Lan Kwai Fong – Best Place for beer, wine and fun

Review and Rating on Lan Kwai Fong

Ask any locals for a nightlife recommendation. 9 out of 10 answers you will hear ‘Lan Kwai Fong’, the little L-shaped ally in Central. Lan Kwai Fong is a little expatriate area inside Hong Kong, home to over 90 restaurants, bars and clubs, packed with foreigners, locals and celebrities especially on Friday nights and weekends. On Halloween, Christmas, New Year and Lan Kwai Fong’s beer festival the crowd gets to a maximum of both persons per square meter and laughter per drink.

Spending – 5

The official language at Lan Kwai Fong is English. Menus are in English, service persons are mainly foreigners. So you don’t have to worry being cheated as you are not alone! A lot of the time bars are so packed that people cannot get in. An extremely smart and economical solution came up when a 7-eleven was opened a little down the alley. People simply buy bottles and cans of alcohol, stand and drink on the slope outside the shops, creating an unofficial extension of the bars with its loud music and free-flow of people.

View – 1

There’s not much of a view in Lan Kwai Fong, just lots and lots of ‘Gwai Lo’s (Cantonese for foreigners, literally ‘ghost people’, but is now accepted as a cool naming). Yet there are also many local visitors, and seems to be the only place conservative Hong Kong girls show more of their flesh.

Convenience – 5

Lan Kwai Fong is in Central, the central of Hong Kong. Best way to get there is to walk up slope from Central MTR (metro) station. By the time you leave probably the metro is no longer running. Overnight buses and speedy (or speeding) mini-vans are available down the streets. Or if you are too drunk to find your route, tones of taxis are waiting right at the corner of the street, with vomit bags readily available.

History / Culture – 2

Lan Kwai Fong was once a street for street hawkers, for flowers, for marriage-arrangers, until ‘the father of Lan Kwai Fong’ German-Canadian businessman Allan Zeman gave it a make-over. Now it is Hong Kong’s most popular entertainment destinations. It is a city in the city of Hong Kong, a foreign culture unique to Hong Kong. If you wander a few blocks away from the main street, you will still find traditional dim sum restaurants, and Chinese herbal medicine stalls. Maybe this is where Hong Kong’s true culture, where East meets West, lies.

Overall – 3

Hong Kong is a dynamic city, and Lan Kwai Fong is where the action is! Do check it out! Just beware of the crowd especially during festive seasons. A serious accident happened Lan Kwai Fong in 1993 because it’s too crowd and  more than 15,000 were celebrating the New Year’s Day. But after that, it become much less dangerous and saver in recent years. Let’s go and have fun there !!

Photos By : istolethetv, Vasenka, Chika, jf.amadei, Marc van der Chijs, istolethetv under creative common