We’re either lucky enough to be able travel or spend time dreaming of travelling, it’s a way to escape the day to day grind.

We’ve been privileged enough over the years to have traveled to a number of countries around the world like South Africa, Singapore, Hong Kong, Mauritius and England. Now, when we decide to travel, we always look to see if there’s a race track we can visit as part of our trip.

Hong Kong Jockey Club – Sha Tin

Part 1

The first overseas track we went to was the Hong Kong Jockey Club. This track is something else, I can only describe it as immense. We found out on our first trip that the inside of the track was used for equestrian events at the Beijing Olympics back in 2008 which you can just make out in this photo.

To give you an idea of just how big this track is, the top left hand corner is the 1800 meter barriers and to the far right corner is the 1000 meter barrier. The corporate suites, which I thoroughly recommend and will be describe in more detail in my next blog, are on the 7^th, 8^th and 9^th floors. You actually need to go up in 2 lifts to get there, one from the ground to the 6^th floor and then another for the 7^th, 8^th and 9^th floors.

The seats that you can see down the bottom are for the general public and on the day we were there they were expecting over 50,000 people, not including the members areas and corporate suites.

To the far left of the photo, barely in view, is the stables. Unlike in Australia, horses in Hong Kong are housed in what I can only describe as horse condominiums.  The stables are housed in standalone buildings over several levels on the premises of the turf club.

The turf club itself is a little way out of town but you can get a bus or transfer quite easily, takes around 30 minutes from memory, taxi’s aren’t that expensive so you can probably do that as well but if you book a package through your travel agent it’s usually included.