By the time Tony co-founded Lonely Planet Publications in 1973, he already had the travel bug. And ever since, travel and discovery have been at the heart of his life and career.
I hadn’t planned to stop in Hong Kong, on my way from Melbourne to London. I had quite different plans until Taco Trump decided he’d have a go at starting WW III. Hold on, I’ll get around to my original travel plans in June.
▲ Sai Kung seafood – Meanwhile I flew in to Hong Kong with Cathay Pacific Airlines, dropped my bag at the Regal Airport Hotel and, appropriately, was picked up by my retired Cathay Pacific pilot friend Rowland Burley. We drove out to his place above Sai Kung, a dormitory suburb for Hong Kong and Kowloon and one of the most popular places in Hong Kong for seafood. There’s a cluster of seafood restaurants across from the waterfront with what looks like an ocean full of marine creatures splashing or swimming unhappily in tanks. My photograph is of a boatful of them beside the quay.
▲ Sharp Island – Kiu Chau in Chinese – literally does have a sharp profile and it’s only 15 minutes by ferry from Sai Kung
▲ Sharp Island ferry from Sai Kung – so once the rain seemed to be slowing we jumped on a ferry, they run every half hour or so to …
▲ Hap Mun Bay – at the southern end of the island. There were young people camping above the beach and snorkellers in the water.
◄ Sharp Island Country Trail signpost – the island’s Country Trail starts from the bay and climbs up to run pretty much along the spine of the island for a couple of km to the ferry jetty at Kiu Tsui Beach at the other end of the island. Cute little sculptures beside the trail provide entertainment for the walkers and a tombolo, a shingle levee, joins the village to the small Kiu Tsui Pai offshore island. You can walk out to the island at lower tides, there’s even a lighthouse.
▲Country Trail Sign posts – Hap Mun Bay to Kiu Tsui Beach – back in Sai Kung we snacked on seaweed-wrapped rice triangles, a tasty snack I’ve never tried before, then took a bus to Kowloon and another bus to the relatively new and surprisingly large Hong Kong Palace Museum on reclaimed land looking across to Hong Kong Island.
▲ Dish with figures in the pavilion, Dish with dragons & Phoenixes among clouds, Hong Kong Palace Museum
We didn’t have time to really explore the museum, but I enjoyed the Ming Dynasty Ceramics Treasures gallery where most of the works seemed to come from China’s ceramics city Jingdezhen. In 2017, on Day 28 of my four-month Silk Road drive across Asia from Bangkok in Thailand to Abingdon, north of London in England, we stopped in Jingdezhen and met up with my Australian ceramic artists friends Alexadra and Leigh Copeland who work on their ceramics there every year. As we left the gallery an accidental phone call from Alexandra popped up on my mobile, there was clearly something in the air. Why did my drive across Asia end in Abingdon in England. Because we were all in elderly MGBs (eight of them) and that’s where they were made. Today MGs are manufactured just outside Shanghai in China.
Culture completed we dined outside the gallery, watching the lights come up in the city. Then I caught the Airport Express back to the airport and just before hitting the bed realised, yet again, that I am getting old and forgetful. I’d forgotten to take out travel insurance before I departed from home. I fixed that problem before I fell asleep and next morning flew out to London. A good flight, Trump’s crazy war was well to the south.
I hadn’t planned to stop in Hong Kong, on my way from Melbourne to London. I had quite different plans until Taco Trump decided he’d have a go at starting WW III. Hold on, I’ll get around to my original travel plans in June. ▲ Sai Kung seafood – Meanwhile I flew in...
◄ Rory Maclean – author of numerous travel books including Magic Bus – puts on a magic annual travel festival in the very attractive little Dorset town of Sherborne. I was there for the recent weekend and if I say nice things about the festival perhaps Rory will invit...
Having ticked off Christmas Island I continued another hour’s flight west across the Indian Ocean (and another 30 minutes time change) to the Cocos Keeling Islands, 1000km away. There are 27 islands around the Cocos Keeling Atoll, but only two of them are inhabited. W...
There are a number of Christmas Islands around the world, this one is an Australian territory technically part of Western Australia with a population of about 1700. Straight line it’s only 500km south of Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, but the only flights to Chris...
I’ve started 2026 with a A$861.15 (that’s US$576) refund from Booking.com, but wow it took a long time to get it! I did a number of flights in late 2025 on my visits to Nepal, Seychelles, Mauritius, Reunion, Jordan and finally Algeria. Some of the flights were made...
I read – it’s a quick read – David Szalay’s 2019 book Turbulence, an interesting series of connected ‘flight’ chapters, each titled with its airport departure and arrival codes and each with a character who continues into the next chapter. The New York Times review wh...
I love absurd travel suggestions – ones you read and you think ‘where on earth did that come from?’ The Australian newspapers The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald featured a travel enquiry: • If the only flight option is Ryanair, should we ditch that destination?...
There are lots of places still to visit on my travel bucket list and Greenland is certainly one of them. In recent weeks Taco Trump has emphasised that it could be important to get there sooner rather than later. After all if Trump succeeds in invading Greenland we co...
Melbourne has a new subway line – the Metro Tunnel – running through five new stations and currently having a soft opening, before the schedule launches full tilt on 1 February 2026. The new Parkville Station will probably be the most useful new station, since it’s at...
Melbourne photographer Paul Dodd asked me to take part in his photo project The Chair. I was one of 40-odd subjects, each photographed in his studio, seated on the same chair, under identical lighting conditions, and captured in timeless black and white. We were encou...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013