We crossed mid-morning, from Tsim Sha Tsui to Central — a few minutes on the water in one of the small green-and-white boats that have carried people over Victoria Harbour for well over a century. You walk aboard across the gangplank and, as we always do, take a seat in the shade on the lower deck: the breeze comes through, and the view, to us, is every bit as good as the climb to the upper.
There’s a whole history riding with you — the boats began in 1888, and the crossing has outlived the reason most people once needed it — but you don’t take the Star Ferry for the history. You take it because it is still one of the great cheap pleasures anywhere: a working commute that happens to cross one of the world’s great harbours, and which National Geographic once put among fifty places to see in a lifetime. We sat, the engines thrummed below, Kowloon slid away behind, and for a handful of coins we had the best seat in the city.
The full story — 1888, the Tennyson-named fleet, the 1966 fare riots, the routes, decks and fares: The Star Ferry