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Other entries in Hong Kong

Hong Kong

We arrived in Guangzhou and immediately bought a ticket from here to Kowloon, Hong Kong.  We had to wait for 4 hours, since all the trains were booked because of a trade fair they were having in the city the previous day.  We arrived in Kowloon, the Hong Kong mainland around 4 pm and actually used the booking office at the station to find a place........and for 1400 RMB later - yes, that's about $200 CAN we had a place to stay at the New San Diego Hotel........we were completely bummed.  The ride there was in a broken down and re-wired mini-van of sorts that we actually ended up pre-paying $8 for!!!  AND he dropped us off at the wrong place which Andre quickly rectified by calling the booking office at the airport. The room was absolutely beautiful but SO expensive.  We quickly dropped our things off and went looking for a new, much cheaper place to stay!

Our walk took us to other small, kinda dumpy hotels, who were asking for about $180/night!!  Are these people crazy!!!??  Anyhow, after about 3 hours of walking we eventually made our way to the part of Hong Kong we were trying to avoid, Chungking Mansions!  We heard that these are definitely the backpacker ghettos to stay in.......and the place looks like a dump!  Inside and Out!!!!  We by-passed it though, and made our way next door to the Mirador Mansions, also a dump, but a dump with 2 extra elevators that make getting the overpopulated population into the building a little easier!  There's even a note at the elevator entranceway that says that there is a definite overcrowding in this building and that there will be serious injuries and/or deaths if there is ever a fire!!!  And we were considering staying where????  Even with that we made our way to the top 16th floor and made our way slowly down, looking at each guesthouse we could find along the way.

There were rooms without windows and beds 5feet long.  Bathrooms with big black dark holes to nowhere lurking behind the toilet bowl and "this was the best you're going to get in here!!" yelled behind us as we said "no thank you", expecially for $45 CAD!!.  So Hong Kong may be a wonderful place to get your "Western" fix, but you pay dearly for it.  We eventually ended up in the Kowloon Gueshouse in Mirador mansions on the 13th floor.  He took us to the absolutely best room he had -2 double beds and a bathroom with a tub so no wet feet in the middle of the night.  The room has laminate floors complete with a beautiful lining of rat poison along the walls!  nice!  At 550 HK dollars (about $80 CAD) per night, this was the best we saw at the best price, so we took it for 2 nights, knowing that we would prompty be leaving!  Oh, but we HAD a window!!!!!  cool!

Hong Kong was pretty great, with light shows at night and a wonderful shopping district on Hong Kong island that we bought our new camera at.  We are now proud owners of the S21S Canon Powershot!!  Very exciting!  But we ate at Mc Donalds everyday we were in Hong Kong, with one night "out" eating at the Spaghetti house where they had 2 for 1 beer and 50% off food during their happy hour.....pretty sad stuff we know.  We were approached MANY times for "copy watch" but said no thanks.  The only thing we bought in HK was a camera and it's bag and many burgers at McD's..........unless you have an endless budget, don't come to Hong Kong, save the money on the flight here and go shopping at home!  There's nothing special about what they have on sale - we came only to make the 2nd part of our double entry visa valid!

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