Lonely Planet - Hong Kong

7. Calling on the heavens from New Kowloon

Like most Chinese Taoist temples, Sik Sik Yuen Wong Tai Sin Temple is an explosion of colour with red pillars, bright yellow roofs and green-and-blue latticework. If you visit in the late afternoon or early evening, you can watch hordes of businessmen and secretaries praying and divining the future with chim, bamboo 'prediction sticks' that must be shaken out of a box on to the ground and then read (they're available free to the left of the main temple). Behind the main temple and to the right are the Good Wish Gardens, replete with colourful pavilions (the hexagonal Unicorn Hall with carved doors and windows is the most beautiful), zigzag bridges and artificial ponds.

Just below the main temple and to the left as you enter the complex is an arcade filled with dozens of booths operated by fortune-tellers.

Some of the fortune-tellers speak decent English (and advertise the fact on signs above their counters), so if you really want to know what fate has in store for you, this is your chance. The busiest times at the temple are around the Chinese New Year, Wong Tai Sin's birthday (23rd day of the eighth month - usually in September) and at weekends, especially Friday evening.

8. A breath of fresh air at the top of Hong Kong Island

The Peak, Hong Kong Island's highest point, has been the place to live ever since the British came on the scene in the 19th century.

The taipans built summer houses here to escape the heat and humidity (it's usually about 5C cooler here than down below). The Peak remains the most fashionable - and expensive - area to live in Hong Kong and is the territory's foremost tourist destination.

Not only is the view from the summit one of the most spectacular cityscapes in the world, it's also a good way to get Hong Kong into perspective. And the only way up, as far as we are concerned, is via the Peak Tram.

Rising above the Peak Tram terminus is the seven-storey Peak Tower, an anvil-shaped building containing shops, restaurants, an outpost of the waxworks Madame Tussaud's and a viewing terrace. Opposite is the Peak Galleria, a three-storey mall of shops and restaurants. Like the tower, it is designed to withstand winds of up to 270km/h, theoretically more than the maximum velocity of a No 10 typhoon.

When people in Hong Kong refer to the Peak, they usually mean the plateau and surrounding residential area at about 400m. The summit, Victoria Peak (552m), is about 500m northwest of the Peak Tram terminus up steep Mt Austin Rd. The governor's mountain lodge near the summit was burned to the ground by the Japanese during WWII, but the gardens remain and are open to the public.

You can walk around Victoria Peak without exhausting yourself.

Harlech Rd on the south side and Lugard Rd on the northern slope together form a 3.5km loop that takes about an hour to walk. If you feel like a longer stroll (and want to avoid the Peak Tram and its crowds on the way down), you can continue for a further 2km along Peak Rd to Pok Fu Lam Reservoir Rd, which leaves Peak Rd near the car park exit. This goes past the reservoir to the main Pok Fu Lam Rd, where you can get bus 7 back to Central. Another good walk leads down to Hong Kong University. First walk to the west side of Victoria Peak by taking either Lugard or Harlech Rds. After reaching Hatton Rd, follow it down. The descent is steep, but the path is clear.

9. Take a trip back through time

Commercial Hong Kong may have its eyes firmly on the future, but when you see a computer-shop owner tending a shrine to the earth god Tou Tei in his store, you get the notion that at least some of the city's character lies in its past.

'The Hong Kong Story' at the Hong Kong Museum of History takes visitors on a fascinating walk through the territory's past via eight galleries, starting with the natural environment and prehistoric Hong Kong on the ground floor - about 6000 years ago, give or take a lunar year - and ending with the territory's return to China in 1997 and a tear-jerking (well, we cried) video collage of Hong Kong through the ages on the 2nd.

Along the way you'll encounter replicas of village dwellings; traditional Chinese costumes and beds; a re-creation of an entire arcaded street in Central from 1881, including an old Chinese medicine shop; a tram from 1913; and film footage of WWII, including recent interviews with Chinese and foreigners taken prisoner by the Japanese.

A favourite exhibit remains the jumble of toys and collectables from the 1960s and '70s when 'Made in Hong Kong' meant 'Christmas stocking trash'. If you are like us and prefer modern history to ancient, you'll take a lift to the 2nd floor and do the exhibit backward.

That way, if you run out of time, you can give all those cave dwellers and their stone ornaments a miss.