Google Sightseeing » Hong Kong

Fat Planes

Alex Turnbull — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 13:30:16 +0000

Invasion of the fat planes! There’s a really fat green plane at Heathrow (which looks a little like Thunderbird 2)…

And at Hong Kong International, there’s some sort of fat pink alien spacecraft!

(Or these might be fire training aircraft of course…)

Update: from the comments, here’s a lime-green fatplane, and a white one which has some mysterious Dutch writing next to it…

Thanks to Mako, foo and Marco.

Locations: England, Hong Kong, Netherlands / Categories: Aircraft, Large Type, Structures

View in Google Earth

Oil in China

James Turnbull — Sun, 08 Jan 2006 21:43:06 +0000

Castle Peak Power Station in Hong Kong is one of the largest coal-fired power stations in the world and these two oil tanks are clearly marked with the Hanzi characters for Oil. There’s more about the plant on their website.

Black Point Power Station also has large type for Oil as well as smaller characters for Water just to the north (which are much clearer if you view the sight in Google Earth).

It’s cool to see some more Hanzi large type, but I wonder why have they done this? In light of Australia’s recent worries about terrorists using Google Earth to target their nuclear power plant why would China be shouting out the location of their highly flammable materials?

Thanks: Jeremy & Billy Leung

Locations: Hong Kong / Categories: Large Type

View in Google Earth

Jumbo Kingdom

Alex Turnbull — Tue, 27 Sep 2005 21:43:20 +0000

Docked in the middle of Aberdeen Harbour in Hong Kong, in the style of a sumptuous Chinese palace, is the gigantic floating restaurant Jumbo Kingdom. Opened in 1976, this mammoth eatery can accommodate up to 2,300 people, and the facilities include a ’six-star’ gourmet restaurant, shopping, exhibitions, cafes and a ton of other stuff. However, I read that Jumbo Kingdom no longer actually floats, and is now supported by concrete. Can anyone verify this?

There’s a free ferry which takes you out there, and you can see some of them docked by the side of the restaurant itself (see this photo for comparison).

Some people claim that this is the world’s largest floating restaurant, but the Jumbo Kingdom site makes no such claim, which makes me wonder… What is the world’s largest floating restaurant? And (more importantly) is it in hi-res?

Many thanks to Leonard Wan for being the only person to submit this!

Locations: Hong Kong / Categories: Buildings, Watercraft

View in Google Earth

The Whampoa

Alex Turnbull — Mon, 26 Sep 2005 22:15:55 +0000

Has an extremely drunk captain parked his ship in-between these buildings? Nope, this is actually The Whampoa, a ship-shaped (haha!) shopping arcade in Hong Kong.

According to their website, the Jusco Whampoa Store offers:

one-stop-shopping facilities to customers, including fashion, footwear, handbags, household items, electrical appliances, cosmetics and food.

No boats then? Huh.

Thanks to Fabien Cornu and Kam Tsang.

Locations: Hong Kong / Categories: Buildings, Watercraft

View in Google Earth

Shing Mun Tunnel

Alex Turnbull — Tue, 28 Jun 2005 23:36:32 +0000

And for my final post today from Hong Kong, check out this exposed section of the Shing Mun Tunnel in Shatin. This tunnel links between the eastern and western part of the New Territorries, which are separated by mountains.

How cool?

Many thanks to Philip Ng.

Locations: Hong Kong / Categories: Bridges

View in Google Earth

Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre

Alex Turnbull — Tue, 28 Jun 2005 23:31:17 +0000

This is the fantastically modern-looking Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, (which reminds me of The Flight of the Navigator!).

As I’ve said before, everything on this site seems to be the tallest/biggest/highest something, and this building proves to be no exception, as it contains the world’s tallest glass wall (which overlooks Victoria Harbour). There’s some fantastic lower-down shots of the building over at their homepage.

Thanks: David, Mike Gavin, Chris Granger, Michelle Cleveland, Nels Nelson, Paul

Locations: Hong Kong / Categories: Buildings

View in Google Earth

Two International Finance Centre

Alex Turnbull — Tue, 28 Jun 2005 22:58:23 +0000

Overlooking Victoria Harbour (as seen in our previous post), is the Two International Finance Centre, which at 415.8 metres it is currently the tallest building in Hong Kong. Check out that shadow! Apparently it is the third tallest building in Greater China and the 6th tallest office building in the world.

Interestingly the building has 88 storeys, which is an extremely lucky number in Cantonese culture. Except that it doesn’t really, because some of the ‘taboo floors’ like 14 and 24 are omitted (In Cantonese ‘14′ sounds like ‘You must be dead’ and ‘24′ sounds like ‘It is easy to be dead’). There’s more info at Wikipedia too.

Actually there’s tons of huge skyscrapers right here, the Bank of China Tower for example, which was the first building outside the United States to break the 1000 foot mark.

Thanks to Chris G.

Locations: Hong Kong / Categories: Buildings, Shadows

View in Google Earth

Victoria Harbour, Hong Kong

Alex Turnbull — Tue, 28 Jun 2005 22:38:22 +0000

This is brilliant, hundreds of sea-vessels of all shapes and sizes zipping around in Victoria harbour, Hong Kong. Scroll around to see just how many of them there are! Victoria Harbour is one of the busiest ports in the world, with an average of 220,000 ships visiting the harbour each year.

Apparently the container port in Hong Kong is the busiest in the world. There’s some weird looking cargo transporter things, and you can also see one of them being tugged (check out the guy doing the u-turn too!).

There’s also a massive cargo ship, and even an airplane in this mega-harbour!

As usual, loads more great info about Victoria harbour is available on Wikipedia

Thanks to Nels Nelson and others.

Locations: Hong Kong / Categories: Watercraft

View in Google Earth