Hong Kong

Day 286 (April 10, 2019) – Hong Kong, China

I was very excited when our plane landed in Hong Kong. We had been in Thailand and Malaysia for nearly two months and I was ready for a change. Hong Kong certainly provided that. Compared to Thailand, Hong Kong felt modern, sleek, and clean. Exiting the airport, we hopped on a bus that took us downtown. The bus was extremely well signed, quite comfortable (also nearly empty), and had flat screen displays showing all the stops, the time, and our progress along the route. This was definitely not Thailand. You would never find this level of organization there.

The Hong Kong skyline is perhaps the best in the world. I'm sorry, New York, but you can't compete with this.

We were in Hong Kong for a purpose. Outside of your home country, the easiest place to apply for a China tourist visa is in Hong Kong, so we set aside a week in the city to get this taken care of. And as much as I love Hong Kong, this was going to be an incredibly expensive week for us. The cheapest (acceptable) accommodation we could find was a moldy-smelling AirBnb apartment for around $75 a night, and the Chinese tourist visa was going to cost us $335 each. On top of that, I had to purchase a new computer because the one I had bought just prior to leaving on this trip had some serious issues with the display and had to be shipped back home for repair. Whether we liked it or not, we were going to be big spenders this week.

There are a lot of parks in the urban jungle of Hong Kong. There are even flamingos in the pond if you look closely.

Applying for the China tourist visa was fairly straightforward. We went through a government-owned travel agency that, for a fee, helped usher our application through the system. We read you can apply on your own and save some money, but that the official office has little patience for errors or missing information. The travel agency made sure we had everything in place. However, one of our mistakes was arriving on a holiday. We landed on a Thursday and started the visa application process on Friday. While the travel agency office was open, the visa processing office was closed that day for the Ching Ming Festival, meaning that the application wouldn’t even get looked at until Monday. With a three-day processing time we would be able to pick up our visas on the morning of our day of departure to mainland China. It was a little stressful with everything coming together at the last minute, but it all worked out.

An example of what not to do to save money in Hong Kong, but it had been a long time since we had a beer with any depth of flavor.

While we were waiting for our visas, we explored the city and tried our best to be frugal. This was hard to do in Hong Kong because it’s such a fun city to explore.

On the Star Ferry, crossing Victoria Harbor.

If you’re not a city person, Hong Kong might make you feel like you’re a rat stuck in a maze. The sidewalks and streets are dwarfed by huge skyscrapers from every direction. Elevators and escalators are required modes of transportation around the city, getting people over hills, across highways, down into underground tunnels, and up high-rise buildings. It’s not unusual for a restaurant or a bar to be located on the 30^th floor of a building. And even when you’re up that high and looking out the windows, it seems like there are always higher buildings around. Down on the ground level there are small alleyways, steep hills to climb (think San Francisco), elevated pedestrian walkways, and expanses of underground tunnels. The whole city could be called claustrophobic, like a maze packed with people, but I found it fun to explore and experience.

The food all around the city was incredible. The funny part was that most of the inexpensive restaurants we ended up at where essentially the Hong Kong equivalent of a New York dinner. Cheap, fast, and not particularly friendly, but the food was delicious. Rather than getting a club sandwich with a pickle and fries, we were getting giant bowls of noodles, rice with pork, stir fried vegetables, and dumpling soups. Hot tea is always on the table, food comes out one plate at a time, and you help yourself to soup spoons and chopsticks from a hidden drawer built into the side of the table. Rather than ketchup and mustard we had vinegar and chili oil. These restaurants are fast, efficient, cheap, and they turn over tables like crazy. It was always a fun experience.

At a Hong Kong diner.

I also managed to pick up a new computer. It was the fastest electronics purchase I ever made in my life. We went to the Wan Chai Computer Center, a cramped shopping center on the second and third floors of an office building. There were dozens of vendors selling computers and phones and all sorts of electronics. We made a loop around the stores asking for their cheapest computers, each of which I took a picture of. That night I did some quick browsing online, starting with the cheapest computer and working my way up to the more expensive ones, to make sure I wasn’t about to buy anything too under-powered or too poorly rated. After quickly deciding on one of them we went back the next day to make the purchase. I had a day to set it up and update all the software and I was good to go with a new, fully functioning computer in hand. The only problem with it being from Hong Kong is that the keyboard is laid our slightly differently and I find myself constantly hitting “/” and “\” in place of where shift and enter would normally be. This will take a bit to get used to.

The streets of Kowloon.

I really enjoyed Hong Kong the first time we were here in 2014 and I was glad to have a chance to return. Hong Kong provides that intriguing feel of being both familiar yet very different, similar to how we felt in Bogota. Walking around town you feel like you could be in any major city at home. It’s a feeling of knowing how things work and not encountering too many surprises as you do the things you normally do in life. However, there is also a big part of the city that is foreign and different, and you have no idea how that works. But the part that is familiar about the city is comforting enough that you’re willing to throw yourself into the thick of things to try and figure out how the other part of the city works. Just as easily as you can find a bar serving up European beers and soccer matches you can find a dozen hole-in-the-wall restaurants serving up noodles and dumplings. English is widely spoken, but Cantonese is the dominant language. There are markets selling goldfish and turtles, people playing mahjong in city parks, and grocery stores stocked with more unfamiliar items than familiar ones. It all feels exotic, but at the same time it’s really not all that different from home. This all makes for an experience that feels exotic but is easily accessible.

The streets of Hong Kong.

After a week in Hong Kong we were geared up and ready for our travels in China. We heard that mainland China was going to be very different from Hong Kong, and we were excited for the new experience. On our last day we picked up our passports, with their new 10-year multiple entry China tourist visas in them, and boarded a bullet train in Hong Kong’s West Kowloon railway station destined for Guangzhou.

The view from our 23rd floor apartment.