Hong Kong Shopping – Part 2 – Street Shopping & Markets

Today it’s all about Street Shopping & Markets in Hong Kong! The street shopping and markets were in some ways, my favourite part of Hong Kong.

Street Shopping & Markets

Hong Kong Island

On Hong Kong Island we checked out the Lanes (Li Yuen Street East and Li Yuen Street West ), which are two small lanes with Markets in the middle and tiny little stores along the sides, which is open daily. There were some cute shoes here for around the $10-$15AUD mark (mostly patent and gladiator sandals), but I for one was disappointed in the range overall – I feel like I saw the same 20 pairs of shoes, over and over. Do also keep in mind, that your feet will be swollen when shoe shopping – luckily I stocked up on a heap of heel inserts at Sasa!. The clothing here was nothing to write home about – lots of sequinned t-shirts and baby doll tops, but for Hello Kitty or Disney Princess Paraphernalia you needed look no further. Want a Hello Kitty toilet seat? Done. Big paint tubes that act as a tissue dispenser. Come here. There was also lots of cute cheap jewellery, underwear, bags and the usual tourist market stuff. Not an essential visit if you’re planning on hitting the Temple Street or Ladies Market, but fun all the same.

Our favourite shop was one we randomly stumbled upon after visiting the Man Mo Temple . I can’t for the life of me remember the name of it, but I do remember the address (Its on the corner of Hollywood Rd and Peel St). It was just this odd little vintage store and it was seriously my dream vintage store. They had a gorgeous brand new Alexander McQueen dress for $166AUD (cream, lace, it was stunning) oodles of vintage jewellery and sunglasses, kewpie dolls, some gorgeous craft items from up and coming HK designers (I kept eyeing off a pretzel brooch) and my bargain purchase for the trip – a Kate Spade Pencil Case set, in perfect condition, complete with all the authentic packaging for AU$13. I was so excited. This store was everything I’d ever dreamed about in a vintage store. They also had heaps of vintage designer shoes and was just such fun. We managed to spend an hour just playing in here.

Kowloon

On the Kowloon side, we checked out Granville Rd, which was good for clothing stores, as was Fa Yuen St . Fa Yuen St has a market in the middle during the day, and the stores on each side of the lane were mostly clothing export stores – so they basically get the factory over-runs in big bins and you dig through and see what you can find. Most of the clothing here is pretty casual though, think GAP t-shirts, Country Road hooded zip jumpers and the like, but it IS cheap. The aforementioned Country Road hoody was tagged at $AU13, which means with bargaining you could have paid as little as $5. Dotted in between were a few fashion stores, but Fa Yuen was predominantly export stores and shoe stores, and is where I would recommend going for shoes. We find probably the best range here, and for an average price of $10 a pair, I was a happy camper.

Other great little finds in Kowloon were a store on Waterloo Rd which sold beautifully made jewellery boxes, ranging from $5AUD-$30AUD. What I really loved about these jewellery boxes was that they all came with the proper velvet trays inside, so you could line up your watch collection up just like in the jewellery store. We had to keep our luggage limit in mind here, so I didn’t go too crazy (ok, I bought three!) but the store also wrapped them up nice and safe and they have arrived home in one piece.

Marketwise, the two we hit was the famous Ladies Market and Temple St Market . Both pretty much sold similar stuff, there was lots of jewellery, tourist clothing, electronics and the like, although Temple Street tended to be a bit more organised (like the one section devoted to ‘adult’ products. That was pretty funny.) At Temple St you can also choose from a dizzying array of fortune tellers to hear about your future (undoubtedly fabulous. My favourite part was where I asked the fortune teller if children were in my future (at my sisters request) and he replied ‘Yes, you are capable of having children’ – yes, I have noticed I am a female!) Temple Street Market was slightly more fun, as it had lots of nice food places and music, but both are worth checking out. Dotted around Temple Street was groups of different types of stores (although I can’t give you specific locations as I was hopelessly lost by this point) – such as Hair care Supplies (the one place I managed to find Dry Shampoo) so do take the time to explore the streets surrounding the markets because you never know what you will stumble upon. I’ve got no photos of the markets because my camera does not play nice at night sadly.

Sasa & Bonjour

I’m giving these stores there own special mention since they were so much fun. Both are sort of like Priceline, but with more upmarket cosmetics (think Clinique, Chanel and the like). You can’t walk two blocks without tripping over one of the other and ‘falling’ inside and spending a few dollars. My personal favourite part was the little sample pots they sold of various high end cosmetics for around $2-$5AUD – think SK-II, Dior and the like, which you could then try out a wide variety of different cosmetics for not a lot (and I am the master at making my sample pots last). Other notable mentions are the perfume (I didn’t look in-depth at this, since thanks to Strawberrynet I’m likely to last any worldwide perfume shortage easily), random face masks for $.90cents AUD), make up applicators for $2….really the list goes on. Its fun to go in, fill up a basket and be charged around $30AUD depending on what you buy!