A ten-minute crossing on a green-and-white boat that has run since 1888 and costs less than a bottle of water.
The Star Ferry has crossed Victoria Harbour since 1888, and it remains the best value in Hong Kong and one of the best short journeys anywhere.
The boats are green and white, diesel-electric, and named Morning Star, Twinkling Star, Celestial Star and so on. Several are over sixty years old.
The routes
Tsim Sha Tsui to Central is the classic — about ten minutes, with the Hong Kong Island skyline rising in front of you the whole way.
Tsim Sha Tsui to Wan Chai runs the other diagonal.
Fares are trivially small, a little more at weekends and on the upper deck, and payable by Octopus card or coin.
Which deck
The upper deck is enclosed at the sides with open windows and gives the higher, wider view. The lower deck sits close to the water, smells of diesel and rope, and is where the crossing feels like a working boat rather than a sightseeing trip.
Both are correct. The lower deck is cheaper.
The 1966 riots
In April 1966 the ferry company applied to raise the first-class fare by five cents. A young man named So Sau-chung began a hunger strike at the Central pier in protest; he was arrested, and the demonstrations that followed turned into several nights of rioting across Kowloon, with a curfew, over a thousand arrests and at least one death.
The fare rise went through. The riots are generally read as an early sign of the social pressures that produced the much larger disturbances of 1967, and they led to reforms in colonial governance.
A five-cent fare increase is an unusual thing to have caused a riot, and it is worth thinking about while paying today’s fare.
The piers
The original Central pier in Edwardian style was demolished in 2006 for land reclamation, over substantial public protest and a court challenge. The Queen’s Pier beside it went the same way in 2007.
The current Central pier is a 2006 replica in a vaguely Edwardian idiom, and Hong Kong has argued about it ever since.
The Tsim Sha Tsui pier of 1957 is original and has the clock tower beside it.
When to cross
After dark for the lit skyline, and again in daylight for the working harbour — container ships, tugs, junks and the hydrofoils to Macau all pass.
The Symphony of Lights show runs nightly at 8pm across the harbour buildings; the ferry crossing at that hour is the cheapest seat for it.
Practicalities
Runs from early morning until around 11pm, every six to twelve minutes.
The MTR crosses the harbour too and is faster. Take the ferry anyway.
More Landmarks
Victoria Peak
The view that sells Hong Kong, reached by a tram at a gradient that pins you to the seat.
Tian Tan Buddha and Po Lin Monastery
A 34-metre bronze Buddha on a Lantau hilltop, reached by 268 steps and a cable car over the sea.
Tsim Sha Tsui Promenade
A waterfront walk facing the most photographed skyline in Asia, with a nightly light show pointed at it.