Batgung

Excellent Quick Tourist Guide, Mr Tall. Future visitors can no longer expect me to do in person what you've done online. This will save me time and money - and health of mind!

My wife and I only discovered Ocean Park after our daugher turned two, and have since bought ourselves season tickets and received more than their value in return during the last six months. The cable car ride and aquarium alone are worth the price of admission, but my daughter would add the butterfly house, goldfish complex, tortoise and fish feeding station and merry-go-round. Definitely worth visiting, especially in small doses, with either little or big people.

I agree with you that Temple Street is also worth a visit. I worked in an office on the corner of Nathan Road and Public Square Street for several years; i.e., we overlooked the Tin Hau Temple (where Temple and Public Square Streets meet). The temple was renovated about a year ago and so it's now quite a sight. Workmen gave it a new roof and the whole area was cleaned up, including the park where triads run illegal gambling games. Having lunch on the second floor of the Mido Cafe (on the other corner of Temple and Public Square Street) is an ideal location to watch them in action. A friend and I used to wander over to the park after lunch sometimes to watch the gambling, but I never had a clue what was happening except that guys in shiny suits held lots of money and old unemployed guys in singlets and baggy shorts didn't. One gambling game involved an intricately patterned cloth - about the size of a picnic blanket - on the ground around which everyone squatted. People gambled on something but whatever was going on was a complete mystery to me.

The Mido Cafe is one of the last old style Hong Kong cafes in the area. It's certainly not flash, but it's very spacious for Hong Kong and in winter and spring they open the upstairs windows and you can feel for a short while that you've retreated into a part of the SAR that's almost disappeared. One word of advice if you visit: watch your head going up the stairs if you're over about 5' 3"! Don't sit down at the bottom. The elderly staff (I'm sure no one under 65 works there) will point up the stairs anyway, so just do as they say. They have an English menu. Serving sizes on meals like the pork chop and rice are enormous. Take a seat at the window and watch a Hong Kong rather at odds with Central slip by.

A New Zealander spent a few months several years ago photographing the old place but was only given permission to do so after he agreed not to show any faces in his photos because a fairly high number of regulars didn't want them shown in public (and not because they're bashful about their good deeds...)

The temple, so I'm told, is home to a tiger spirit (and there are tiger shrines inside). When it was reopened after renovations people set up stalls and sold pieces of raw meat with red dye (sauce?) on it for people to offer up as gifts. Apparently the tiger eats your bad luck. I thought that was a good thing until somebody told me that it also dispenses it as well, so you have a 50/50 chance of leaving with somebody else's bad luck! I was also put off buying a piece a meat when I realised that the triads seemed to have taken over even that aspect of temple life, with young tatooed women and - again - guys in shiny black suits overseeing proceedings.

And, as you mention, the area abounds in street walkers. Many of them are from the mainland, and during the day they service the mainly older guys who gamble and hang around the park. If you sit in the Mido you'll see them haggling over prices on the corner. The numbers on the street around lunch time definitely increased over the years I worked there, and by the time I moved up to Kowloon Tong last year I was being propositioned if I walked along there to go and have lunch (a reflection of the economic downturn and increased competition, I'm sure). At night it gets even more feral with the porno VCD and mag guys setting up and propositioning anyone who looks like they've got $20 in their back pocket. It was here that I discovered the Hong Kong interest in things Japanese when I was offered a porn magazine called [i]Wasabi[/i]. Obscure porn - so I'm told, ahem - can be found upstairs. Go there if you dare, but don't blame me when you're caught up in the ensuing raid.