I spent most of my time in Hong Kong doing 1 of 2 things; either looking for accommodation or investigating visas. Hong Kong was more expensive than I thought it was going to be. When people speak to you about Hong Kong, one of the first things they mention is usually the price. As an example, the cost of a hostel room in Chengdu, one of the cheaper places in mainland China, was 40 CNY. In Hong Kong it was 400 CNY. This takes into account the differences in currencies and in reality, the rooms in Chengdu were actually nicer. Things get more expensive around this time of year anyway, so the start of the ‘high season’ was actually a good time for me to leave.

I got to Hong Kong after setting off late from Guilin the day before. I’d got a bus from Yangshuo, where I’d met Tommy, who was visiting Yangshuo with his girlfriend. They had the weekend there, as he only got 5 days annual leave per year, so was having a very quick trip before heading off somewhere else. The bus had dropped me at the same station that I had departed from, but instead of going to Guilin North train station, I needed to depart from the main train station in Guilin. Luckily Tommy had a local guide with him and they were all staying in a hotel opposite the station, so we all walked there together.

Once I had decided that I was happy where the train station was, I went and got something to eat. As is usually the case with things like this, I had picked somewhere fairly early on and spent about 40 minutes walking around, making sure there wasn’t anything better. After eating a very basic and fairly expensive meal (my haggling skills hadn’t worked), I went back to the train station and got on my train. It was a hard sleeper and I don’t remember speaking to anyone.

The train got into Guangzhou, where I followed my Lonely Planet guide and found the ticket office for the trains to Hung Hom. They were actually marked as Kowloon, with is part of the mainland in Hong Kong, but this wasn’t totally obvious until I had checked my ticket. Some Chinese guy who spoke English remarked that we were travelling on 12/12/12 at 12:12, so the world was probably going to end.

Once in Kowloon, we crossed the border crossing (much like in an airport) and I got the metro to my first stop, the first hostel I was staying in. After checking in and getting something to eat, I managed to make it to the Tsim Sha Tsui area for the light show. This was worth seeing and I walked around the waterfront for a bit before getting the ferry across to Hong Kong island, were I got back on the metro back to my hostel.

The next few days were spent:

• meeting with Louise, Syd and Anabelle, who I know from university
• going to the film archive and an exhibition on global German design
• going up to the Victoria Peak on the tram and walking the 2-3 Km around the top
• having an impropmtu tour of the city’s parks
• moving house
• looking into visas
• seeing the Hobbit film.

Visas

The time spent in Hong Kong was meant to be a kind of holiday. The idea was that as I had been travelling for 2.5 months, the ex-British colony would be a good place to relax and get a few jobs done. One of those jobs was planning what I was going to do next. It was obvious fairly early on that I was not going to be spending the full 3 weeks in Hong Kong, so I decided to go to Taiwan. As I had a double-entry visa for China (and wasn’t meant to be flying), this meant re-entering China, getting a train to Xiamen and then get a ferry to Keelung. This would have been fine, but I would have needed a multiple-entry visa (which I should have applied for in the UK) in order to get back into China to continue my journey to Vietnam. As I didn’t know what my plans were going to be when applying for the original visa, this would have meant getting another visa in Hong Kong.

After thinking about this a lot, I decided to go to the Chinese consulate in Hong Kong and apply for a new visa. At this point I hadn’t decided I was flying, so it seemed like a logical choice. The options I was presented with by the consulate worker were as follows:

• it is not possible to have 3 visas active at once. What I had done was apply for a 2nd, single entry visa, hoping to ‘top up’ the one I had with another ‘entry’, so I could get back into China in order to continue to Vietnam. The second visa would have cancelled the first, so this was a waste of money
• it is possible that I could apply for a Chinese visa on the Chinese border (from Taiwan). This is something I would need to investigate, as the consulate employee didn’t have a number for an office there, but she did know that it was not possible to apply for a Chinese visa in Taiwan
• multiple-entry visas can only be requested by Hong Kong residents
• I could use the 2nd visa for travel to Taiwan, but I would need to fly back to Hong Kong to get a 3rd visa for re-entry to Vietnam. As I was getting the train and a ferry to Taiwan, flying back made the journey out there a bit pointless.

After going to the counter a second time to pay for another double-entry visa, I decided that this was actually a waste of time and money and that I was going to fly. This broke the rules of the ‘no flights’ ethos of this trip, but it had to be done. Taiwan wasn’t part of my original plan!

Accommodation

Even though I was in Hong Kong for one week, I had to change where I was staying 3 times. This had not happened before, as even when I hadn’t planned where I was staying, I could always extend my stay by a day wihout any problems. In the case of Hong Kong however, I had to be constantly thinking about where I would be staying next.

The first place I stayed in was actually the cheapest. I got commended by my friends the first time I met them in Hong Kong on how cheap it was. I thought it was quite expensive at the time and the price actually increased on one of the days I was staying there, but I was there for 3 nights without any problems. On day 3, I got moved across the road to one of their other flats that they had been buying and converting to apartments. There I met a Dutch couple and two Swedish girls, who let me follow them to Chung King Mansions, where they were going to be staying next.

Chung King Mansions is a back-packing ‘institution’ in Hong Kong and consists of several apartment blocks (maybe 5) that have been converted into guest houses. I think the same reason existed there as in the first place, as there was nowhere available to stay. I gave up after trying about 3 different places and went in search of an Internet cafe. After looking on Hostel World, instead of there being about 80 room listings, there were 2. One increased by 200 HKD whilst I was looking at it and the other one looked like the best of a bad bunch. I took the details for both of them and set off for Mirador Mansions, which is just down the road from Chung King Mansions. Here I spoke to someone in one of the guest houses that had spaces on Hostel World, but not in reality. Without a booking, I was not going to get anything here, but the man inside came out and offered to give me some advice on where to stay. One of the places he gave me the details for he described as having “many bedbugs”, so I crossed that off the list immediately. Amongst other places, he recommended one place in the same building, which I decided to go and have a look at. Once I was downstairs, I asked the woman behind the counter how much each room was and whether I could have a look. The cost of the room was 200 HKD, 600 HKD cheaper than the expensive place from before, but she wouldn’t let me look at it. Not taking no for an answer, I waited around until someone was free to show me a room. Having walked around for about 4 hours, as soon as I saw the room I took it. It was a single room with a 3/4 size matress and 3 of its 4 sides were touching the bedroom walls. It had air-conditioning and a bathroom and toilet, so instead of going back upstairs and talking to the original woman, I gave the person who had showed me around the price they were asking for. With this sorted, I could go and do something else with my day.

Two nights later I decided to move out, as I was in need of a change. I stayed in the most expensive place yet, a hostel on Hong Kong island which was more expensive than the first place I stayed in and less good. After having spent 7 days in Hong Kong, in 3 different places, I was ready to move on.