After drilling through my bank statements and totaling up my expenses for Hong Kong, I realized I've been totally Asianized by this trip. I'm adding everything up in a "holy shit that's a lot of money" manner, until I realize that what I spent in Hong Kong is probably less than what I would spend traveling in a western city.
The good: Hong Kong is probably the most diverse city I've ever been to. There's all kinds of people, tons and tons of great food, and lots of culture. The architecture is the most modern and diverse I've ever seen. It also has a cool sense of efficiency to it; the metro trains were very well organized and clean. Speaking of clean, the efficiency system in that department is amazing. Hand rails on escalators are literally sanitized every fifteen minutes! The road and pedestrian infrastructure is incredibly well planned: I never saw a traffic jam and buses seem to run every minute. Seeing the Bank of China building ticked a box on my list. My camera got a work out, and for it's services it now has two shiny new lenses to give it some class. I got to accomplish a life goal in this city: photographing the Hong Kong skyline from Kowloon was something I've always wanted to do. Macau was really cool, too. It was my first experience in a casino city and it makes me look forward to hitting up Vegas someday. Oh yeah, and I killed the black jack tables!
The bad: Prices. Like I said, not up to western standard, but definitely high by Asian standards. This city takes the record as the most expensive city on this trip so far. Hong Kong has some of the most expensive real estate in the world, and it shows in the prices of some services. For example, to work out one time at a fitness club near my hostel was $200 Hong Kong Dollars, roughly $25 Canadian dollars, more than it would cost in Canada. It was ludicrous to drink in a club or bar, a beer would run you $55HKD ($6.80 CAD) and up. The clubs there were lame in my opinion. I'm not really into the swanky, pretentious dance clubs where people flash their cash, and the huge banking industry that Hong Kong possesses breeds tons of rich yuppies that populate those clubs. THE HEAT. Fuck was it hot in Hong Kong. I've been in Death Valley, California, where it was fifty two degrees C at 9pm, and I did better in that heat than I did in Hong Kong. I can't imagine what it would be like in July. The Hunter S. Thompson quote "I was pouring sweat. My blood is too thick for Nevada" comes to mine, just swap it for Hong Kong.
The money:
Days spent: 8
Total spent: roughly $600. $73 on miscellaneous stuff (tours, admissions, bank fees, etc), $140 on purchases, $400 on daily expenses.
Average spent per day: $50
And I do have to include that I won $171 CAD on the black jack tables in Macau. I added that just to brag.
No comments:
Post a Comment