Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2008

5. Temple Street Night Market

This rowdy thoroughfare in central Kowloon starts at Temple Street's junction with Jordan Road, terminates five blocks north on Kansu Street and looks like every B-movie director's dream of Chinatown. Under the glare of bare light bulbs, hawkers flog everything from bizarre patent medicines to counterfeit watches. Prostitutes work the low-rise tenements, fortune-tellers cluster by the multistory car park and impoverished Chinese opera troupes busk for a few dollars just outside the public toilets. Outdoor food stalls display still-twitching, unnameable crustacea and old men and junkies gamble on games of Chinese chess in the concrete square outside the eponymous temple. Ghetto heaven. (Nearest MTR: Jordan or Yau Ma Tei)