Escalators Galore

That's the name of the mall - and I have to say it's the coolest shopping mall ever. It makes the entire Orchard Road stretch seem juvenile. It's 13 floors plus 4 below-ground basement floors. And for some strange reason, the building doesn't follow the English system, and starts counting from L1. Another strange point to note is that it doesn't have a B3, and just goes on to B4 and B5. So, the final tally is 17 floors of pure shopping pleasure!

This was taken some distance from the place. It's located above Mongkok MTR station, so it's easily accessible. The shopping mall is in the shorter building; the taller one's a connected hotel. There's office space somewhere in there too. See the giant glass balls above both buildings? They glow at night and change colors slowly, like that tower on Hong Kong Island, only slower. It's really cool and you can see it from as far as the peak on clear nights.

The place has quite an interesting history. It use to be Hong Kong's red light district. (When I told my aunt I wanted to go there after my friend had told me about the place, she thought I wanted to get a hooker! The only remnants of that left is the sexy CGI babe they use as their mascot.) But the government decided to bulldoze the place and build a splendid shopping mall with hundreds of shops there. And voila!

Here's the escalators at the L4 atrium, which is a great open space (but still inside the building) about 2-3 stories tall, surrounded by glass windows, and full of restaurants and a food court. I went to one of them, Matchtoo, which I reviewed in my flog.

The escalators are boringly long, so much so that you get bored after riding them for a while, being forced to look at the shops passing you on each floor. What a cleaver way to make you shop. Pictured above is the escalator from L4 to L8.

And here, we have the escalators from L8 all the way up to L13 - equally boring. It seems like Hong Kong engineers have a knack for building long escalators. And they find ways to get you up on top too. There's this huge TV screen on L4, you see, and the night I was there, it was broadcasting live from L13 this jazz band that was playing there. (I don't know how often they do this) So people who saw and heard the music on the screen at L4, being curious human beings as we all are, trooped up to L13 via the two sets of escalators.

And what happened when they got to L13? Well, the jazz was nice, but now that they were here, they might as well walk down, instead of going back to L8 directly, because that would just be so boring - again. So they start walking down, only to find out that from L8 to L13, the place is called "The Spiral". Why does this matter? Because the floors are connected in a circular way, and there's only one way to go, because there are no elevators or other escalator for you to skip floors (see floor plan at their website, address below). Kinda like the Ikea concept of keeping your customers moving through your products, only without shortcuts. Well, at least it was good exercise. And the shops were all small business boutiques too, with lots of funky and cute products.

To sum it all off, this place is a must go for any tourist coming to Hong Kong. Even if you don't buy anything, you still will be amazed at the place's architecture.

http://www.langhamplace.com.hk/