Hong Kong for the Backpacker

Having lived briefly here in HK, I get a lot of questions about where a good place to stay might be, and other requests for travel advice.

For many travelers, Hong Kong (HK) is frequently always a stop on major international flights between Asia and Europe/Middle East or the Americas.

HK Island, for the most part, is not a cheap destination. In fact, in many ways it is a super luxury market. The outskirts away from the Island tend to be cheaper but you see less and it can take time to get to where you are going. If you are aiming for Shenzhen or the mainland, then that's great. If you're aiming for the financial center, then probably not.

HK is a place where the westerner can feel comfortable in Asia, where most things are or have a translation readily available in English. The Mass transit system is world class.

Where to stay

Here is Hostel in two locations - Hong Kong Side and Kowloon (Mong Kok) side -  Yesinn - http://www.yesinspace.com/ I have not stayed here but heard it was better than others.

Hotel: 3 stars - Hong Kong Island side - http://www.mingleplace.com/ near Wellington st. This is the Midlevels region and highly recommended if you want to experience the Hong Kong ' Atmosphere' on the Island. Its also near major tourist sites.

In my head at least, Kowloon has always been the more industrial side, Hong Kong island side the manhattan side. Things have changed a lot in the past 25 years or so, with the modernization of Tsim Tsa Tsui (TST) in Kowloon but the gritty manufacturing side is still there on the Kowloon peninsula.

Hong Kong tends to have a very high people density in very close quarters (claustrophobic close), so in general I would avoid staying at a very cheap place. You will see people wearing face masks to prevent transmission of respiratory diseases in public areas. I personally can tolerate staying in hostels all over Africa, but hesitate inHong Kong because of previous SARS and respiratory disease outbreaks. It is better off for your health and safety to stay at least in a 3 star or above hotel.

Also a word of caution: On the Kowloon side avoid any Hostel on Nathan Road in TST. This whole area is a tourist trap. It is worth visiting TST if you have never been before, but please don't stay here if you are looking for a hostel. The Chungking Mansions on Nathan Rd are where most backpackers stay. I have been harrassed at the front of the building even though I'm Chinese and wasn't staying there. The local touts press visitors for cash and it is a maze of shops with slow as molasses odd/even alternating floor elevators.  Great if you have the energy to deal with it, otherwise visit at your own peril.

Do not stay in Chung King Mansions or any place similar on Nathans Road at any cost. It is not worth your trouble and will wreck your HK experience. 

Transit: the MTR subway system is really good. If you can, do get an Octopus card, instead of the single ride tickets because its very useful. The Octopus card is good for Starbucks, 7-11, Mcdonalds, Watson's, and a lot of other convenience stores. Helps you avoid carrying around spare change - the coins in HK are super heavy. 

If you are flying out of the HK airport you can check your baggage in at the Central or Kowloon station instead of hauling it all the way to the airport. Checking in here with your Octopus card automatically gets you ticket to the airport ($90 HKD) Super awesome service.

Wifi: Free wifi can be hard to come by in Hong Kong for the short term visitor. Your best bet is Y5 internet, which gives you free internet for 20 minutes each day. you can get access at McDonalds or Starbucks. HSBC also has free wifi if you enter their building and just hang out. 

Real Estate and Inflationary Prices in Shanghai

Real Estate

1 bedroom apartment in Shanghai in a new complex will go for anywhere between 2- 3+ Million RMB. That's about 300-500K USD. There are approx 63000 empty apartment units currently open in Shanghai unfilled.

The Cash in the bank is not keeping up with the real rate of inflation. It is fetching a Negative 4%. So real estate is the only way to go for appreciation.

Tech Sector -  this once again proves how there is no way to make any progress into the chinese market unless you are in bed with the communist party members. 

Interest rates in the banks for RMB is yielding negative returns so people are putting their money into real estate. However, he also says that more than 63000 apartments are standing empty unoccupied in shanghai.

People put their money into housing because they believe that's the only place where they can get real rate of return. Like many reports, the mainlanders are not buying housing in HK to stave off potential drops in the market.

iPad - credit, consumerism . his idea is that the consumerism elitist attitude is going to be 10x worse here in china than in HK. Also that China is going to become old before it becomes rich. unlike japan which became rich and then got old. There is a large demographic in china that is growing old rapidly. Also there aren't going to be enough workers to cover manufacturing because the female worker population will be dwindling. the 1990-boom was based on the population of working age that was born in 66-76 ; they needed to put all of these people to work, and so opened up the markets, and increased foreign investment and jobs.

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Prices are inflationary.

The cost of Mcdonalds - a meal is 30-32 RMB in Shanghai, and 26-28 in Hong Kong.  1 USD = 6.48 RMB,  1 USD = 7.7HKD

2 people meal in Shanghai for 187 RMB at a local chinese restaurant, 4 dishes 2 drinks.  mid range.

Tipping is a foreign concept here.

Pacific coffee company - mocha blended drink - medium size is about 5.88 USD, with whipped cream was extra 5RMB, so total is 40 RMB, or 35 RMB

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Costa coffee is a Starbucks look a like that is originally italian, and has significant retail space in Shanghai. It looks like a Starbucks copycat.

Joe says the government reports fudge the inflation numbers all the time. the real rate of inflation is about 8% but they're only doing 4% on the banks so people don't want to keep cash in the bank , its negative interest rate is really painful. they'd rather put it into real estate.

Alvin tells me that his Shanghai friend's family bought property about 1 year ago , it was 2/3 down and their mortgage has a whopping 20% interest on it.

Too much, Too Fast, Too Soon? Commentary on China's Economy

Commentary

Too much, Too Fast, Too Soon?

There is a massive gap between the super wealthy and the poor. Shanghai is very much a 2 speed economy . You have your Maserati, Porche, BMW dealers all lined up in brand spanking new office buildings. And then you turn the corner and there is a guy on a rusty bike hauling bales of hay and bamboo down the street wearing peasant clothes. In a June 13, WSJ article, "In China, Women begin Splurging" apparently 30% of the 400 Maserati's sold last year were to women who were self made billionaires!

I don't believe anything this government says to the world including what it tells its own people. What harmonious society? In a recent copy of the China Daily and the WSJ.com there have been bombings and riots in about 5 different locations around the entire country in the past month. The subways all have metal detectors in them.

Now while it sounds horribly pessimistic, there is a lot of "sweeping the dust under the rug" but the problem is that its not simply "dust"  - they sweeping massive amounts of social problems along with it. And eventually its going to heat up and blow up.

In general try to avoid shanghai in June - august. It is extremely hot and humid. It is also rainy season.

Comment from my friend Alex - " In China, its almost like complete obliteration of self in this city. In the serbia/ eastern europe - they hate each other but they're not out to erase all of their history their past their culture, like this complete razing to the ground of the old buildings in many parts of shanghai."

Hackerspaces in Shanghai

Saturday -

we go to the hacker space - xianchijian - it is pretty central  - one stop down from the Jia'an temple on Jiansu Road.

They are trying to do the hackerspace noisebridge thing. It is located on Anhua road in an old factory where a lot of the local people are and its really nice to bump into a lot of shanghainese speakers. Many people in the space are american, canadian expats.

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Sunday

Xianchijian - went back to see their bamboo hydroponics workshop but it was cancelled. Heard Ricky really like Tianzifang, so I went to check it out.

On Jiangsu lu? there is a french owned store - china-africa fashion. About 1/2 a block down is one of the alleyway entrances to TianziFang. Old architecture has been preserved in this alleyway city. super easy to miss the sector if you didn't look down an alley

Tianzifang - is down an alleyway. I almost missed it the first time around. Even within the maze of old houses, its easy to miss the good spots. A must see place. The inside architecture in some buildings are gems. It was nice to find a place that maintained some of the old french concession character.

China's Demographic Time Bomb

One of the issues that Joe discussed (US visiting professor of economics at Fudan, also sits on real estate investment boards) is what is going to happen with China's own IP when it starts having it? Because right now they are ripping off other people's patents and copyrights and copying books and tv shows and movies like they don't are about the licensing restrictions. In 5-10 years what is going to happen when they create their own IP? How are they going to protect it, if they don't respect other people's IP?

There is also a demographic time bomb waiting to happen, as the largest part of the working population severely declines starting in 2015, because of the one child policy, labor will soon be scare and expensive. Even if they dropped the one child policy today, there would be a gap between '15 and 2026 when the children come of age to work, at the age of 15. So a big part of the massive push for outside investment and manufacturing in china was because they had so many people who were in the working age range from 1990 until now that were born during the great leap forward.  

So we are likely to see a big slowdown after 2015 in the China's growth because there are fewer workers. It may also be the only chance it gets to transition to a service economy from a manufacturing economy, but it depends on the transition to the new party in 2012; we don't know if this new leadership is going to make a mess of things or if they are going to be able to handle the delicate transition. Especially with the amount of civil unrest going on and shifting the consumption away from real estate and toward a consumer market like the US.

Suzhou

Suzhou - Friday

It rained a ridiculous amount. 

Time to travel from Shanghai railway station to suzhou is approximately 22-24 minutes. The speed also depends on the time of day. Trains depart from 4am until 11:30 at night.
It was really difficult to get around in the rain. Suzhou does not have that many native speakers anymore.

Visited silk factory #2 and saw the worms. It is just a museum, not actual silk manufacturing. That is done in outer western provinces where it is cheaper.and also the printing.  After we left the silk museum, we went to the Temple across the street that had 8 floors and a  garden. There were buddist monks playing chinese chess and we joined them for a round.  The rules of chinese chess are slightly different from the kind we play in the west. There is a king, no queen, which can only move in a small range of squares. There is also a "bomb" piece that can hop over other pieces in a vertical or horizontal path. Some of the pieces have different movement restrictions.

High speed train from Shanghai to Suzhou hits about 300km/hr at max. Brand new Hong Qiao rail way station. train parts come from austria, and possibly french? company. Station is brand new, within the last year. There is a new Beijing to Shanghai train that is opening up this month, it will take about 4 hrs, and will compete with the flights , which have long delays at the airports between the two airports.

Joe says that they can't cover the cost of the new line that was built. also a lot of the existing railway traffic was cleared out to allow for the high speed rail . something about the selling of the bonds isn't going to be enough to cover?

The transit subway within the city is horrifically slow if you compare the distance and speed . It only takes about 25 minutes to go from Shanghai Hong Qiao station to Suzhou. At the suzhou train station we bump into a couple of americans who are on their way to go see the temple. They tell us that the 5 bus is the way to get around and also the 9.

Alex thinks the people who live in suzhou are happier than in the city.  It is pouring rain. we ride the 5 bus up and down the street so that we can get a glimpse of the town without getting wet.

I'm noticing that a lot of the people who now live in suzhou don't actually speak Shanghainese. There are a lot of putonghua only speakers.

Internet and Tech in Shanghai

getting out of shanghai metro and Internet censorship
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There are frequent rail lines to suzhou, similar accent to hangzhou, i'm told that i have.
hotel suggests to buy the train ticket to suzhou the day before departure as they get sold out fairly quickly.
Internet filtering makes it really difficult to access any sites outside of China. The service it intermittent. Gmail is really slow. This city is probably the most frustratingly difficult city to navigate in my recent experience. I think the reasons are a combined problem of a

1) really confusing map that combines both english and chinese characters.
2) metro system is not well laid out - there are now 13 metro lines and some of the lines seem haphazard and redundant.
3) the metro line is slower than taking a taxi during non-rush hours.
4) The size of the city is very large. The distance between metro rail stops fairly large.
5) There are many metro stops per line.  
6) Places with similar sounding names.

Subway - line 2 is old - the cars . line 10 is very new opened as recently as 2010 for the shanghai world expo.

Very much a 2 speed economy.  i thought they would have moved past this problem already but i am guessing that 10 years is too much to expect too soon.

Ricky said that - power brownouts  are expected this summer. especially with the number of air conditioning units coming online they need to restrict power usage.

In a way it feels like the government upgraded the infrastructure, the roads, the malls, the housing but they forgot to upgrade the people. English fluency is a rare commodity.  Students who have studied english speak it really poorly including those who work in tourist destinations, hotels, airports. I don't expect the average person to speak english well on the street, but after the 2008 olympics and the 2010 Shanghai Expo, I would have expected a little better.  If I had to rename the country, it would be Infrastructure's Republic of China, not people's republic. :)


Tech Sector

We visited a mobile video company called Wondertek referred by Joe. They are looking to acquire new software technologies. We talked to their founder CEO. The problem with China Mobile phone service is that its is government controlled. You have to have a person filter words that are used in your application. Wondertek has managed to squeeze its competitor out of a large part of the market. The competitor was a french company located one floor down from their office and was recently acquired by an Israeli company. The competitor has shrunk its size and was mostly europeans who were working in the offices. The Wondertek guy says that europeans are lazier, but I have a hunch that the chinese guy 's close relationship with China Mobile is mostly because he has some relationship with party members that are controlling China Mobile. Like everything in China, you have to be in bed with the party in order to get large amounts of business. Square footage of office space is pretty high. more than $1/sq ft. This is on the pudong side, near the river.

Shanghai for a week

Notes: 6/7-8/2011   - Shanghai

Shanghai is a really big metropolis. Does not have the claustrophobic crampiness of HK. However, it is so spread out, but the weather patterns make it difficult to tell how big it is from even high rises.  The haze - is it pollution or is it just dense haze all the time?

There are 13 subway rail lines , first line apparently built staring 1995 ? Need to double check the date on this . Subway rail line #2 is visibly older than line 10. were probably built in order of line number is my best guess.  The Line 10 subway cars approximate the new HK MTR rails in their electronic sophistication. The line 2 cars have a very loud and annoying buzzer for their door closing. The Shanghai subway system is one of the more difficult systems to navigate on arrival, mostly because there so many lines. The good part is that there is english/chinese on every rail station.

subway lines in the city close down at 11pm . The subway lights are also fairly dim. I'm not sure what the reasoning is behind the low wattage  lights. This is present in both new and old stations. Also i see a lot of fluorescent tubing

Bar manager at The Long bar, waldorf astoria restored from 1930s glamour is shanghainese, says that there is a lot of price inflation but not necessarily wage inflation. Says that he can make 10k rmb as a manager here in shanghai but in tokyo can make 10k as a regular bar tender, back in 2008. Prices are exceptionally high, for a diet coke beautifully presented cost 55RMB, which was about 9 USD! Current exchange rate is 6.47 RMB = 1 USD. The experience was worth it though. (pic here IMG_1257.jpg).

The Lights at the People's square are shut off 11pm??? I asked the cab driver if this was a just a weekday event or if this is was a regular case. He replied that it was a regular event, even on the weekends? that the lights were shut off. The photos show how dramatic the difference is. IMG_1290.jpg is about 10 min after the lights are shut off. IMG_1222, IMG_1278 , IMG_1283 is a little before 11pm.

see pictures here: http://www.dropbox.com/gallery/14421298/1/shanghaiPhotos?h=276e7e

There is a very clear disparity between areas like the bund and the people's square and the spaces in between. Most interesting to note: If you go back 1 or 2 streets from the bund on a normal, not highway street, there is little traffic, mostly dominated by cyclists and motorbikes/mopeds.  There are many very grand neocolonial (style?)  historical buildings that are simply vacant or boarded up. Its as if they only opened up the front row of the bund to the public and "showcased it" in a hurry. for events like the 2008 olympics or 2010 expo?  Some of the buildings have windows boarded up with new international fashion brand names eager to occupy the new retail space. sometimes a view into the building is visible and you see old cabinets, perhaps rooms untouched since the 1940s?

The old and new simultaneously exists. Its almost like having an angst teenager? Sophisticated yet still immature in so many ways. Almost schizo in personality. How do the people manage here?

The significant gap of wealth is really obvious and extreme. Its as if the china of yesterday simultaneously coexists side by side with the new: the old with bicycles and tuk tuk style motorbike cabs mixed in with new wealth and high end brand names, the audis, bmws, japanese brand taxis, the pradas, guccis and so on.

Most of the purchasing activity seems centered around mid-level retail brands. I noticed a lot of activity in stores like the gap or mango, but hardly anyone walked into luxury boutiques, such as Dior, E. Zegna.  That's a lot of high end retail .

There is a McDonalds in People's square that is open 24hrs. The lights are strong and bright, assumingly all the lights in the square that are on after 11pm are paid by the tenants? and all the other lights are sponsored by the government? When the lights go off at 11pm, there is a large crew of cleaners that mop the tiled floors with soap and water.

It will be interesting to see if the bund's lights also go off at 11pm . I would be very curious to know. More on the bund : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bund My grandfather and great grandfathers worked here at the old HSBC bank in the 1920-30s. Influenced by the west, my maternal grandmother is catholic. Both maternal and paternal grandparents left with their children ( my parents ) pre- 1949 revolution and ended up in Hong Kong because it was British Territory at the time and protected from the communists. Hong Kong is an extremely capitalistic market today, even though it is SAR, because of the 50 year hand over deal with the UK. More details on HK’s history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong

The big difference between Hong Kong and the mainland is that most people don’t speak english even though there are signs that are bilingual. Hong Kong has the advantage of blending both east and west cultures. The majority of people who live in Shanghai today are not orignally from Shanghai. A lot of people have migrated from the city and only 40% speak the local dialect - Shanghainese. Nationwide, everyone is mandated to speak Putonghua , also known as Mandarin. I only understand and speak shanghainese, and although some of the words in Putonghua are similar, there are plenty of people who don’t understand Shanghainese. There is also a lot of confusion as to why I don’t understand Putonghua, but this is an extreme anomaly in China.

I’m also asked by local people - “ why would my family even want to leave China, because isn’t Shanghai the best city in the world?? “ (which in my opinion is not true based solely on the amount of pollution.)  Apparently a lot of the pre 1949 history was wiped out in the educational system, and people don’t really know the details before the red revolution. Hong Kong, is entirely different - its very westernized and people have a lot more freedom. The internet now is so choked off in China, its almost like we can’t breathe, and we have a difficult time accessing a lot of wikipedia web pages . Gmail is intermittent and so is google.

The bund, even with its historic buildings only, feels almost larger than life grand. Its interesting that the modern skyline counterpart is built directly opposite the bund. The river separates the old bund architecture from the space age modern pudong side.

Pudong is mostly comprised of financial buildings and the infamous space needle. The skyscrapers rival HKs and have no worry about running out of space.

A lot of the high end architecture in pudong , people's square, and Luwan has a "larger than life" , extremely dramatic feel to it.
The problem with the weather is that it is difficult to see of the skyline from a distance. So much of the cloudy haze blocks views from afar.  

We went up to the a round space bar in one of the hotels near the people's garden, hoping to get a better view of the city and pudong from 46 floors up, however, it was impossible to see much with the haze in the way, even at night. The lights do not penetrate

Don't listen to the US State Department.....

.....because they're not always right.

So a few weeks ago, I was scouring the US State department's web page for travel advisories. I come across this and I have to laugh:

April 30, 2008

This Travel Alert updates U.S. citizens about security issues in China and advises American citizens traveling or residing there to be alert to their surroundings and exercise caution at all times. This Travel Alert expires on October 31, 2008.

Any large-scale public event such as the upcoming Olympic Games may present an attractive target for terrorists. There is a heightened risk that extremist groups will conduct terrorist acts within China in the near future. In light of these security concerns, U.S. citizens traveling in China are advised to use caution and to be alert to their surroundings at all times, including at hotels, in restaurants, on public transportation and where there are demonstrations and other large-scale public gatherings. Consistent with our standard advice, American citizens are urged to avoid the areas of demonstrations.

http://www.travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/pa/pa_4238.html


In May I was in Hong Kong, right when the olympic flame was being run through the area. May 1st and 2nd, to be exact. May 1st is a holiday in Hong Kong. Now that I think of it, the hotel I stayed at was where they kept the flame, unbeknownst to most of us. But we figured it probably was there because it was the 8th floor and there were about 5 or 6 guards hanging around the lobby near the elevators constantly, all with ear pieces and wearing signal jamming devices. I could not place a cell phone call out of there for hours. At first I thought these guys were on every floor because we knew the flame was coming through, but then we checked on the 10th and the 7th floors and it was really only the 8th floor. Yeah Asians and the number 8. In my bad Chinese, I translate 8 8 8, as basically get "f**king rich".

The night of May 1st, we were forced to move to another hotel, simply because "there weren't any more rooms." Ahhh... yeah. Somehow I don't believe that the New World Hotel in Hong Kong could possibly run out of rooms on just that particular day; there are more than 800 rooms in this hotel. It was likely that they didn't want anyone on the floor when the flame was there. We give hell to the staff at the check in desk and get nothing out of them. The look at us blankly and we know they are lying. But we can do nothing. So we move next door to the Intercontinental - ridiculously expensive but the only place that "apparently" had room.

I digress. Back to the point - basically on the morning of the 2nd when the olympic flame was run through the Kowloon peninsula and through the island of Hong Kong, the atmosphere was certainly far removed from that of San Francisco or Paris. Security was tight and well run.

If anything, it was massively crowded. So crowded you could feel the breath of the person standing next to you. And definitely a tremendous amount of pride and energy in the crowd. As far as I could see there weren't' any demonstrations. There were a LOT of happy people. There was plenty of security, and the subway was shutdown, in every mall and hotel that connected itself to it. The peninsula has an overbuilt maze of malls and hotels with subways integrated into many slots. It's so twisted and confusing, it's super easy to get lost. And lost I did get, many many times. Everything looks the same, the same bling bling over and over again. Heavy air conditioning inside, tropically warm outside. Going inside and out repeatedly gave me a massive headache.

Early on the 2nd, I was reading two newspapers at breakfast. One was the South China Morning Post and the other, the Asian Wall Street Journal. The WSJ didn't make much of an event for the torch. Impartial, factual, mostly about world politics and the economy. The cover of the South China reported on the crowds and the national pride. The inside section had a complete page about detaining Mia Farrow at the airport. She was given a stern warning not to try anything crazy but not held or penalized in any other way. She was quoted as saying that she was here to peacefully attending a human rights meeting within Hong Kong. I guess if you're an "american traveler", you're more at risk in San Francisco - where the demonstrations were rampant or in Paris. The funny part is that I was on my way back into San Francisco via San Diego the day the flame was run through SF. And I was detained at airport security for a good half hour. Um.


If you look at the British travel advisory site, there is no warning. So it seems that this US warning was really politically motivated. Mind you, up until 1997 Hong Kong, now Hong Kong (Special Administrative Region) was British territory. They seem to know their stuff. But of course, I am biased because a) I'm asian and can hang back while the white americans get hassled at the market b) I don't get mistaken as an american unless I open my stupid non-cantonese speaking mouth c) I've been to Hong Kong too many times to know better.

In fact, this article from an old Conde Nast rag lying around - shows clearly different views between the US and Britsh. It is not my imagination at work. (see picture)



On the left in mostly Red is the US State Dept warning to "Avoid ALL Travel to the country" On the right in mostly orange is the British Foreign & Commonwealth office, instructing travelers to avoid all travel to *certain parts* of the country.

October 2006 Conde Nast Traveler: Stop Press : Reality Check
http://www.concierge.com/cntraveler/articles/10469?pageNumber=1

Direct your browser to the U.S. state Department's web site in search of advice on venturing abroad and what you'll find there may persuade you to stay home. At press time, Travel Warnings are in effect for 30 countries, many of which (Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan) one might not be inclined to visit anyway. But a maddeningly comprehensive Public Announcement entitled "Worldwide Caution" seems to have been composed to put Americans off travel in general, warning of "the continuing threat of terrorist actions and violence against Americans…overseas." The text cites the danger zones as including but not limited to Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, and reports that extremists may subject Americans to assassinations, kidnappings, and bombings on public transportation, at sporting events, and in offices, clubs, restaurants, hotels, and places of worship. The media's tendency to grant prominent coverage to incidents of violence overseas, most notably those involving Americans, enhances the impression that, post–9/11, the world beyond our borders is perilous and hostile.............

Which sources should travelers trust? Travel agents who specialize in the Middle East and Southeast Asia note that Americans are rarely warned against visiting countries considered allies, and unruly states are rarely removed from the don't-go list. "We strive not to make warnings political," says a U.S. State Department spokesperson. "We just want to get the best information to Americans."

Ah... um.