Best things to do in Hong Kong on a rainy day

Put your shooting skills to the test and get the heart pumping with a game of laser tag at Lasermads, Hong Kong’s newest lasertag joint in Causeway Bay. Step into a futuristic maze and battle it out with teammates to eliminate your opponents in this high-tech game of tag, which comes with the added bonus of teambuilding and the satisfaction of shooting down your opponents. Walk out feeling like a rebel fighter in Star Wars. $118 per game.

Cure cabin fever on a rainy day with some intense jumping action. Ryze, Hong Kong Island’s biggest trampoline park, is lined with trampolines from wall to wall, plus there are foam pits and rope swings allowing the daring to unleash their inner ninja. All visitors have to sign a liability waiver but once you’re in, you can bounce, flip and jump to tremendous heights all to your heart’s content. It’s a surprisingly decent exercise workout, too. Starts at $150 for one hour.

Taking bubble football (or soccer to certain heathens out there) to a whole other level, Crossfire Arena offers competitors glow-in-the-dark bubble suits to bump about in when playing on the indoor pitch. Learn drills and strategies that will immediately go out the window as teams waddle across the pitch trying to score before inevitably getting knocked to the floor. Aside from bubble football, Crossfire has a whole host of other fun neon-themed games including archery tag, dodgeball and neon sabres — lightsabre duels, anyone? $225 per person.

The perfect way to kill some time indoors with your buddies, Causeway Bay’s Breeze features three standard-size pool tables and convertible beer pong tables. This is the only place in town where there are live cam services installed to capture all your best shots throughout your game. And yes, Breeze lets you rewatch all the footage so you can admire all those sweet shots. Fuel up on beer on tap, customised cocktails and a range of pub bites.

Hoverboards may be so last season, but Azzita Hoverland has ingeniously created an indoor track for people to race around in. Doubling up as a hoverboard retailer and repair center, Azzita’s 5,000sq ft indoor playground in Kwun Tong allows patrons to zip along the twisty and winding track on electronic balancing boards. It costs $119 per hour on a weekday and 139 on a weekend. Take it a step further and hop on a hover mat, a type of go-kart powered by a hoverboard. Note though that they’re a lot pricier. Azzita has also just opened a smaller venue in Repulse Bay that’s perfect for private parties. 

Ever since the rise of powerful gaming consoles, arcade centres have been slowly disappearing from Hong Kong streets. One of the few retro-style arcades that still remains is Game Centre, a short walk away from the IFC on Jubilee Street. You can find a range of classic series like Street Fighter and Gundam, and pretty decent prices for driving games and shooters. Plus, when the weather’s got you down, you can’t go wrong with a round of Taiko Drum Master. Most games cost $2-per-credit and you can exchange your notes for coins at the counter. Relive those childhood after-school sessions!

Opened in 2018, Wheat and Wood is one of Hong Kong’s newest board game cafés. Located down a lane between Holland Street and Sai Cheung Street, the place has a huge range of games, everything from Cards Against Humanity to Catan and Saboteur to Tokaido. It’s $90 for two hours play (each extra 30 minutes costs an additional $10), which also gets you $40 credit towards your F&B spending.

Why not take the opportunity to develop a new skill on a rainy day if you’re going to be stuck indoors? There’s a massive food culture in our city and home cooking is all the rage. Complete Deelite is the go-to place to learn the art of baking. Discover how to bake dairy-free cupcakes or create mouth-watering drip cakes from scratch. Want to do it in your own time? Book and reserve a private bake jamming party at its DIY studio and host your own bake-off. Mary Berry would approve! Classes from $550 per person.

Hong Kong is a shopper’s paradise and you can easily lose a day inside Festival Walk, the city’s largest shopping mall. With a skating rink on the top floor, a cinema and more than 200 retail shops and restaurants to pick from, you’re spoiled for choice. Easily accessible from the MTR and KCR light rail stations, the Kowloon Tong mall is the ultimate heaven for shopaholics on a rainy day. 

Inspired by the popular Korean variety show Running Man where celebrity guests complete missions at different landmarks, Running Games invites visitors to tackle interactive challenges and hilarious mini-games. In three elaborately themed zones – a secret garden, a maze in a European-style house and a life-sized chessboard akin to the one from Harry Potter – you can take part in silly games such as human whack-a-mole, role-playing as the ingredients necessary to create a hamburger, and ‘spread the virus’ (sure to conjure SARS flashbacks). Still intrigued? This weird and wonderful activity awaits at San Po Kong. $300 per person (minimum six people).

There’s no need to travel all the way to Tung Lung Island for some kick-ass climbing action, especially when it’s wet and slippery and you can easily do it at a breezy air-conditioned venue in Kwun Tong instead. Go Nature, Hong Kong’s largest indoor climbing gym, offers 6,500sq m of climbing terrain for climbers of all experience levels. Challenge your climbing skills and your noggin’ with its 100 different climbing routes and bouldering problems. First-time climber? There are beginners courses for newcomers as well as kids-only and parent-child courses. What’s also great is that no membership or reservation fee is required. From $350.

There’s arguably no wilder or crazier party room than Best Fantasy in Kwun Tong. This 3,700sq ft venue comes equipped with a whole bunch of large-scale gaming facilities including a giant foosball-type table, table tennis where players blow the ball towards their opponent’s goal, and the pièce de résistance: rain biking, where you and your teammates spin as fast as you can on the bikes to fill up the water tanks and make it rain above your opponents. There’s also karaoke, mahjong tables, game consoles and board games to keep you entertained throughout the day.

While the extreme hype for escape rooms has simmered down over the last few years, Lost Hong Kong strives to update and add regular new challenges to keep things fresh for patrons. For those who don’t know, escape rooms are adventure games where players (minimum six participants) are trapped in pre-set scenario rooms and attempt to escape by solving a series of puzzles within an hour. There are 10 different rooms to choose from with varying difficulties and cool storylines like escaping Alcatraz or finding a friend in Japan’s Aokigahara suicide forest. If that isn’t enough, Lost can even provide tailor-made escape games for special occasion. $150 per person.

If it’s raining cats and dogs, show off your jumps and spins at one of the city’s best indoor ice-skating rinks. Our top recommendation? Slide onto Mega Ice, the city’s biggest rink, for some frozen fun. This international-sized rink plays host to Olympic qualifiers and local figure skating contests. On a regular day, you might see budding ice hockey players zinging pucks around. A free shuttle bus runs from Kowloon Bay MTR station to the rink. After you’re finished, as another bonus, there’s all the shopping you could want at Megabox once you’re off the ice. $50 (includes entry fee and skates rental).

Enjoy documentary screenings on reclining chairs beneath the Space Museum’s iconic dome. Films get projected onto the curved ceiling of the planetarium as viewers learn about astronomy and the vast universe of outer space. Head over to the main museum and discover plenty of info and gadgetry perfect for space enthusiasts.