iDrink Stone Houses

This row of handsome stone houses is home to a cool vintage café. The décor takes you back half a century: phonographs, steel plates and posters on the wall and typical Cantonese tea-time food such as pineapple buns on the menu. Like what you see? Visit the small museum upstairs that shows what life was like for Hong Kong's Chinese immigrants in the 1950s.

The stone houses date back to the days of World War II. The Japanese built them as a refuge for people from the villages that were demolished to make way for the expansion of Kai Tak airport. After the war, many Chinese immigrants came to Kowloon City and, with them, new businesses. The stone houses were home to movie production houses and, after that, a tombstone factory. The large characters saying 'Lam Yun Kee' engraved on the stone houses are a reminder of those days.

These stone houses are locally known as 'Ho Ka Yuen' (Ho's family garden). This name is the only reminder that in the early 19th century—long before the stone houses were built—this was the private garden of the wealthy Ho family, complete with an orchard of fruit trees.