Author: JT

HK: Day 1/Sat summary

Here’s what I managed to do on my first day (a Saturday) after the late arrival the night before:

  • Walked around my immediate area (near Causeway Bay MTR), including a light breakfast (not that many options at 8am!), purchasing and activating a SIM card and wi-fi plan, stumbling on a St@rbucks (pros and cons for that one :-), and a light lunch of squid ball soup at a hole-in-the-wall resto in Jardine’s Bazaar
  • Rode the double decker tram (streetcar) westbound to a loop terminus at Chun Yeun St Market near North Point MTR
  • Walked around North Point area, finding the pier where my dinner cruise will leave from later this week, a little seafood market, little a waterfront promenade, a cement dog run park, a green park and another cement park with (Chinese) Checkers players
  • Hopped on the tram to the next westbound terminus at Shau Kei Wan MTR (not much to see there); the south/inland side of the road/tracks starts going uphill right away
  • Met a nice local traveler named Yin for a veg dinner
  • Walked around Wan Chai in the evening – lots of bars, many with “bad” bands, and hostess bars (apparently this is where the sailors used to go, but the area has cleaned up some)

HK: local SIM card and wi-fi

I bought a local SIM card from PCCW the first morning. Surprisingly I didn’t need to show ID.

Cost was only HK$48/US$6 which included the full HK$48 worth of credit, i.e. the SIM card is effectively free (in comparison, I’ve paid up to US$30 in other countries for a SIM card with almost no credit).
This was for the “no IDD” (international direct dial) version, which means I’d have to call through a special number in order to make international calls, which I’m not planning on doing. The IDD version was maybe 50% more expensive.
Aside: the SIM can snap down to a micro-SIM size if needed, though the package made it sound like it was only micro-SIM, which I had to ask about, since I need a regular SIM)

This gives me a local Hong Kong phone number (good for 180 days or as long as I keep recharging the account), as well as data on my phone at a not-cheap rate of HK$3/U$0.39 per MB. The data was easy to set up on my phone – pretty much just two entries for the APN.

For another HK$48/US$6 I bought a wi-fi plan online from PCCW – that’s the one month one device unlimited plan.
Why one month? It was cheaper than 7 one-day plans.
Why one device? I have two (smart phone, netbook). One device actually means one device at a time (no multiple simultaneous logins).

Note that you have to have a local HK phone number (not necessarily from PCCW) in order to buy the wi-fi plan.

And how useful is the wi-fi service? They have wi-fi locations all over the city, including at some phone booths and in MTR stations (and in the Airport Express train, which is partly why I picked PCCW, so hey, good advertising move for them there).
So while I’m walking about, if I see the PCCW wi-fi logo, I can briefly turn on wi-fi on my smart phone and do a quick email download or google search…

Note: of course there are several competing companies offering pay-as-you-go SIM cards; I’m ntot saying this is the best one, but it works for me.

Wi-Fi for 100m around this PCCW phone booth

rule #1 of travel footwear

Never start a land war in Asia.
No wait, that’s not it.

Never talk about fight club.
Wait, wrong movie again.

Never wear brand new shoes on a trip.

And only slightly less well known: make sure your shoes are still in good condition before the trip!

Yesterday I put on my light hiking shoes in the middle of the day, only to rediscover that the heels are broken.
By that I mean that the hard vertical plastic in the heels are broken, with a slight tear in the fabric, resulting in a hard plastic edge digging in to my heels and shredding the skin. Ouch! It was particularly fun going down (narrow) stairs during my hike, where the heal would hit the back of the stop and dig that plastic in even more.
Why didn’t I throw away these shoes already? Or maybe use some pliers to break out the plastic…

Oddly enough, my main pair of casual shoes has a similar problem (though not as pronounced) in the same spot on the left heel.

HK: More random observations

ok, it’s day three and here are some more random observations:

  • There is an IKEA (with big blue and yellow sign) in the basement of a building in Causeway Bay retail area (i.e. downtown in expensive real estate, something unheard of in North America). And twice now I’ve seen someone carrying a large IKEA item – once downtown, and once off the ferry on Cheung Chau island
  • Octopus card – can use for contactless payments at some stores (e.g. 7-11, Circle K, St@rbucks)
  • Octopus card – can go negative HK$35 (comes off next top up or card deposit refund). A very handy feature as yesterday my HK$2.30/US$0.30 tram fare was more than I had on my card. Oops. No problem – it just debited the fare and I had negative one HK dollar on my card…
  • Octopus card – the card checking machine (which shows balance) also shows last 10 transactions (amount and date), although you’d have to have a good memory if using that to  double-check usage
  • The tram runs on dedicated right of way, and very frequently – often two or three trams back to back. Reasonably quick, with stops pretty much every major block or two.
  • Traffic lights go red-yellow before green, like in Europe
  • Cantonese/English Look Left and Look Right messages are painted on pedestrian crosswalks (both are needed because of one-way roads, and of course it depends which way you are crossing
  • My St@rbucks card worked: similar price $3 for grande soy misto (we’ll see if it counts towards my rewards program, although it’s probably a bad exchange rate :-)
  • $150 for a pair of not-so-fancy name-brand pants (Tommy Hilfiger?) in Sogo department store. Really?
  • One morning I saw 29 wi-fi signals at breakfast. Crikey!
  • Steps tend to be rather steep and narrow here – I don’t think I’ve ever used handrails so much!
  • Some eateries use stainless steel plates instead of styrofoam – I applaud them.
  • Quite a few pedestrian flyovers, as well as long pedestrian bridges (sometimes next to a raised road, sometimes freestanding)
  • Lots of A/C everywhere; annoyingly you get blasted by it while walking on sidewalks due to open doors. How is that excessive power usage environmentally friendly? (for that matter, how is making everything electric/automatic, like faucets and advertising signs on subway escalators, green or helping reduce dependency on oil?)

 

HK: Exhausted on the return ferry

After bailing on going up The Peak because I didn’t want to wait in line for an hour, I hopped a ferry to Cheung Chau Island.
Great day trip!
Fresh seafood, temples, beaches, long walk with views and cool boulders. Epic!
Before rounding the point, the big tower in Kowloon sticks out from a distance, much like Taipei 101.
Also catching the nightly festival of lights.

Tallest building in Hong Kong is in Kowloon, lit up during nightly Symphony of Lights

HK: initial impressions (favourable!)

Weather outlook had potential thunderstorms most days, though I have yet to see more than a 5-second trickle of of a shower, though it was cloudy and hazy yesterday.

Today (the 2nd day here) it’s sunny so just some quick random impressions of Hong Kong from yesterday so I can get out and explore in the sunshine (more details to come):

  • Easy to get around – English and Cantonese bilingual signs everywhere, and efficient transportation system
  • Lots of people. Duh! Although not at 9:00 on a weekend where the streets are empty and most stores aren’t open yet
  • Tall buildings. Well, not insanely tall (besides a handful of buildings), but definitely a vertical city
  • Good food!
  • Some areas (little local street markets) are very reminiscent of Chinatowns in North America :-)
  • There are no toilets in the MTR (subway) – say what!?
  • Even outdoor public parks (which can be small concrete areas with benches and such) are non-smoking! Come to think of it, haven’t seen many cigarette butts on the ground, as most garbage cans on the street have big ashtrays on the top.
  • There are paper/plastic/metal recycling bins around town
  • The double-decker (wood-sided) tram (aka streetcar) is funky and apparently the only one in the world (not sure if it’s the “wood-sided” makes it unique or not – I’ve never seen a double-decker tram/streetcar anywhere else)

And some random notes from things I’ve read:

  • There are 44 (almost) daily newspapers here –  a boon for crossword lovers??
  • Given how expensive land and rent are here, it’s amazing how cheap food can be (esp. when people can be paying half their salary in rent).
  • HK has a “flat” income tax rate of 16%, though with credits for low/regular income, very few people (1% of population) only pay that maximum rate.