered the New Territories, the landscape transitioned to huge apartment buildings made of concrete. They had become stained with age. Each building had hundreds of old air conditioners and clothes lines hanging off its sides. Towards the end of the route, I started to see large undeveloped fields of grass and weeds. I felt like I was very far from what I thought of as "Hong Kong."

The recommended stop turned out to be a small bus depot in the middle of nowhere. It was on a road that was pretty wide but had no traffic. The road had run-down, abandoned storefronts every few hundred feet. Opposite the depot, it looked like a large overpass had been demolished and then forgotten. Enormous pieces of concrete and rebar littered the ground. It was all very post-apocalyptic.

There was nobody at the depot to ask for directions. I figured that if I walked along the road far enough, I would get into town and the museum would be easy to find. I picked a direction at random and started walking. After 15 minutes, I had gotten nowhere. I must have picked the wrong direction. I walked back to the depot and continued on in the other direction for another 15 minutes. Nothing, other than the aforementioned abandoned storefronts.

I couldn't think of anything to do, other than walk back to the depot and take a bus back to my hostel.

When I got back to the depot, there were a handful of employees (bus drivers?) milling around. I asked them if they knew where the museum was. None of them spoke a word of English.

The depot didn't have any benches. There were three bays for busses, essentially parking spots, and two of them were empty. I walked over to an empty one, sat down on the curb, and waited for the bus back to Kowloon. I was basically sitting on the ground. I felt defeated.

After a few minutes, one of the workers approached me and mimed that I should wait at the depot instead of getting on a bus. Okay. I didn't know what was going on, but 20 minutes after that, they came back with a man who could speak some English. They had clearly pulled him away from his job in town just so that he could translate for me. I felt horrible that they had gone to so much effort, and all I wanted was directions to a museum. I hoped they wouldn't be angry when they found out.

Nobody knew where the museum was, but they discussed it for a minute or two and told me that I should walk 20 minutes in a particular direction to get to town. I had already tried walking 15 minutes in that direction. Shame that I didn't keep going for a few more minutes.

Once I got into town, there were signs to the museum. I found it no problem. It seemed shiny, new, and empty. I wondered how many tourists had tried to find it and failed. I spent a few hours there. There was a great exhibit about the Hong Kong music industry in the twentieth century and how every type of Western music had been popular in Hong Kong, but with Hong Kong musicians. There was a Hong Kong equivalent of the Beach Boys, there was a Hong Kong equivalent of Elvis, etc. etc.

I'm sure that the museum gets a lot more traffic now that people have smartphones.