https://www.facebook.com/106856675850025/

IamtheUrbex, Hong Kong (2026)

17/07/2026

People who do not live in Hong Kong often find it quite difficult to accept that there are so many abandoned spaces here despite the fact that the territory is so small and is the fourth most densely populated place on this planet. The two major reasons for the surprisingly large number of abandoned places is firstly urbanization in which most people have chosen to live in densely populated towers in the sky which are more convenient for work, school & play. Over time this severs the link between the village and later generations of families, especially when conflict of inheritance occurs or when the legality of the properties is in question. A fair number of homes in rural areas were actually built illegally without permission from the authorities who often would turn a blind eye for the sake of social stability and if they need not wish to develop the land.

The second factor is emigration, since the 1945 at least a million people from Hong Kong have migrated to other countries, often in waves due to external or internal events such as the British Nationality Act of 1948 which made migration earlier or the run up to the 1997 handover. These types of events have resulted in huge numbers of rural homes & even entire villages becoming abandoned as what was initially thought of as a temporary move becomes permanent and such properties become forgotten.

In the case of this house the evidence suggests that at least some of the people who lived here moved before the 1997 handover date and may have moved to Canada. I get the impression that the patriarch of the family may well have stayed and passed away with his children never coming back to deal with or sell the property. If this is the case it could well be due to conflict over how to divide the money. A common issue which can easily be solved by dividing the profits by the number of children alive. All of this is of course conjecture and there is no way to truly know from what has been left behind in the dust.

This house is located in Tsung Yuen Ha village up in the very north of Hong Kong and from all accounts was locked up a few months after I was able to enter from the back door which had been left unlocked. In Hong Kong there are at least a handful of people who have no issue with breaking into these abandoned spaces, regardless of the potential trouble such acts could land them in. I will always be eternally grateful to the work of these reckless renegades & if I had a drink in my hand I would salute them!

These photos were shot in April 2022 on a Nikon D850 with a 20mm f1.8 lens & 35mm f1.4 lens.

IG: IamtheUrbex (https://www.instagram.com/iamtheurbex/)

#城市探索 #廢墟攝影 #廢探 #香港廢墟 #廢墟

23/06/2026

These photos are from a place called Dills Corner Garden in Kwu Tung which was a retirement home but before that it used to be a British military base called Dills Corner Camp. It was built in 1952 to keep an eye on the border, and was eventually expanded in the 1960s to allow British and Gurkha servicemen to house their families. After the 1997 handover, the camp served no military purpose, so it was repurposed.

From 1998 until the middle of 2023, the site became Dills Corner Garden, a retirement home that housed over 1,300 elderly people. This setup was quite unusual for Hong Kong, where retirement homes tend to be cramped and crowded. Instead, this facility was incredibly spacious. Spanning 25 buildings, it functioned more like a village for the elderly, where residents could enjoy open space and a have a close-knit community.

However, the facilities were entirely demolished at the end of 2023. This is because most of this area of Kwu Tung is being cleared to make way for the upcoming MTR Kwu Tung Station on the East Rail Line. The project has resulted in almost all buildings within a 500-meter radius of the new station being torn down. With the station due to open next year, the demolition of the area has noticeably accelerated. Luckily for the retirees, the government rehoused them all nearby in a new complex, allowing them to fully maintain their community as much as possible.

These photos were taken in October 2023 with a Nikon D850 20mm f/1.8.

IG: IamtheUrbex (https://www.instagram.com/iamtheurbex/)

#城市探索 #廢墟攝影 #廢探 #香港廢墟 #廢墟

06/06/2026

Located near the former Chernobyl power plant, the Duga radar was built in the 1970s as a top secret early warning system to alert the Soviet Union of an impending nuclear strike. At the time it cost about 7 billion Rubles which is around 100 billion USD in 2026 US dollars! As was often the case in the USSR these radars were not all that accurate so a satellite system was launched at roughly the same time.

When the Soviets turned the radar on in 1976, it broadcasted a massive, unannounced signal that could be heard on radios all over the world. It sounded like a sharp, annoying tapping noise, which quickly earned it the nickname "The Russian Woodpecker." Because the USSR kept the whole thing completely secret and denied it even existed, people in the West started coming up with crazy conspiracy theories, claiming the signal was actually a Soviet experiment for global mind control or changing the weather which to be fair is the sort of thing the Soviet would defnitely have tried to do if they could.

The actual physical size of this this structure was made of thousands of tons of steel and is nearly 150 meters tall and almost 700 meters long. To keep it running, the Soviets built a secret ghost town right under it called Chernobyl-2. This town housed around 1,000 military workers and their families with its own school, theater and mega supercomputers.

Duga radar station was closed in 1989 because attempts at decontaminating the site after the Chernobyl incident proven ineffective and more advanced satellites meant that it was no longer necessary anyway. It is currently rotting away and can never be demolished out of fears that demolition would probably cause a micro earthquake in the area which could potentially damage the nearby reactor sarcophagus, which sealed off the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Even though it is rusting, Ukraine officially made it a protected historical landmark a few years ago. Originally urbexers who sneaked into this site could climb up it but in 2017 an urbexer from Belarus fell off it while climbing it. His death caused the authorities to remove all the ladders going up and increased surveillance and security.

In recent years, the Duga radar when Russia invaded Ukraine they temporarily captured the whole Chernobyl area. Russian troops actually used the massive steel structures and the thick surrounding forest to hide their armored vehicles and command posts from drones, and they completely looted what was left of the Chernobyl-2 town, smashing up old data centers and stealing equipment for scrap metal. They also completely looted the laboratories and radiation monitoring checkpoints that Ukrainian scientists had been using for decades. When the Ukrainian military successfully liberated the area, the retreating soldiers left the forests and roads around the radar littered with dangerous landmines and tripwires. Because of this, the entire area has been heavily militarized to protect the border, and the popular tours for tourists that used to run there have been completely banned, returning this giant Cold War relic back to the isolation is used to know before the advent of mass tourism and urban exploration.

These photos were shot in August 2019 with a Nikon D610 and 28-300mm f3.5-5.6 lens.

IG: IamtheUrbex (https://www.instagram.com/iamtheurbex/)

23/05/2026

The Macau Canidrome Club was the only legal greyhound race track in East Asia and first opened in 1932 as a means to attract tourists as part of an effort to diversify the economy of Macau. It closed in 1938 due to the war with Japan and became a refugee camp but it was not until the early 1960s that everyone living there was rehoused so the track could reopen in 1963.

It finally closed in 2018 mostly due to years of campaigns by animal rights groups who took issue with the fact that the dogs that tended to not do well were usually euthanised and that amounted to about 30 a month. Reportedly, any greyhound that failed to place in the top three for five consecutive races were dealt with in this way, no one likes a loser after all. It is estimated that almost 20,000 dogs were killed in the all the years this institution existed and it is this that fueled the international outrage and campaigns against this business. One of the people who joined me on this day is very sensitive to the spirit world and he declined to go into the building because he claimed that it was too haunted with the souls of the dead dogs. He is very matter of fact about his 'talents' and there is nothing sensational about what he claims to see. He seeks neither attention nor clout in these matters. While I was there I saw, heard and felt nothing spooky to confirm what he felt.

This cavalier attitude towards to the dogs can further be shown by the fact that when the owners shut up show they simply abandoned the 533 dogs who worked on the race track to starve to death. Luckily the dogs were rescued after authorities threatened massive fines against the owners and most of the dogs were adopted abroad but this clearly shows the type of people the owners of this business were and I assume, still are.

The site has now been demolished and is currently being turned into a massive sports park at a cost of MOP$1.34 billion (US$167 million) which should be completely finished in 2029.

These photos were shot in Macau in March 2024 on a Nikon D850 with a 20mm f1.8 lens.

26/04/2026

Club Captain Bear was a 2006 attempt at building a resort in Tai She Wan and is one of the most famous abandoned spots in Hong Kong. It is located on the outskirts of Sai Kung and Tai She Wan translates as big snake bay in Cantonese. This is also the site of what was a village which was over 300 years old until it became abandoned in the 1970s upon the construction of the High Island Reservoir and the ruins of some of these homes are still there.

The idea behind the resort came from a Wan chai Bar owner who wanted to create a secluded retreat for people in Hong Kong and especially expats to relax in nature and isolation. It cost about HK$600 to HK$750 per night in 2006 Hong Kong dollars and would be about HK$971 to HK$1,214 in today's (2026) currency, which is about $124-$155 in USD. Naturally there was a bar which supposedly could accommodate 100 people even though the resort had just 10 guest rooms. It however failed after less than a year because there are no direct roads to this area and the easiest way to get there is by charted boat which obviously made it very inconvenient and expensive for people to travel to and from.

Interestingly it was not the first attempt at building a resort there and a fella called Chan Fat supposedly had tried previously and went as far as trying to create an artificial beach which kept on getting swept away by the sea. Legend has it that a plane crashed in the area in the 1940s after World War 2 with lots of gold and Chan Fat, who worked in the area, managed to find some and hide it from the police who sealed the area. Eventually he used the gold to try and create his resort until the authorities blocked his plans.

Sadly the reality is far less exciting. It turns out Chan Fat thought that the new airport would be built somewhere not too far away from this area so he purchased the village as an investment but sadly he never got the correct permission so he was forced to abandoned his project. Unfortunately this is not such an unusual occurrence in Hong Kong in which it is very easy to buy rural land from people who often do not realize that they do not have permission to sell it in the first place.

This site is most famous for the decaying animatronic animals which were originally from the famous Rainforest Café which used to operate in Kowloon Tong up until 2003. I went back again in 2022 and found some of the animals had totally lost all their fur leaving nothing but horrific terminator style exoskeletons.

Like most famous abandoned sites in Hong Kong there is a long history of ghosts being talked of in relation to this place yet I saw, heard and felt nothing to suggest anything supernatural exists here other than the broken promises of success. The first time I came here an Indonesian worker was clearing out the place and burning rubbish which made me assume that some sort of renovation was about to take place. The chap very kindly gave me permission to explore the site. I think he may have actually lived on site and I have a sneaking suspicion that could have been squatting there though I have no evidence other than a feeling to back this up.

Not surprisingly, almost 9 years on, nothing has changed and the place remains the abandoned "wonderland" it has always been.

These photos were taken in September 2018 with a Nikon D610 28-300mm.

IG: IamtheUrbex (https://www.instagram.com/iamtheurbex/)

#城市探索 #廢墟攝影 #廢探 #香港廢墟 #廢墟

05/04/2026

In my opinion Pok Wai Public School was one of the best of the 200 or so abandoned school in Hong Kong to visit due to how decayed it was and the horror movie atmosphere it conveyed. Built in 1957, it was initially funded through donation and then expanded in the 1960s due to growing student numbers in the area. This growth soon reversed and the school closed in 1996 due to dwindling numbers which is the reason for the closure of most schools in Hong Kong that have been left abandoned.

Like many abandoned spots in Hong Kong which get a lot of people visiting them, there have been reports of strange sounds being heard at night from the classrooms from both urbexers and locals and even reports of ghosts being sighted over the years. In the 3 times I have visited I saw, heard and felt nothing to suggest that the restless apparitions lurk in and out of the shadows. One interesting thing I did notice upon recently visiting this site is that most of the graffiti that is in these photos had been painted over.

This school was also a place you could rent out from the government as a filming location for the very generous sum of 10,150 for the first month which is a bargain if you ask me though you are not allowed to let off any explosions, fireworks or fires. I do not know of any productions that were filmed there and there is no evidence that any ever took place, which is a missed opportunity in my view and this is a far better place to film a horror film than in the more famous Tat Tak School.

Since the start of March this school is currently in the process of being demolished to make way for a new underground MTR line which will link the soon to be opened Kwu Ting station with the existing Kam Sheung Road station in the south of Yuen Long. The actual line will be underground but land is needed to install ventilation shafts and launching shafts for tunnel boring machines. This new line is called the Northern Link and should be ready in 2034.

These photos were taken in December 2020 with a Nikon D850 24-70mm f/2.8.

IG: IamtheUrbex (https://www.instagram.com/iamtheurbex/)

#城市探索 #廢墟攝影 #廢探 #香港廢墟 #廢墟

21/03/2026

Maykong Godown Silk Mills is one of the most famous abandoned places in Hong Kong and has been abandoned for over 40 years. It was built in 1966 by a Shanghai industrialist who moved to Hong Kong in 1953 due to no longer being able to operate from his home because of Korean war related economic sanctions and nationalisation. Located in Tsuen Wan this mill specified in the production of silk and rayon and was a central part of the golden age of textile production in Hong Kong due to its focus on high end silk. Textiles at this time were a major part of the Hong Kong economy but like all good things this was not to last partly due to the death of the founder in 1977 which resulted in his family deciding to shut down production because the mill was aging and rising costs led to the firm to relocate production to Guangdong in the 1980s, which is same fate as almost the entire Hong Kong textile industry, as it has been in most places around the world. This trend is now also hitting China as companies there find other places like Bangladesh to be much cheaper to operate in. Lower costs always win in the end.

The factory consists of 2 main buildings which are the famous red brick building which was used for storage and the second which is where production took place. These photos are from the production building though sadly almost all the machinery had long since been removed. It is quite strange that this site which is situated in central Tsuen Wan would have been left abandoned as long as it has but in most of these instances the causes are due the children being unable to agree how to fairly divide the proceeds. I guess fractions & percentages were not taught to these people when they were children if this was indeed the case. It could also be that this company is a global company with factories all over China which perhaps mean that this little old place just got forgotten about though there have been reports that at one time there was a live-in caretaker with a fascinating VCD collection.

All of this has since changed because in September 2025 Billion Development and Project Management Limited bought the site for HK$476 million, which is about 61 million USD. The site has now been secured and sealed as work is about to begin if it has not already. The interesting thing about this purchase is less the time it took for this to finally happen but the fact that is was a court-ordered sale in which the authorities decided that this site has been left vacant for too long and forced the owners to accept sale which means after all these decades the children probably had yet to agreed what to do with the site. At this moment in time no future plans have been announced but the mill will probably be demolished and turned into apartments though there has been some talk of keeping the buildings and turning the site into some high end complex like a luxury car showroom or corporate headquarters though I doubt this will be the case. Just too much money can be made from selling apartments less than 5 minutes walk from Tsuen Wan station.

These photos were taken in December 2021 with a Nikon D850 35mm f1.4.

IG: IamtheUrbex (https://www.instagram.com/iamtheurbex/)

#城市探索 #廢墟攝影 #廢探 #香港廢墟 #廢墟

12/03/2026

If there is one thing you can say about a lot of people in Hong Kong is that they are chancers who are not afraid to take a risk on the off chance that things may work out. The roots of this could come from a deep belief in luck and fate which runs deeply through traditional Chinese culture or it might lay in the fact that the vast majority of people here are descendants of those who have fled to Hong Kong from the 1930s on wards. This sort of experience can easily create a way of thinking which values resilience and pragmatism in which you will take the chance of building a home even if the government may eventually come and move you along because your structure is illegal.

The ruins of this shack can be found in Kau Lung Hang village in Fanling, Hong Kong and this is a typical example of the type of squatter huts that can still be found throughout Hong Kong in place like Pok Fu Lam village. Though this cluttered example was a lot bigger and more elaborate than most. Gradually these structures are being demolished as the government develops more and more far flung areas of Hong Kong. I have no idea when this was built or even whether the people who lived there left by choice or not.

These photos were taken in February 2023 with a Nikon D850 35mm f1.4
IG: IamtheUrbex (https://www.instagram.com/iamtheurbex/)

#城市探索 #廢墟攝影 #廢探 #香港廢墟 #廢墟

08/03/2026

RAF Tai Mo Shan radar station or as it was designated, Project Cabbage Leaf, was a radar station built on top of Tai Mo Shan in the 1950s and was manned by the 117 signal unit of the Royal Air Force. It was built to provide long-range surveillance and monitoring for British intelligence service during the height of the Cold War. It remained in operation until 1996 and was subsequently taken apart as there would no longer be a need for it after the 1997 hangover. The remaining derelict buildings which are still there were the offices and operation buildings for the base and they have remained abandoned since. I would imagine the effort and money involved in demolishing these buildings is not worth it.

Tai Mo Shan is the highest peak in Hong Kong and stands at 957
meters above sea level which also explains why the Japanese built a radar station close to this one during World War 2 which included anti-aircraft guns. Sadly almost nothing remains of these structures.

I recently returned to this site after almost 6 years and since then the base has been extensively trashed with graffiti everywhere. There is even evidence to suggest that a rave had taken place due to all the bottles of alcohol that were all left behind as well as almost inexplicably, a drum set and generator! If I had to guess rich international high school pupils! It is a long hike back to civilization so I would not like to be doing that either drunk or hungover.

These photos were taken in March 2020 with a Nikon D850 24-70mm f2.8
IG: IamtheUrbex (https://www.instagram.com/iamtheurbex/)

#城市探索 #廢墟攝影 #廢探 #香港廢墟 #廢墟

21/02/2026

For a time Ma Wan fishing village was the most famous abandoned village in Hong Kong due to all the media attention it gained due corruption, its prominent location and the existence of tour groups that would take tourist there.

This village had existed for at least 250 years with the Tin Hau temple that was built in 1857 continuing to be used to this day but there is archeological evidence to suggest that people have inhabited this island for over 5000 years. The most likely reason that the village itself is relatively new is because of the The Great Clearance of 1661–1669 in which the recent Manchu usurpation of the Chinese empire had resulted in large scale Han rebellions against their new rulers and who continued to remain loyal to the previous Ming dynasty. So the plan of the Qing emperor was to move large amounts of people away from the Chinese southern coast line to prevent them from aiding Ming loyalists who were based in Taiwan as well as isolating any potential Ming loyalists in the coastal areas. After this period the people were allowed to return to places like Hong Kong but unfortunately almost every building had been razed to the ground to prevent any rebels sheltering in them.

In 1997 Sun Hung Kai Properties started the process of buying the village in order to clear a path for the massive luxury residential project Park Island which involved the villager people swapping their old homes for new ones in Ma Wan New Village on the island. This effort turned out to be a multi decade process because many of the villagers held out for a long time and even I went there was still at least one house that had someone living in it in 2018. This caused the town to become famous for being a ghost town.

The process was also complicated by what would become known as the 'Trial of the Century' which highlighted the ties between HK property moguls and the government. In this case it turned out that one of the founders of this company had paid HK$19.6 million in bribes to the Chief Secretary of Hong Kong, Rafael Hui, who was the second most powerful politician in the city. This was done to ensure that the government remained "favourably disposed" toward their interest during the complex land-swap negotiations and the long-stalled relocation process, effectively turning the village's abandonment into a central piece of evidence for misconduct in public affairs. Part of this included allegedly being provided insider information on land sales and government projects such as this Ma Wan Park development. This would become a major piece of the evidence during the 2014 trial and this resulted in Hui being fined HK$11.18 million and sent to prison for 7.5 years and one of the brothers was fined half a million and send to prison for 5 years. This verdict sent shock waves through HK elites and was the first time such individuals were sent to the big house for these types of crimes. It also forced the government to be more transparent in subsequent land-swap deals and large-scale redevelopments to avoid accusations of collusion and corruption.

As part of the 1997 land swap deal for Park Island, the developers were legally required to rejuvenate the old village and in March 2025 this happened with the opening of Ma Wan 1868. This has turned the old village buildings into an art and lifestyle hub, whatever a lifestyle hub is. All the buildings have been painted over in artistic ways with mural and vibrant colours by local and international artists and the village is now populated with coffee shops, galleries, shops and creative studios in order to turn the location into a major cultural and tourist hub.

These photos were taken in March 2018 with a Nikon D610.

IG: IamtheUrbex (https://www.instagram.com/iamtheurbex/)

#城市探索 #廢墟攝影 #廢探 #香港廢墟 #廢墟

IamtheUrbex

17/07/2026

23/06/2026

06/06/2026

23/05/2026

26/04/2026

05/04/2026

21/03/2026

12/03/2026

08/03/2026

21/02/2026

Address

Website

Alerts

Shortcuts

Share

Category

Listing takedown request