Hard landing in Hong Kong

Chungking Mansions [Enlarge]

Usually we don't like arriving into a new city at night, but after one look at Hong Kong we knew it didn't matter. Public transport and shops seem to be open all night, and as for the problem of not being able to find your way around the dark streets, Hong Kong has just one word for you: neon! It's amazing what a few tens of millions of gas-filled tubes can achieve.

Hong Kong's shiny new airport is on a shiny new island just off Lantau Island, a fair way out from the action. We caught the airport bus into town as it's the cheapest and simplest way of getting to our hostel. The bus had a multilingual commentary of where we were, along with a dot matrix display of the upcoming stops for good measure. It was impossible to get lost. We just listened for the announcement that we had reached Tsim Sha Tsui district, pressed the bell and got off.

Our hostel is one of ninety guesthouses in a building known as Chungking Mansions. The mansions are on the main thoroughfare through Kowloon, Nathan Road, and are easy to find—just look for the most dilapidated, enormous block of early 1960s concrete that you can see. Then check for a ridiculous number of touts on the street trying to persuade you to stay at their hostel, and go on in. We had booked a room at the Oriental Pearl Hostel on Hostelworld. We had no illusions that it was going to be glamorous or luxurious, but we had chosen it because it had good reviews, and its description on Hostelworld promised that it would be spotlessly clean and spacious, with extra large beds.

We had discovered when trying to book it that there is no really cheap accommodation in Hong Kong. The most basic ensuite hostel room will cost you at least twenty pounds (40 USD) per night; a cheap hotel room will be at least twice that price. Once we booked the room, we got an email back from the hostel to say that we could have a ten percent discount if we paid for the whole seven days in advance through PayPal. This was a bit ominous—they already had a guarantee against no-shows from Hostelworld, so why were they so keen for us to pay the whole lot before seeing the room? We chose not to take advantage of the discount and when we turned up at around midnight we said we would pay for the first night only, then pay the rest the following day. They weren't keen.

We were shown to our room. Reception is in A block, floor three. The room was in E block, floor eleven. Having queued to get into the tiny, slow elevator up to floor three we now had to wait for it again, go back down to the ground floor, walk through a labyrinth of shops and touts and shady corners and general dodgy dealings to the base of E block, queue for the elevator again and take the long ride up to the eleventh floor. Then we found out why they had wanted our money upfront. The room was big enough for two small beds, but there was not enough room to walk around them. The TV was mounted on the wall because there was nowhere else for it to be. The fridge was full of mould. The bathroom was the size of a small shower cubicle. To have a shower your best bet was to sit on the toilet. The room was filthy, as was the bathroom. The view from the window was of a similarly disgusting tower (another part of Chungking Mansions) a few metres away. We found out later that we were lucky to have a window at all! On the plus side however, there was a network cable hanging from the ceiling. We attached it to the laptop and had another look at the Hostelworld website to see what we had been promised.

From the Oriental Pearl's own description on Hostelworld:

… As we see that almost guest rooms in Hong Kong are too small with tiny beds. We especially design spacious rooms with king size beds. We possess all the merits of other hostels, and at the same time, we guarantee an absolutely silent and new environment in every room we have. Rooms are designed according to the level of a 3-star hotel. Both the room and the size of the bed in our hostel is the largest among all hostels in Hong Kong … We have comfortable guest rooms equipped with coffee and tea making facilities, free local direct-line telephone, IDD, color television with in-house movie channel, cable and satellite television, individually controlled air-conditioning, mini refrigerator, hairdryers, 100Mbps high-speed internet access with wireless, mini sofa, clothes chests, reading desk, new 3-star hotel bed sheet and bath towel, bath tub, bath liquid, microwave. There is a self catering kitchen, a washing machine, water machine, 24 hours hot water for shower … We clean rooms and change the bed sheet every day, rooms are spotlessly clean. For the common bathrooms, the staff clean them nearly every an hour! All staff can speak fluent English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese language … Guest is provided with personal digital access key tag.

Sounds great, doesn't it? We have rewritten the above paragraph to reflect the true situation. See below.

… As we see that almost guest rooms in Hong Kong are too small with tiny beds. We give tiny beds too. We possess all the merits of other hostels, and at the same time, we guarantee an equally filthy environment in every room we have. Rooms are designed according to the level of a 1-star hotel. Both the room and the size of the bed in our hostel is as small as other hostels in Hong Kong … We have uncomfortable guest rooms equipped with coffee and tea making facilities, free local direct-line telephone, IDD, color television with in-house movie channel, cable and satellite television (poor selection of channels and bad reception), individually controlled air-conditioning, mouldy and dirty mini refrigerator, hairdryers, 100Mbps high-speed internet access with wireless, mini sofa, clothes chests, reading desk, new 3-star hotel bed sheet and bath towel, bath tub, bath liquid, microwave. There is a self catering kitchen, a washing machine, water machine, 24 hours hot water for shower if you switch on the heater in the corridor and wait fifteen minutes, and hope that nobody switches it off without you noticing… We clean rooms and change the bed sheet every day, rooms are spotlessly clean. For the common bathrooms, the staff clean them nearly every an hour! All staff can speak fluent English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese language … Guest is provided with key.

We called reception and after a while we got the manager to come to our room (it was gone midnight by now). We explained that we had not been expecting hotel quality accommodation, but that we had booked a room based on his description on Hostelworld and we expected him to supply a room which met this description. Unfortunately his grasp of English was very bad (all staff fluent in English, remember) and so we struggled to get across to him that his room was actually fine—better than many we have stayed in—but when we are told in advance that we will get something in return for our money, we want it.

His argument was that the description on the site was for his best room, and obviously we couldn't expect the standard rooms to have these features. We showed him the description, which clearly says "Room facilities and service", not "Deluxe room facilities and service", and we made it clear that we were going to get what he had promised us. After a lot of shouting from both sides he realised that we were not going to back down. He said that in the morning he would move us to a deluxe room for no extra cost. We agreed and let him go.

This morning he came to our room at 10:30 and took us to our new accommodation on the third floor, which is clean, large (for a hostel), has a street view, a bath, a wardrobe and a chair (which we guess is what the manager means by mini-sofa). At least now we can do the washing and hang it somewhere other than directly above the bed. For the money we are very happy, but that's because we're in a deluxe room having paid for a standard. We still have to run the gauntlet of touts to get into or out of the building—now that we don't have our luggage with us they can see that we don't need accommodation, so instead they're touting watches and handbags, and tailored suits. Do we look like we're in the market for a nice new suit?! And because we're on the third floor we can bypass the lifts and use the back stairs. Once we're fully inside or fully outside, it's fine. And we're loving Hong Kong already!

Incidentally, Chungking Mansions is so infamous it even has its own entry on Wikipedia.

Day 109
Hanoi to Hong Kong

This map shows the route we took in this post. Click it to see larger maps of our whole route at flickr.

Maps are taken from the CIA World Factbook.