Tsim Sha Tsui’s Star Ferry Pier is sited at Kowloon’s southwestern tip; immediately outside is a 45-metre-high clocktower, dating from 1921, the only remnant of the grand train station which once welcomed rail services from Europe. The ferry terminal sits at the bottom of a series of interconnected, upmarket shopping malls running up the western side of Tsim Sha Tsui’s waterfront, one of the largest such complexes in Asia. The first section, Ocean Terminal, is where cruise liners and visiting warships dock; exclusive boutiques line the confusing maze of galleries that link it with the adjacent Ocean Centre, and, the next block up, Harbour City - between them they boast several hotels, restaurants and a good number of exorbitantly priced clothes and shoes stores. To exit the mall at any stage, signs direct you out onto Canton Road, which runs northwards. East off it, just down Peking Road, One Peking Road is Tsim Sha Tsui’s first example of Centralstyle modern architecture, a 160-metre-high, glassy, bowfronted edifice whose upper floors are mostly restaurants, all with excellent harbour views. Back on Canton Road, continue north and you’ll pass the China Ferry Terminal, another block of shops and restaurants set around the terminal for vessels shuttling back and forth between China and Macau.

Salisbury Rd T2920 2888, The Peninsula Hotel is one of Tsim Sha Tsui’s few throwbacks to colonial times. Built in the 1920s next to the train station, the hotel offered a shot of elegance to Hong Kong’s weary new arrivals who had just spent weeks crossing Europe, Russia and China by rail. It remains one of the most expensive and stylish addresses in Hong Kong, and still offers a taste of more refined times in its opulent lobby, where afternoon tea is served (daily 2-7pm, $165 per person); you don’t have to be staying, but note that dress rules apply.

Salisbury Rd T2734 9009. Box office daily 10am-8pm. The Hong Kong Cultural Centre was built in 1980 to provide a cultural hub for this otherwise overtly materialistic city. It contains a concert hall and several theatres, where events from classical Italian and Chinese opera through to contemporary dance are performed (contact the box office for current programmes).

Worthy though all this is, the building itself proves that you need more than money to create impressive architecture: costing six hundred million Hong Kong dollars, the building - astonishingly, given the harbourside location - has no windows. The pink-tiled exterior is awkwardly shaped, with angled walls and outshooting ribs creating a cloister surrounded by a starkly paved area, dotted with palm trees. An adjacent twotiered walkway along the water offers the view of the harbour and Hong Kong Island denied from the inside; come here at night to see Central’s towers in all their chromatic glory.

Salisbury Rd Mon-Wed & Fri-Sun 10am-6pm. $10, Wed free. The Museum of Art houses six galleries of mostly classical Chinese paintings, ceramics and historical artefacts, though not much effort has been made to place them in any context. The Xubaizhai Gallery of Chinese Painting and Calligraphy features examples of superb penmanship (in Chinese calligraphy, it’s the spirit of the brush-strokes which is most admired) and some quirky scroll paintings such as Jin Nong’s podgy Lone Horse (1761). Next door, the Contemporary Art Gallery hosts post-1950s work, including silkscreen painting, calligraphy, ceramics, and paintings by Hong Kong artists in both Western and Chinese styles.

The high point of the third floor section on Chinese Antiquities is the display of Tang dynasty (618-907 AD) ceramics, from a period when an unparalleled level of interaction between China and the outside world fuelled great artistic innovations. In particular, the Tang tomb figures, streaked green and brown, show very “foreign” features in the characters’ big noses and beards. These all complement the Chinese Decorative Arts Gallery, whose costumes, embroidery and textiles are outstanding. The Historical Pictures Gallery is of interest for contemporary illustrations by both Western and Chinese artists tracing the eighteenth and nineteenth-century development of Hong Kong, Macau and Guangzhou (in China). The final fourth floor Chinese Fine Art Gallery shows selections from three thousand works, including modern Chinese art and animal and bird paintings.

Salisbury Rd T2721 0226, Mon & Wed-Fri 1-9pm, Sat & Sun 10am-9pm. $10, Wed free. The Chinese were the first to record Halley’s Comet and the first to chart star movements - the Space Museum traces these breakthroughs and the entire history of astronomy with hands-on displays, push-button exhibits, video presentations and picture boards. There’s also a Space Theatre ($32; 6-15 years, students and senior citizens $16; under-6s free), where an ever-changing selection of films (either on space or the natural world) is shown on the massive wrap-around Omnimax screen, providing a thrilling sensory experience.

Nathan Road is Tsim Sha Tsui’s - and Kowloon’s - main thoroughfare, running north from the waterfront all the way to the New Territories. It’s always packed, the pavements with extraordinarily thick crowds, and the roads by fastmoving traffic. It’s not just the neon along here that glitters, but the shop windows too, full of jewellery, the latest cameras, MP3 players and mobile phones, clothes, shoes and fine art. Even window-shopping is a struggle nonetheless, what with the crowds, hustlers and the insistent hawkers.

Nathan Road has its own shopping centres, the most notorious of which are the seething downmarket complexes of Chungking (nos. 36-44) and Mirador mansions (nos. 56-58), full of guesthouses, Indian restaurants, and supercheap stalls for daily necessities.

Side streets are also alive with similar possibilities. To the east of Nathan Road, Granville Road is famous for its bargain clothes shops, some of them showcasing the work of new, young designers, though you’ll also find clothing, accessory and jewellery stores all the way along Carnarvon, Cameron and Kimberley roads. To the west, department stores and shopping centres include the large Yue Hwa Chinese Products store at the corner of Peking Road and Kowloon Park Drive, selling everything from traditional medicines to inexpensive leather jackets and carved jade animals.

Daily 6am-midnight. There’s an escape from the teeming masses in Kowloon Park, which stretches along Nathan Road between Haiphong and Austin roads. Parts of it have been landscaped and styled as a Chinese garden with fountains, rest areas, a children’s playground, and two bird collections - the wildfowl (including flamingoes and mandarin ducks) outside in landscaped ponds, the parrots and other exotically coloured rainforest species contained in a small aviary. There’s also a swimming complex (daily 8am-noon, 1.30-6pm & 7.30-10pm; $21) and a sculpture walk.

The southeastern corner of the park is taken up with an open area known as the Kung Fu Corner. Full of practitioners from about 6am every morning, it also hosts free displays of various martial arts between 2.30pm and 4.30pm every Sunday. Below it, at 105 Nathan Road, is the large Kowloon Mosque (no public access), built in the mid-1980s to replace a mosque originally built in 1894 for the British Army’s Muslim troops from India. It retains a classic design, with a central white marble dome and minarets.

Leave the park at the southern end and you can drop down to Haiphong Road and its small covered produce market at the Canton Road end (daily 6am-8pm).

Science Museum Rd Mon-Wed & Fri 1-9pm, Sat, Sun & public holidays 10am-9pm.

$25, Wed free; The Hong Kong Science Museum is especially fun for children, as there are plenty of handson exhibits. Subjects include the workings of kitchen and bathroom appliances, robotics, computers, mobile phones and other electronics, and even the most Luddite of visitors should be tempted to push buttons and operate robot arms with abandon. Don’t miss the engaging look at brain perception in the “Human Body” section in the basement, or the World Population Meter, which counts up - at a frighteningly fast rate - the earth’s population. Avoid Sundays if you can, since the attraction palls rather if you have to wait in line for a turn at the best of the exhibits.

Chatham Rd South Mon & Wed-Sat 10am-6pm, Sun 10am-7pm. $10, Wed free. The Hong Kong Museum of History is an ambitious trawl through the region’s past, using videos, light shows, interactive software and life-sized reconstructions.

The museum’s most interesting section is a reproduction of a 1930s street with tea shops that smell of tea, and a herbalist’s niche filled with a bitter, pungent aroma. Perhaps what’s most surprising is that these shops don’t look much different from those in business in Mongkok and Sheung Wan today, almost a hundred years later. Noticeable gaps include little material on Hong Kong’s ethnic populations of Indians, Nepalese and Filipinos, and scant coverage of events after the 1997 handover.

Chow Tai Fook

Shops G1 & G2, Holiday Inn Golden Mile, 50 Nathan Rd Chain with wide range of gold, diamond and jade jewellery at mid-range prices - a good place to get a feel for local styles and costs.

Elissa Cohen Jewellery

209 Hankow Centre, 5-15 Hankow Rd. Individual designs, either new or based on antique European or Chinese.

Very elegant, though they do tend to overdo things slightly with encrusting gems.

Fortress

14-16 Hankow Rd. A local electronics chain selling the latest mobiles, MP3 players, digital cameras and laptops.

No bargains, but you won’t get ripped off either; a good indicator for what you should be paying locally.

Johnson & Co.

44 Hankow Rd. Tailoring for mostly male customers (they were a favourite with British military personnel stationed in Hong Kong), this shop also deals in middle-of-the-road jewellery and watches.

Aqua

29th Floor and Penthouse, One Peking Rd T3427 2288. Mon-Thurs noon-2am, Fri-Sun 10.30am-2am.

Enjoy superlative harbour views from the sunken slate tables, as you consume an unexpectedly successful blend of Italian and Japanese dishes.

The atmosphere is informal, and the prices high - at least $400 a head.

Chao Inn

7th Floor, One Peking Rd T2369 8819. Daily 10am-10pm. The moderately priced food - mainly cuisine from Chaozhou in Guangdong province, featuring clear-skinned dumplings, seafood and roast meats - is a cut above average, especially the roast goose fl avoured with sour plum, and harbour views are an added bonus.

D&J Shanghai

2nd Floor, Hanley House, 68-80 Canton Rd T3113 6993. Daily 11am-midnight. Good place for Shanghai cold dishes, hot meals, or just a quick snack of xioalong bao (tiny steamed pork buns). Slightly tourist-inflated prices - mains cost $50 and upwards.

Bahama Mama’s

4-5 Knutsford Terrace T2368 2121. Mon-Thurs 5pm-3am, Fri & Sat 5pm-4am, Sun 6pm-2am. The beach-bar theme and outdoor terrace attracts a party crowd, along with all their antics. One of the rare bars that is popular with both gweilos and local Chinese; for the best crack, stump up the cover charge and come along on club nights where a mixed music policy offers everything from garage to world.

Ned Kelly’s Last Stand

11a Ashley Rd T2376 0562. Daily 11.45am-1.45am. Dark Australian bar with great live traditional jazz after 9pm, plus good beer and meaty Aussie food served at the tables. It’s a real favourite with travellers, and good fun.

Someplace Else

Basement, Sheraton Hotel, 20 Nathan Rd T2721 6151. Daily 11am-2am; happy hour 4-8pm. Upmarket singles bar, whose large, rowdy two-floor bar-restaurant has live music, free popcorn nibbles, Tex-Mex and Asian snacks and a good cocktail list.

Stag’s Head

11 Hart Avenue T2369 3142. Daily noon-4am, happy hour daily noon- 10pm. Popular pub attracting expats and tourists alike; almost always has Britpop plus beer, spirit and wine promotions.

Watering Hole

Basement, 1A Mody Rd T2312 2288. Daily 4pm-1pm. An enormous subterranean bar with darts and a small selection of beers. The decor is nondescript, but there’s a good mix of locals, expats and tourists, the bar staff are friendly, and it’s big enough to harbour lots of dark nooks and crannies.