Nick Angiers

This was the first time I had visited Hong Kong in about 12 years, and previously I had only gone there from Mainland China (specifically to renew my visa).

At the airport I left from (Saigon) they asked me to show my ticket leaving China; just proving I was leaving HK wasn’t enough.

I was planning to take the ferry from China to Korea, and was under the impression you couldn’t book more than a few weeks in advance. They said at the counter to just make sure I had a ticket when I landed in HK.

So I checked ferries to Korea and it turns out there are none running from anywhere near Beijing, and the two ferry booking apps I downloaded didn’t have anything useful, nor did the official site, so I gave up and bought a plane ticket. It was pretty cheap, just over $100, and will save lots of time.

After landing in HK, they didn’t ask for my ticket, but I’ll keep it in mind for next time that you can buy ferry tickets well in advance, if they’re available.

From the airport, the express train was quite good, and they accepted credit card. I wasn’t planning to take out cash just for two days, since HKD isn’t accepted elsewhere.

On the way, I stopped to get something to eat, and found a steamed bun place that had two mushroom ones left…but they didn’t take credit card. Then I found a sushi place that had inari, but same thing. By this time it was almost 9pm and I was getting pretty desperate. I found another sushi place that had two inari left and accepted credit cards; it took a few tries but eventually worked.

Now it was time to transfer to the subway. One great thing about HK is that anyone whose job involves dealing with random people will generally speak great English. I quickly learned that two of the dozen or so subway entrance gates could be accessed by tapping a valid Visa or Mastercard. Not quite as good as Singapore where you don’t even need a local transit pass at all, but still much better than many big cities in Asia.

Garbage cans were weirdly absent from pretty much the entire train station, much like Japan where I always felt really excited to see a garbage can. I eventually found one but ended up missing my train and had to wait seven minutes, but at least I had eaten something so it was okay.

The subway system in HK is quite efficient, and takes you anywhere you need to go. My hostel (hotel? dive?) was right outside the subway exit.