Hong Kong Day 2: Sights, Sounds, & The Symphony of Lights

A trip to Hong Kong will not be quite complete without getting a glimpse of The Symphony of Lights, a multimedia show on Victoria Harbour that has already been dubbed as the “World’s Largest Permanent Light and Sound Show” by the Guinness World Records. It’s at the heart of almost every photo set there is of Hong Kong, and is the definitive moment to photograph the Hong Kong skyline.

The Symphony of Lights can be viewed on the waterfront of both the Kowloon side and the Hong Kong island side of Victoria Harbour. But we’ve already determined when we were researching our itinerary that the view from the Kowloon side is better, owing to the fact that the Hong Kong island side has taller and more number of skyscrapers. Another option to view the show is getting on a boat and going on a harbor cruise, but we found the ride too long and we didn’t want to spend money for something we could see for free on land.

But if ever I’m going on a harbor cruise next time, I’d really rather go all the way and do it on board one of Hong Kong’s last remaining traditional junk boats called the duk ling.

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The Symphony of Lights is shown every night at 8 pm. At the Kowloon side, the best place to view it is along the Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront promenade between The Avenue of Stars and the Hong Kong Cultural Centre. We arrived there at a quarter to 8 and it was already getting quite full. Good thing we were still able to squeeze in a small gap in the crowd and got a front view of the harbor.

It was so nice to see the buildings of Hong Kong all lit up in different colored lights.

Finally, the show started. We could hear snippets of the English narration of the show through the loudspeakers scattered along the promenade but there were just too many people and the sound not that loud to be heard distinctly. Of course, everyone had their still and video cameras set up to capture the lights and sounds of the show.

For me, it was just a good thing to be one with the crowd in appreciating the show (well, aside from me also taking lots of pictures). It lasted only fifteen minutes, but that was just enough for me to get as much pictures as I can, and to appreciate the beauty of Hong Kong’s harbor and the splendor of Hong Kong in general—about HK$44 million dollars to set up the whole show plus the fact that they produce The Symphony of Lights with no admission fees everyday was simply amazing! I did kind of feel sad that here in Manila, we also have a city by the harbor and yet we can’t stage anything quite so similar.

Anyway, after the show, there was now enough space to take pictures with the harbor and the skyline in the background 😉

After the show, we didn’t see the Avenue of Stars anymore. It features plaques for honored movie celebrities and showcases milestones and exhibits about the Hong Kong film industry. We were already tired and we just couldn’t brave going against and through the thick crowd along the promenade to get there. So we went further along the waterfront in the opposite direction (towards the Star Ferry pier), and we saw that there were so many stalls lined up of professional photographers who offered to take our photo with the quintessential Hong Kong skyline in the background (an 8R photo costs about HK$100 and there are cheaper options as the photo sizes go lower). We played the tourists and couldn’t resist getting our photos taken as one of our Hong Kong souvenirs. 🙂 Cheers!