Showing posts with label Pollution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pollution. Show all posts

Friday, July 25, 2014

Hongkong Lung Cheung Road Lookout - summer versus spring History

Following on from the last post on Hong Kong's air quality, here is a post I had originally put up some time in March of 2013. Actually, it was one of the last posts I wrote on the old blog before pulling the plug. The topic was a famous lookout point very near to where I now live and one reasonably fine day I took the kids up there to see what the view was like.

Okay, I admit the film buff in me was also a bit curious because this spot has supposedly been used many times for film locations and, in fact, the first time I had really heard about it was from reading Dan Thomas� excellent Hong Kong on Film blog. He had identified this place as one of the locations featured in the film Where�s Officer Tuba.

Anyway, despite the very unreliable air quality I figured it was worthwhile highlighting this place. Despite an abundance of tour coaches laid up in the adjoining car park, we had the place to ourselves which leads me to believe a lot of coach drivers use this place to have a kip in between pick-ups.




The picture above shows the view directly south. The building in the near right is the Festival Walk mall � built by Swire but now owned by a Malaysian company called Mapletree. Actually, there's lots to see, but better views during the summer when there is less haze.


Closeup of Festival Walk and Kowloon Tong East Rail station
Lion Rock from Kowloon Tong-side (i.e. no longer a lion)
Sitting out area of the lookout

Now, if you want to get here yourself, the best way is probably to catch the 32M minibus from outside Shek Kip Mei MTR exit A. Alight at the terminus on Lung Ping Road and cross Lung Cheung Road next to Beacon Heights using the pedestrian flyover. Once on the south side of Lung Cheung Road (next to the reservoir recreation ground) just follow the not-so-direct-but-singular path up the side of the road. It takes you under the highway�s sliproad before dumping you on the right side of the road for walking on to the lookout.

For those of you interested in seeing how the view is a lot better in the summer time, here are some more pictures.



 Fei Ngo Shan aka Kowloon Peak
 One Island East in the far distance


 A few icons: Langham Tower, BOC HQ, tip of the IFC2
 Kai Tak airstrip hidden behind the new high rises
Mount Beacon lower left, City U residences on the right

Hongkong Hong Kong Air Quality History

Here's a quickie for those with any doubt about the varying air quality that you can encounter here in Hong Kong. For purposes of comparison I took a couple of snaps out of my window a while back at different times of the year and although it's a little bit of a generalisation, they do show the differing quality of air at different times of the year.

The first photo was taken at the end of the summertime - in early September - when the local winds are still blowing in from the southeast bringing in lots of fresh air in from the general direction of the Pacific ocean.


Pretty good eh? Nice clear skies and a lovely clear view all the way over to the Peak viewing tower 8 kilometres away (just to the right of the ICC). This is pretty much the standard view I get during the summertime from about the end of May to the start of September. It's great and puts me in the best of moods :-). However, summertime isn't always quite as blissful as this and various factors - most notably the advance of typhoons - tend to stir up the skies a bit. When a typhoon is close by (and by close I mean it may actually be 1000km away) it tends to swing all the bad air over from China and the smog can get quite bad.

But in general, if you want clear skies and reasonably fresh air (we can never get rid of the local vehicle pollution, after all) then the summertime is the best time. You just have to be able to put up with the heat and perhaps worse, the humidity. Compare it to the very typical non-summer scene below.

Yup, pretty grim! This is the same view, all I have done is zoom in a bit otherwise I wasn't sure I could get the details. When I say non-summer days I mean anytime between around October all the way through to April. Again, I am simplifying things a little bit but the fact remains that outside of the summertime, the chance of your day looking like this is quite high :-(