How to meet people in Hong Kong when you're travelling alone

Hong Kong has a word for the thing every other city in this series has to explain: daap toi, 搭枱, sharing a table with strangers. In a cha chaan teng, the local diner, at lunchtime, the waiter seats you where there is a chair, and the person opposite goes on reading the racing pages. It is not a conversation. It is, though, a city that has already decided strangers can sit together, and that is most of the work done.

The rest of the work is in the hills, and Hong Kong has more of those than any city its size.

Hiking is the social life

Three-quarters of Hong Kong is country park, and on a weekend morning it seems that three-quarters of the population is in it. Hiking here is not a niche; it is what people do with friends, and the trails are the easiest place in the city to make some.

Dragon's Back is the beginner's classic: bus 9 from Shau Kei Wan, two to three hours along a ridge with the sea on both sides, ending on the beach at Shek O. Lion Rock is the one with the view over all of Kowloon, three hours and steeper. MacLehose Trail Section 2 in Sai Kung is the full day, with the beaches nobody believes are in Hong Kong. For a morning, the Old Peak Road up to the Peak from Central is an hour of stairs with joggers on it from dawn.

Every one of these is a plan a stranger can propose and expect to fill. "Dragon's Back Sunday, 9am, Shau Kei Wan bus stop" is the most-typed sentence in this city's group chats. October to December is the season; in July you will melt.

The cheap crossings

The Star Ferry across the harbour costs a few dollars and is still the best ten minutes in Hong Kong. The tram, the ding ding, runs the length of the north side of the island for less than that; the upper deck at the front is the seat. Neither is a plan on its own, but either is how a plan gets from one side of the water to the other, and a group on the ferry at sunset has done something together already.

Where the tables are close

Sham Shui Po is where to eat cheaply and well and sit at a dai pai dong, the open-air stalls with the folding tables, with whoever is there. Temple Street in Yau Ma Tei has the evening ones. Central's Soho and Lan Kwai Fong are the bar streets, expensive and loud and busiest on Wednesday and Friday nights, and easier to talk to a stranger in than anywhere else in the city because everybody is standing in the road. Hotpot, da bin lou, is the winter group meal; nobody has ever ordered it for one.

In summer there are junk trips: a boat, thirty people, a bay, the whole day. They are organised by whoever has the boat, and saying yes to one is the fastest way into a circle here.

Practical

An Octopus card does everything. The MTR runs until around one; taxis are plentiful after. Minibuses stop when you shout; the green ones have fixed stops, the red ones do not. Cantonese is the language, Mandarin is widely understood, English is on every sign. When a typhoon signal 8 is raised the city stops; a black rainstorm warning does the same. Both are announced hours ahead, and both are good days for a group chat.

Hong Kong is very safe at night. The usual rules: first meeting in public, tell someone where you are going, keep your own way home. The safety page has the rest.

Where MeetMap fits

MeetMap is a map of small plans happening soon near you. Each pin has a time, a place and a number of seats; take one and you are in the group chat. Hong Kong plans are short to write because the city already has the vocabulary: "Dragon's Back, Sunday 9, four seats", "Dai pai dong in Sham Shui Po, 7:30", "Star Ferry at sunset, then Temple Street".

If the map is quiet, post the first one. This city invented a word for sitting with strangers; it will not mind you using it. Two weeks of that is the whole method.