Sky 100 - Hong Kong
First published in 2018
I had a few frequent flyer miles that were going to expire and wondered what to do with them. One of the options was a voucher for Sky 100, an observation deck on the International Commerce Centre. It's the highest skyscraper in Hong Kong and as it is located on the Kowloon side of the harbor you have a nice view of the Skyline of Hong Kong Island.
Getting the ticket is a little bit tricky as you have to get a voucher, to get a voucher, to get the tickets. But if you follow closely the descriptions and mails you can handle it. I went to the counter in the morning to make sure that I can choose a timeslot around sunset, but it turned out that this was not even necessary. As soon as you have the ticket you can enter whenever you want. The only drawback is that you have to commit to a day some days in advance.
If you don't have miles to pay, you can also search for vouchers directly and save some money compared to the walk-in prices. Mine was from Klook and it worked fine.
When I visited there were no crowds at all. Not when picking up the ticket, not at the elevator, and also on the observation deck you have lots of space - if you ever tried the same in New York, you know how it could have looked like. It might be different on special occasions (New Year's Eve i.e.), but most of the year it seems to be like that.
The observation deck is huge with a 360° view of Hong Kong and as long as it is not really crowded they don't mind if you bring a tripod along. Still, most people take pictures with their mobile and they even have marks on the windows to show where to place them.
Talking about windows brings us to the biggest issue if you want to take photos here. You have windows all around and a lot of light inside. You need to look for a place where the windows are kind of clean. I don't know if you can figure out when they clean it to select a date shortly after, but as for most people, I didn't have a lot of choices anyhow.
The second thing is that you have to find a way to avoid reflections in the window. Placing your lens as near to the window as possible helps, but as you most probably don't want to have it 100% flat on the window this is not good enough. There are some gadgets around that you can mount to lens and window to do the job, but blocking the light with a jacket or something else works fine as well.
