Jordan: One MTR Stop North of Tsim Sha Tsui, and Noticeably Cheaper

Jordan: One MTR Stop North of Tsim Sha Tsui, and Noticeably Cheaper

You want to stay near the harbour and the museums, but the hotel rates in Tsim Sha Tsui have you reconsidering the whole trip. Book a room in Jordan instead. The difference is one MTR stop. One stop on the Tsuen Wan line. And a hotel bill that drops by 30 to 40 percent for the same standard of room. What you trade is the view. Jordan has no harbour panorama, no grand hotel lobbies, and no Avenue of Stars. What you get is a dense, working class neighbourhood where a bowl of wonton noodle soup costs HKD 8 less than the version served further south, and where the northern end of Temple Street Night Market sits a two minute walk from your hotel door.

Jordan is the neighbour Tsim Sha Tsui does not acknowledge. The building stock runs from 1950s to 1970s, with some pre war tenements still standing. The median monthly household income in this part of Yau Tsim Mong is around HKD 24,000 to 26,000, according to the 2021 Census, about half what you would find in the luxury towers facing the harbour. That income figure tells you something about the restaurants here. They are not designed for tourists. They are designed for people who live in apartments where the average floor area per capita is 15 to 17 square metres. Nobody has a kitchen big enough to cook a proper meal, so the street does the cooking. That is the real selling point of Jordan.

The expatriate population in Yau Tsim Mong as a whole sits at roughly 5 percent, per the same census. One in twenty. When you eat in Jordan, you are eating among Cantonese speaking residents. The roast meat shops, the congee stalls, the cha chaan tengs serving Hong Kong style milk tea with condensed milk, they exist because the neighbourhood needs them, not because a guidebook told them to. That is a different texture from Tsim Sha Tsui, where the ratio of souvenir shops to hardware stores has tipped hard toward the former.

The One Stop Trade: What You Actually Lose and Gain

What You Lose

Take the MTR from Jordan to Tsim Sha Tsui. Trains run every two to three minutes. The journey is three minutes. Step out at Tsim Sha Tsui station, walk through the underground passageway, and in another seven minutes you are on the Star Ferry crossing to Central for HKD 5.0 on the upper deck on a weekday, a fare that has held steady since the 2024 rate was set by the ferry operator. From Jordan station to Central station via the Tsuen Wan line, the adult Octopus fare was HKD 12.5 at the 2024 published rate from the MTR Corporation. That is the same fare as Yau Ma Tei to Central, despite Yau Ma Tei being one stop north.

You cannot walk from Jordan to the harbour front, not comfortably. It is a 15 minute walk south along Nathan Road, past the budget electronics shops and the guesthouses, before you hit the Tsim Sha Tsui Promenade. You also lose the prestige address. If you need to impress a client or your Instagram feed requires a pool with a skyline behind it, Jordan will not deliver.

What You Gain

What you gain is twofold. First, your hotel room will be larger for the same money. Jordan has a high concentration of mid range guesthouses and three star hotels that cater to mainland Chinese tour groups and independent budget travellers. The markup for the Tsim Sha Tsui name does not apply. Second, you gain what the census data calls a working class neighbourhood and what the traveller experiences as honest street life. The noise, the neon, the wet market smells, the mahjong tiles clicking from open ground floor windows. None of that is staged. It is the city operating as it has for decades.

Temple Street and the Yau Ma Tei Connection

Temple Street After Dark

Jordan does not feel like a self contained destination. It feels like the connective tissue between Yau Ma Tei to the north and Tsim Sha Tsui to the south. The Jordan MTR station sits on Nathan Road, and the useful part of the neighbourhood lies to the east, toward Temple Street. That street runs for about 600 metres from Jordan Road up to Kansu Street, operating from 14:00 to 23:00 daily. Go earlier and you will find shuttered stalls. Go after 18:00 and the food vendors are firing up the woks. The southern section, near Jordan Road, is where the fortune tellers set up. The northern section, closer to Kansu Street, has the better food stalls and the counterfeit watch sellers.

Two Markets Worth The Walk

At the northern edge of Temple Street, at the junction of Kansu Street and Battery Street, you find the Yau Ma Tei Jade Market, open 10:00 to 17:00 daily. It is a collection of perhaps 400 stalls under a metal roof. Most of the jade is not high grade. The serious collectors buy elsewhere. But the market is worth a 15 minute walk through for the noise and the negotiation ritual alone. A block west, on Waterloo Road and Reclamation Street, stands the Yau Ma Tei Wholesale Fruit Market, established in 1913 and operating 24 hours. Arrive at 04:00 to 06:00 for the peak activity, when trucks unload mangoes, durians, and longans under fluorescent lights. Most tourists miss it because it requires a pre dawn alarm. That is exactly why you should go.

Getting Around and Eating in Jordan

Transit From Jordan

Jordan sits on the Tsuen Wan line, the north south spine of the MTR. You are three minutes from Tsim Sha Tsui, eight from Central, and ten from Yau Ma Tei to Central if you interchange at Admiralty. The station has two exits. Use Exit A toward Temple Street and the night market. Use Exit E for Nathan Road and the bus stops that connect to the A21 airport bus, which costs under HKD 45 and takes about 45 minutes to the airport. The Octopus card is essential here. Top it up with cash at any 7 Eleven or Circle K. Most small restaurants in Jordan still do not take cards.

Where To Eat

Eat at the cha chaan teng on Parkes Street, just off Jordan Road, where the pineapple bun with butter costs HKD 10 and the milk tea is poured through a cloth sock filter. Eat at the claypot rice stalls on Temple Street when the weather turns cool, November to February. The lap cheong sausage version is the right order. Skip the tourist oriented seafood places on the main drag. Walk one block east to the side streets and follow the crowds of workers eating lunch. The roast goose is not as refined as the famous Wan Chai shops, but the price is half and the queue moves faster.