In a few days I’ll be flying to London via Hong Kong, and I might get stuck there for a while as I am flying on stand-by. I’ve never been before, so what can you recommend for me to do there on a budget? I’m also interested in budget accomodation (hostels or anything cheaper than a hotel). I’m female, and looking for something safe and clean. Forgive me if this has been asked before as I can’t use the search function on my guest membership.
Stay on one of the outer islands. ‘Outer’ is not far, it’s a small place. Try Lamma or Cheung Chau. Or you could try one of the huge cheap hotels in Kowloon but I’m not sure they meet the ‘safe and clean’ requirements. Overall it would be worthwhile to get your hands on a “Lets Go Hong Kong” guidebook. It is a good guide to accommodation and sightseeing, with maps and particular accommodation recommendations.
By and large it is a pretty good place to just walk and look, (but carry water as it is hot.) Especially the Main part of Hong Kong Island. Other tourism stuff:
- The tram up to the Peak.
- The statute on Lantau Island.
- Stanley on the south side of HK Island - especially the beaches, market and Maritime Museum.
- But really the best is to take the trip to Macau, it’s quick enough and there is a lot more to see there.
I have been in Hong Kong for a couple of months, and am still pretty ignorant, but we are living in the village of Mui Wo on the island of Lantau. Some advantages of this place:
- There is a decent hotel, the Silvermine Beach Hotel. It is cheap and, if you stay in the newly-constructed wing, clean, modern and comfortable.
- The airport is on the island of Lantau, so you can take a bus directly from Mui Wo to the airport.
- There are lots of walking paths around Mui Wo which lead to a large number of interesting shrines, etc.
- The bus station in Mui Wo has buses for all of the island’s major attractions (the Big Buddha, Po Lin monastery, etc.).
- There is a ferry pier in Mui Wo, about a 5-minute walk from the hotel, with ferries every 30 minutes or so to Central Hong Kong (the ferry ride is about 30 minutes if you take the fast ferry, and 50-55 minutes if you take the slow ferry).
- There is a great pub.
I know there is (or at least used to be) one or more permanent Hong Kong residents on the board. Hopefully someone with more knowledge than I will be along shortly.
I agree - stay on Lamma, at Yung Shue Wan (better ferry links than Cheung Chau). Very cheap and a vibrant, cute little village with lots of international restaurants. I lived there for a few years and can confirm it’s lovely. Just don’t miss the last ferry back from HK!
The other option is Chungking Mansions or Mirador Mansions in TST, which are both shit-pits and can seem scary, and there are a lot of unsavoury characters hanging around outside. Though I have to say, HK is one of the safer big cities to visit.
Get an Octopus card on arrival - this gives you discount public transport all over the territory, and you get most of your credit and deposit back if you remember to cash it in when you leave.
Cheap outings: the Star Ferry is the cheapest “great boat journey of the world” ever - about US$.30 for the most amazing view of the city. The HK island trams are even cheaper and you can ride the main line in a great big loop and see lots of street life. And the Mui Wo trip, thence to the Big Buddha by bus to Ngong Ping, is dirt cheap and a great day out, with fantastic views. The entrance to the monastery includes a free vegetarian dim sum meal, which is excellent.
I’m envious, but I’ll be back in July, so WOO! Ngoh Ngoi Heung Gong.
Oh, and don’t stay in Hong Kong’s only Youth Hostel. It’s miles from anywhere, a long walk up a hill, and many people have reported getting bed bugs from it.
I second this and mainly because it is convenient to the airport. Lamma Island at least used to be horrible for an airport connection. I lived on Lamma in the late 1980’s and disco bay in the mid 1990’s so my info is outdated. Lantau has tons and tons of hiking.
HK is a pretty safe place
If you really want to experience the low budget traveller life, you can’t go wrong with Chung King Mansions. (Please don’t stay here, while an experience it’s too low budget for most normal people. China Guy who probably spent a combined 6 months total in the various ultra low budget hostels of TsimSha Tsui over a period of 4 years in the 1980’s)
It’s still not totally convenient, but now it’s just 30 mins by ferry to HK Central, then a quip hop onto the Airport Express. Makes a change from 50 mins, then MTR to Hung Hom, then taxi. Or whatever.
We stayed here about 10 years ago and liked it very much, very clean and safe. You don’t have to be a member of the church (we’re atheists and there’s no preaching).Booth lodge
Thanks for the information. I read some reviews about Chungking and Mirador Mansions, and while it is cheap as anything, I just don’t think I have the nerve to stay there.
How does the octopus card work? Do I just put however much money on it and top it up as I go? Is it valid on all modes of transportation–ferry, bus, subway?
Thanks again!
Yeah, you can buy one at the airport; also, any ferry pier has an Octopus Service Center where you can buy one. It has an RFID or something in it, so you just wave it in front of a scanner and the correct amount is deducted. You add money at the aforementioned Service Centers. They are accepted on, as far as I can tell, every single form of public transportation. Also, some shops accept them (e.g., McDonalds and 7-11).
Thanks for the replies so far. As I’ve been making travel plans, I’ve become increasingly interested in visiting Macau. Looks easy enough to get there from HK. A day trip was suggested above, and I think it looks like an interesting enough place to even spend a night. It seems a bit cheaper than HK as well. Any tips on Macau including accomodation or anything else you can think of?
Sadly, I haven’t yet been to Macau. 
I stayed in a hostel in Hong Kong that I found through hostelworld.com. I think it was this one, but I’m not 100% sure because there are a few hostels in that same area…
http://www.hostelworld.com/availability.php/WangFatHostel-CausewayBay-1168
in any case, it was clean, nice, affordable, and safe, although the incessant noise of the nearby shopping center bothered me at night. I am female and was traveling alone.
I liked Macau–it’s quieter than Hong Kong and makes a nice break from the big city. Make sure to try the food specialties of Macau: the fusion Portuguese-Chinese food, and the “po taat”–a rich, creamy egg tart with a caramelized sugar topping.
Cheung Chau and Lamma Island are both wonderful places to visit and hike, but you’ll find transportation easier if you stay in Kowloon or HK, near the subway. There are quite a few fun, free/cheap things to do in HK… wander the street markets, window-shop, visit the free outdoors zoo and parks, visit the outlying islands as mentioned above. They are still very undeveloped and pretty. I have fond memories of a delicious bowl of “dou fu fa” (silken tofu in a sweet ginger sugar syrup) bought from a little vendor in a tropical forest clearing on Lamma, and exploring a tiny cave on Cheung Chau where pirates on the South China Sea used to hide their loot. You can rent a bike on Lamma and it seems like great fun to spend a day just biking around the island, looking at the ocean. Oh, and there’s a restaurant on Cheung Chau where you can bring them fresh seafood and veggies bought at a nearby market and they’ll cook them to order. How cool is that?
Maritime museum in Macau is a must-see, which is why HK copied it. The temples are blah. But the main museum is good too.
The guide books are usually titled “Hong Kong and Macau” and will tell you everything current.
If you like budget smokes, then Chungking mansions as mentioned by jjimm is also a good place to look. Also for curry.
There is basically no crime in Hong Kong unless you look for it. Make sure you go to monkey hill too (short bus ride oop north).
I haven’t been to Macau since all the new casino’s went up. If anyone can confirm, it used to be pretty fun to go to the old church (?) facade, through all the shops and down to the piazza.
fernando’s restaurant on the third island was awesome. I gave up 10 years of vegetarianism there for the ribs.
My info is 15 years old.
OK, this is the third time I’ve written this - deleted twice, entirely due to user error.
If you have the time, a day trip to Macau is definitely worth it. It’s got a very different feel to Hong Kong: historically, the Portuguese integrated much more with the locals than the Brits, who kept the Chinese at arms length and snootily talked about “going native”, so there’s a distinct Macanese “race”, and everyone there, Macanese, Portuguese or Chinese, seems a lot more friendly.
Also, the economy of the place wasn’t so frenzied in the 1960s-80s, so even though it’s very developed, it still retains much more of the colonial charm than Hong Kong (in HK you’ve got the Legco building, the Governor’s house, and some places up the back of Lan Kwai Fong, but the rest has been ‘developed’).
Like HK, it’s a peninsula and some islands, but the city part is confined to the peninsula. The two islands to the south, Taipa and Coloane, are a lot more rural and quiet, with little Portuguese/Chinese villages on them. That said, I was last there in 2000 and since then an airport has been built on Taipa, which has also had a lot of development on the north of the island, so things may have changed a bit. The whole place is absolutely jam-packed with Hongkies on short trips, but you’ll hardly see them as they’re wedged into the many casinos, and the streets are therefore relatively quiet.
In the city, as ChinaGuy says, there’s the symbol of Macau, the facade of the ruined Sao Paolo mission, which is worth a walk to, and you can stroll down the hill there and end up in “Rolling Motion Square”, so-called because of the wavy mosaic tiles therein. I also echo the sentiment that the Maritime Museum is well worth a visit. The temples are just temples, same same Hong Kong, though there’s a nice one up by the Chinese border somewhere.
Taipa has a nice wee fishing village on it, and Coloane, the southernmost island, has a place at Hac Sa beach that is one of my favourite restaurants in the world: Fernando’s, which serves beautiful Macanese food: Portuguese staples, influenced by the flavours of Mozambique, Goa, and China, as the trading ships plied their route to the spice islands. The African chicken there is one of the nicest meals I’ve ever eaten!
You can get around on the buses, but you’ll have to do a bit of guesswork. Many expatriates hire a Mini-Moke when they’re there, which is probably a little bit cheaper than the other alternative, which is getting taxis around.
Not sure about accommodation - it’s a bit pricy. A day trip, however, would be quite tiring. The boats to take you there are jetfoils, which are super-cool, but I don’t know how late they run.
Thanks, Dopers, for the many suggestions. In the morning I am leaving Australia for Hong Kong and spending 5 nights there. I plan on going to Macau for a day trip. I may end up spending the night because the food sounds too divine to consume in any less than 24 hours. I’ll be printing this thread in the morning and will try to tick off as many Doper recommendations as I possibly can.
Regards,
Foggy
If you have the budget, the Pousada de Coloane is a nice enough 3-4* hotel near Hac Sa and Fernando’s.
I took my girl there one Valentine’s, tried to carry her over the threshold, and dropped her on her head. But don’t let that put you off!