Skip to Content

Shop and relax in Hong Kong with UnionPay

Hong Kong is a favourite destination for many Singaporeans who love that it’s just 4 hours away by plane, has great food and a vibrant cosmopolitan city vibe. I’ve always been on the fence about Hong Kong, but when UnionPay invited me up to Hong Kong to see some of the typical tourist sights and check out the shopping there, I was curious to see if it would let me see a different side of Hong Kong and maybe change my mind about the place.

Hong Kong Street Art Harbour City Invader Flag

Looking out over Victoria Bay

I thought this trip was going to mainly focus on shopping, and we did spend a lot more time than I normally would wandering around shopping malls on my own travels, but it did show me what made Hong Kong such a shopping paradise because both Harbour City and Times Square were absolutely popping with visitors and activity every single day, even on typically slow weekdays where malls in Singapore tend to be quite quiet. We ate until we were bursting every day and I even found a whole lot of street art (within the mall!) to my surprise.

Also, we got to check out some of the typical Hong Kong must-see sights that I’d never gotten around to seeing. I last visited Hong Kong in 2015 and spent most of that trip alternating between artsy Art Month activities and heading to the outlying islands, and the very first time I visited was when I was pretty young and I barely remember any of that visit. I like seeing less touristy sights, but also suffer a bit of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) and wonder if I’d been missing out all this time. We got to go to Lantau Island and up the Peak to Madame Tussauds so I can tell you definitely for sure what’s worth seeing or not.

Hong Kong Harbour City Paper Moon View

A toast to Hong Kong outside Paper Moon

So keep on reading for more of my thoughts on that, but first, a little bit about the people who brought me up to Hong Kong:

About UnionPay

I’ll be honest – all I knew about UnionPay before this trip is that it is a Chinese payment brand. I was surprised to find out that not only is it a global payments network, it is also one of the fastest growing global payment brands in the world today.

In Singapore, 4 partner banks currently offer UnionPay cards – I picked up the UOB card which has a 3-year fee waiver and 2% cashback with no minimum spend. I considered the DBS debit card version which offers overseas ATM fee waivers at some ATMs and NETS Flashpay Integration, and there are also the BOC-Zaobao and ICBC Dual Currency Credit Cards now available.

Hong Kong Madame Tussauds Unionpay

The UOB card is quite pretty and shinyyyy

UnionPay is of course most widely accepted in China, but is quickly gaining momentum in other countries as well, particularly East Asian regions which are popular destinations for Chinese tourists, and they are expanding into South East Asia as well. In Singapore, they’ve sponsored the Great Singapore Sale since 2016, and an increasing number of large and small merchants now accept payment via UnionPay cards.

What I found useful for travellers was U Plan that you can access via the UnionPay International app which consolidates all the various merchant offers. This cross border marketing platform makes it really easy for you to see what deals are available in the country that you are in, and you get some pretty decent promotions like vouchers, cash rebates or discounts. For example, you get 20% off pocket wifi rental from WifiBB which has a booth right outside the arrival hall of Hong Kong International Airport.


Shopping in Hong Kong

Harbour City

Since shopping was the main objective of this trip, and UnionPay brought us to one of the most impressive shopping malls in Hong Kong: Harbour City in Tsim Sha Tsui, the largest mall in Hong Kong located right next to Victoria Harbour and Star Ferry Terminal. It’s practically a destination in itself – it actually consists of several buildings all linked in one interconnected chain so you could easily spend a weekend or so hiding out in here if you are trying to escape the relentlessly hot weather that is summer in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong Harbour City Bear Brick Exhibition Me

We were lucky enough to catch them setting up for this Insta-worthy Bearbrick exhibition happening on the roof of the Ocean Terminal Deck.

We stayed at the Marco Polo Hong Kong [booking.com affiliate link] which is located on the Ocean Terminal Deck end of Harbour City, so you can always swing back to the room for a breather after all that walking. I enjoyed the dinner that we had at their in-house Italian restaurant Cucina – we were full to the point of bursting by that point (so much food tasting on media trips omg) but still made room for their Wagyu beef platter.

Hong Kong Marco Polo Room

Considering this is Hong Kong where space is a premium, the room was quite decently sized!

Hong Kong Marco Polo Cucina Beef

Such good beef at Cucina

The F&B offerings in Harbour City are quite extensive – I got to try the famous local Mak’s wanton soup noodles (I’ve yet to visit the Singapore branch), a hot chocolate at Ralph’s Coffee (did you know Ralph Lauren did F&B? I didn’t – this is their 1st outlet in Asia), the ever-popular American Cheesecake Factory (their 2nd branch in Asia) which had a stream of customers as well as the Italian restaurant Paper Moon that has some pretty impressive views of the harbour and is a great top sunset spot for photographers.

Hong Kong Harbour City Maks Wanton Noodles

Yummy wanton noodles – there are several branches in Hong Kong

Hong Kong Harbour City Ralphs Coffee

this is the perfect hipster IG backdrop

Hong Kong Harbour City Cheesecake Factory Cakes

Cheesecake Factory does serve normal food, but why bother when you have ALL THAT CHEESECAKE to choose from

Hong Kong Harbour City Paper Moon Tasting

They fed us until we were about to explode at Paper Moon. We had an entire table of starters, and then mains, and had to call it quits before dessert came

UnionPay has a summer promo with Harbour City offering redemption of gift cards upon expenditure on the UnionPay card. The shopping mall kindly gifted us with some of these vouchers in an easy-to-use debit card so we could indulge in a little spending spree of our own. I picked up some new hiking boots to replace my super worn out career break pair from Timberland, and also picked up a cute dress from Goods of Desire when I headed to the Airport Express train station.

Invader Street Art in Harbour City

I was also thoroughly distracted by these familiar mosaics on the rooftop of Ocean Deck Terminal. It turns out that the French street artist Invader had installed 18 pieces of artwork all around the mall in an ongoing invasion of Hong Kong.

Hong Kong Street Art Harbour City Invader Emojis

Spot the Invader

In a surprising turn considering most commercial properties would probably have thrown a fit instead, the mall liked the works so much they decided to keep them and even invited the artist to collaboration on a fund raising promotion with them, so if you spot just 3 of his works, post about them on Instagram and make a HK$200 donation to the Hong Kong Blood Cancer Foundation, you can redeem a limited edition Invader print umbrella! Read more it here, but I think it’s such a great collaboration.

Hong Kong Street Art Harbour City Invader Mermaid

Love the cute mermaid

I found 12/18 of his works just wandering around the mall and some of them are in quite unexpected spots, so keep a look out for them when you are shopping! If you want to see more street art in Hong Kong, why not cross the river to Sheung Wan and Central where there are some large murals that you can check out.

Hong Kong Street Art Harbour City Invader Treasure Chest

Like finding treasure

Hong Kong Street Art Harbour City Invader Carpark Entrance

I (INVADER) HARBOUR CITY

Hong Kong Street Art Harbour City Invader Anchor

This anchor pattern was replicated onto the limited edition umbrella


Tourist Attractions in Hong Kong

The last time I was in Hong Kong, I mostly wandered around during their Art Month and checked out some of the outlying islands, but I hardly got to do the typical tourist stuff, so I was curious to see whether I had been missing out all this time.

Lantau Island

I’d visited Cheung Chau and Lamma Island already so I was glad to add Lantau to my list as it had been undergoing some refurbishment back in 2015 so I skipped it then.

Of course we had to ride over to Lantau Island on the famous Ngong Ping 360 cable car, and something really cool: we got to ride in the glass-bottomed Crystal Cabin! There’s something very surreal about seeing the world pass by underfoot as you sail across. The more intrepid can hike over from Tung Cheng to Ngong Ping but that wasn’t happening in this weather.

Hong Kong Lantau Ngong Ping Cable Car View

HKIA in the distance

Hong Kong Lantau Ngong Ping Cable Car Wefie

SG and TH represent! Check out that clear glass floor and the forest we were sailing over in the cable car

Of course once we visited Ngong Ping, I wanted to go check out the Tian Tan Buddha and made the climb up 268 steps to do so. Pretty views from above, but it actually got quite foggy at points so I didn’t hang around for that long. There was a paid museum inside the Buddha which would have let you climb to a higher point, but I decided to skip that and took a brisk walk around the Po Lin Monastery near the foot of the statue instead.

Hong Kong Lantau Tian Tan Buddha

Hello Buddha!

The Peak – Madame Tussauds

I remember coming to The Peak as a child and riding the iconic Peak tram – it was definitely colder then and much foggier – but this time around we took a bus and were gifted with a beautiful clear day up on the Peak. We also got to check out Madame Tussauds Wax Museum – I’d only ever been to Grevins in Seoul, and this is actually fairly similar, with lots of eerily life-like wax figures of famous people past and present, interspersed with fun AR type games to keep things interesting.

Hong Kong Madame Tussauds Figure

That my friends, is actually Madame Tussaud. I always assumed it was a made up name like Haagen Daaz, but nope she’s a real person

I walked through the museum fairly quickly – I’m not enough of a fangirl to really appreciate taking selfies with famous people, but it was interesting because some figurines really captured the likeness, while others seemed quite off. Definitely more fun with friends who like taking ridiculous photos!

Hong Kong Madame Tussauds Unionpay Card

Famous Korean star holding on to my UnionPay card for some product placement. I… can’t actually tell you his name because I don’t remember who he is though I bet you guys all know who this dude is


Final Thoughts

Hong Kong Times Square Looking Up BnW

Buildings and more buildings in Hong Kong. I kinda like the shapes happening here

So that was a bit of a whirlwind trip to Hong Kong, now that I’ve enjoyed some of Hong Kong’s more famous sights and practically eaten and shopped my way through some of it, I can see why Hong Kong is a favourite for many people, because it really is quite easy to navigate and there is a certain energy about the city that I can appreciate even if it isn’t an all-time favourite to visit.

Many thanks again to UnionPay for taking me to Hong Kong, as well as all the partners who were involved in hosting our little group.

This trip to Hong Kong was sponsored by UnionPay. Thanks to UnionPay and their partners.

Kellee @ LifeAdventurers

Monday 6th of August 2018

Hong Kong is one of my all-time favourite places in the world to visit. Even got married there. I always wondered about Union Pay but fortunately for me, I got myself a virtual bank which gives me currency at the live rate but having discounts of Wi-Fi or having a more accepted form of payment around Asia.

Dana Berez

Sunday 5th of August 2018

Looks like you had a fabulous time! Love all the reccomendations!

Jaclynn Seah

Sunday 5th of August 2018

thanks! :)

Nana

Saturday 4th of August 2018

I have never been to Hongkong, just the airport. I think I would get totally lost in this city, I am so bad at big cities :D Cool you got invited, that must have been an interesting experience!

Jaclynn Seah

Sunday 5th of August 2018

I'm very much more a city girl - give me an MRT and I'm good to go. It's always nice to see a different side of places you've visited before!

Nam

Saturday 4th of August 2018

I've always used union pay but didn't realise they are expanding - how lovely!

Jaclynn Seah

Saturday 4th of August 2018

it'll be great when they become more widely accepted globally :)