Anyone looking to feel like a minor celeb or rock star, and who happens to be a) white and b) fat (and possibly c) male) should head to Lan Kwai Fong (henceforth LKF) on Halloween. It gets very very very busy, and you'll be pretty popular with the crowds.

For minor background: LKF is the leading nightlife district in Hong Kong - it consists of two L-shaped streets on a hill just south of Central, Hong Kong's main commercial area. The bigger of the two streets is called D'Aguilar Street, and the smaller one, which fits into the angle of the bigger L, is LKF itself. The area holds many 10s of bars, pubs, restaurants and nightclubs, is moderately busy on a random weeknight, can be very busy at the weekend (when it's pedestrianised) and insanely busy on holidays like New Year (both 'secular' and Chinese), Christmas and - yes - Halloween. It can get insanely busy enough that in 1992 a crush formed at New Year and 21 people were killed, ever since when there have been police crowd control measures on holidays.

If you were a cynic, you might ask why Halloween even features in Hong Kong, which is a largely Chinese city with a Christian minority left over from colonial days, but it has absolutely zero religious connotation here. Hong Kong is nothing if not a party town, and Halloween is the sort of party they like - dressing up, going out, special offers and decorations in shops and restaurants - and LKF is the epicenter of party life in Hong Kong. Every bar, pub and restaurant is fully-booked, and the the streets, well, they would be a crush if the police crowd control didn't calm things down slightly. As for the crowd control, it's typical of the Hong Kong police - it's reasonably effective, while still being relatively laid-back, friendly and pragmatic. In theory, once the crowd control is in action, you can only enter LKF at the bottom of D'Aguilar street (the bigger L) and leave at the top, and you will be moved through slowly and smoothly. In practice, as long as there's no trouble, they don't work too hard to move people along, and you can easily walk against the official direction. There are plenty of officers around, and I'm sure they'd tighten things up if needed, but as things weren't too mad tonight they weren't too bothered. They had recorded announcements playing in Cantonese and English (slightly randomly, quite clearly Scottish English), as LKF is a central point for expats in Hong Kong, but other than half-heartedly moving people on every now and again if knots were forming, they mainly held back and kept an eye on things.

Costumes. A small minority of the crowd (including my gf, and a friend of ours) wear 'serious' costumes, some traditional Chinese things, some pop culture (at one point, there were two rubber-suited Batmans having photos taken together) and some more traditional costumes - witches, cats, policemen/women, etc. Most of the rest of the crowd have something small, a token nod to dressing up like some horns on a headband, a bit of fake blood, or just something silly. Having worn a large foam rubber wig in the form of a quiff last year, I kept things simple this year - just a novelty oversized green bow-tie and a novelty oversized green plastic glasses frame. Also, a non-novelty oversized green(-clothed) stomach. I was asked a few times if my stomach was real, which is a little disturbing, but other than that it was pretty much the star of the show.

Everyone in the crowd has a camera. Everyone in every crowd has a camera nowadays, of course, built in to their phone, but quite a lot of people in this crowd had real cameras, from point'n'shoots, to DSLRs, to serious pro cameras, as well as cheap handheld video cameras, and one or two professional video rigs. A lot of the people who aren't in serious costumes are there to take photos of the people who are, and that's where the minor celeb feeling comes from. Standing with my gf and our friend, both of them in full-face makeup and costumes, I was at least as popular a photo target as they were. Even in Hong Kong, which genuinely has different norms for privacy and public behaviour from 'the West', it's not common for a local to approach a stranger and ask to take a photo with them, but at LKF on Halloween, it's perfectly normal. I spent maybe 2 hours standing in the street, having my photo taken, mainly with completely random strangers. Young, old, male, female, dressed-up or not, there were times when I had 2 or 3 people asking for a photo at the same time, virtually queuing to have their photo taken with me. It's quite odd, quite enjoyable in small doses, and I can imagine it would be quite infuriating if it happened all the time, wherever you went.

This is the second year I've been to LKF at Halloween with my gf - she has been going in costume for years - and I had a look around online last November, and found not only photos of her from that year, but from previous years. There's something slightly creepy about strangers publishing photos of her online, even if she does go wanting to be photographed...

Photos of the event are available on Facebook, or by request :)