1960s Hong Kong

Can anyone tell me where this picture is taken?  My wild guess is Kennedy Town or Sai Wan.  Does anyone have better information?

The photo is an aerial shot of the former Macao Ferry Piers in Sheung Wan and the Poor Man's Night Club (Dai Dat Tei) i.e. where the carpark is.

I was quite fond of the place then.  As a kid and living in Macau at the time, we would travel to HK to visit relatives and take the midnight 'big ferry' back home.  It would take three hours and necessitated a snack before boarding.  Where else but Dai Dat Dei for cheap and tasty delicacies?

During the early 2000s, they tried to revive the place by setting up a new Dai Dat Dei and asked little stall owners to get going again, but society had moved on, and it just didn't work.  

    This picture should be taken between 1965 to 1971. It was the Macau Hong Kong Ferry Terminal, roughly the same location as the present one where it is a muti-storeys terminal pus business towers. The boat at the front location was the first generation hydrofoil plying the waterway, quite un-comfortable and you could get sea sickness easuly.  The ship in the far location was the Steamliner Macau, the most luxury ferry of the waterway by then.  The ship was owned by Stanly Ho's Company. They recruited a group of Australian Blondies to perform strip dancing during almost every journey.  Although it was the fastest and most luxury one, it was actuallu a used ship bought grom England.  It was originally called Princess Margret in England begore acquired by Mr. Ho's Company.  The ship was eventuallu blown to the ground of lantau by a huge typhoon in 1970 or 1971 and was then decommissioned and scrapped.  The same typhoon also sank another Hk-Macau ferry Fat Shan which drowned and killed about 80 of the crews.  

Did the Shum Shui Po ferry dock moved to behind this hydrofoil?  The appearance there and the concrete steps into the water suggest to me this was the same site.  I cannot spot the washroom (standing room only inside I recall) in this photo so it was demolished by the time this photo was taken.  One historical photo shows the washroom located in front of the market.  There was almost always a large passenger ship at the dock in the foreground whenever I used the SSP ferry in the 50s and early60s.

In the picture,there are several piers behind the larger steamliner, they are probably ferry piers to SSP and Jordan Road.  Also there was a pier to outlying islands, and further into central should be Star Ferry.

Thanks boaviva for pointing out the outer piers,

Hi Boaviva, I'm a new comer of Gwulo, glad to see your post and I was very familiar with your experience when I was a child, my grandmother lived in Macau until she passed away, so my family always visited her at that period of time, usually 1 to 2 times a month and took mid-night ferry to Macau, I lived in Sham shui po and needed to take Yau ma tei ferry from SSP to Central at around 10pm, took a walk in 'poor man night club' and boarded to ferry, the ferry that I took mostly was 'Tak Shing' and 'Fat Shan' (the ferry in the photo, behind it was Tak Shing), 'Tai Loy' and 'Macau' were departed earlier so we took them not very oven. At that time,'Macau' belong to Shun Tak; the other three belong to three different companies unit they all sold to Tai Tak Hing. After Fat Shan was sunk and Macau was seriously damaged during typhoon, Shun Tak bought a old ferry from Japan named 'Wah Shan'  to run the line until three new sisters from Japan : 'Tai Shan, Nam Shan & Lo Shan', miss that moment.

Hello Chinful,

         Sorry for overlooked your mail.  Looks like we are all Macau friend.  Welcome to this nostalgic site.  Beside, do you have a facebook account ? My facebook name is Dave Vogel.  There are plenty of similar nostalgic groups there also.  You can also add me there.  Anyway, keep in touch and travel back to the lovely Old HK and Macau always.

boaviva