Slumming in HK
I’ve been to Hong Kong quite often since my first visit in 1987, and thanks to the generosity of sponsors and friends, I’ve been fortunate enough to taste some of the good life out there during my most recent trips: swanky hotels, limousine service, and what a TV host used to call “champagne wishes and caviar dreams.” And thanks to our daughter Demi’s job with a major hotel chain, Beng and I have been able to get sizeable discounts at fine hotels all over the world — you know, the kind of place where they greet you with fruit baskets and a personal welcome letter from the manager, signed with a Montblanc (and, conversely, charge you something like $20 a day for the Wifi).
Of course, it wasn’t always like that. Like most Pinoy tourists, we used to check into the usual cheap hotels in Kowloon or the New Territories as part of a budget tour package that included a mandatory visit to the same jade factory and the same outlet shop for the nth time. “Breakfast included” meant a coupon to the next-door McDonalds.
Last week, Beng and I took a trip back to the old days. We went to Hong Kong, to burn up some expiring Mabuhay Miles. That meant the ticket was free (at least before the hefty surcharges and taxes kicked in) but we had to find our own lodgings, so I sent the usual parental SOS to Demi, who told us that, this time, we were out of luck; because we were flying into Hong Kong on the week of an international film festival and a big flower show, no discounted rooms were available anywhere on her hotel chain.
So off I went to Google, keying in “Hong Kong hotels.” Within seconds, I had a list of nearly 200 hotels, sorted out by price from highest to lowest. Regretfully I had to pass on the Peninsula, which was going for more than US$600 a night. Then I was seized by a perverse inspiration, partly out of nostalgia, largely out of necessity. I reversed the sorting order, and liked what I saw. “Hey, Beng,” I said, “what if we go to the cheapest place on the list and see if we can survive four nights in it?” Being the adventurous sort, and having no real say in the matter anyway, Beng said “Sure, why not?”
The place in question was the optimistically named USA Hostel in Kowloon. Take note, that’s “hostel” with an “s,” not the usual “hotel.” Well, I thought, there goes the lobby with the Grecian pillars and the curved staircase, but what the heck, “hostel” had a warm, homey ring to it. My spirits rose even higher when I read the blurb on the hostel’s website (note how smoothly it morphs into a “hotel” in the first sentence):
“Situated in the center of Hong Kong, this hotel is an excellent hub to the main business, shopping and entertainment area of Kowloon. USA Hostel has the perfect combination of attentive care and modern convenience. Located in the heart of Tsim Sha Tsui… USA Hostel provides a central location on a budget with great accommodations you can’t resist.”
And no, I didn’t resist. How could I? At US$55 a night, I figured I could save enough to bring home some souvenirs that were dancing in my head — one or two PokerStars jackets from the Grand Lisboa in Macau, to make me look more fearsome at the tournament table, and maybe a new pen (or two); the rest would go to Beng and her charities. So I booked us into the USA Hostel for four nights, and we flew out to Hong Kong right after the semester ended.
Yes, I did read some reviews of the place on TripAdvisor — something I always do when I’m going somewhere I don’t know. I should’ve been deterred by the comments I read, along the lines of “The smell is just awful! Imagine, while sleeping, being hugged by a sweaty athlete who just brushed his teeth using curry powder and garlic paste! I bought a pillow at Disneyland the next day so that I wouldn’t have to use theirs” and “This is the worst place I’ve ever stayed in 20 years of traveling around the world — the room is tiny, the staff are rude, etc. etc.” On the other hand, a few guests did write “It wasn’t as bad as the others say” and “Great location at a good price!”
My mind must’ve been stuck on Parkers and Pelikans, because I could focus only on “great location, good price” and forgot everything else. I should perhaps add at this point that I spent more than seven months in martial-law prison, so tight spaces and even funny smells don’t bother me as much as they might other people; Beng, for her part, dreams of reincarnation as a Buddhist monk, so every trial for her is one step closer to nirvana. But were we flying to Hong Kong to willingly go to prison? What was the truth behind all the hype?
The hostel’s location was, indeed, terrific; the airport bus stopped practically in front of the building on Nathan Road. A few steps away was Exit D of the MTR’s TST Station. The hostel itself was on the 13th floor (yes, I didn’t think buildings had 13th floors, but I suppose they have different ideas about numbers in China) of the “Mirador Mansions,” which looked like what Hong Kong tenement housing might have been in the ’70s, refitted for 21st century entrepreneurship. The ground floor was crammed with tailors, cellphone stalls, and souvenir shops; budget tourists like ourselves — Filipinos, Pakistanis, Nigerians, Germans — queued up at the elevator for the upper floors, which had been subdivided into “hostels” going by such names as “London,” “Venetian,” and “Cosmic.” When the elevator door opened, you were greeted by laundry hanging out to dry in the corridors.
We were led to our room by a receptionist named Tess, formerly from Cavite; our “double de luxe” suite stood at the end of a pink-themed corridor no wider than the door we stepped through. We opened the inner door and found ourselves stepping into a room half of which was occupied by the bed, a quarter by the toilet and bath, and the rest by the sitting/standing area, whose wall also doubled as the closet. The window on the far side doubled as the fourth wall. At least we had a view, even if it was only that of the building across the street. I had never been in a smaller room in a foreign city, unless I count the triangular attic I booked in London three years ago, which had only a sink in lieu of a toilet.
On the plus side, the room was clean, the water strong and sizzling hot, and — best of all for incorrigible surfers like me — the Wifi was free and fast. The TV had two English channels, featuring news, rugby, and kiddie cartoons. Beng and I learned a lot about seahorses that weekend.
As usual, we brought in bread, jam, and bananas from the nearby 7-Eleven for breakfast, treating ourselves to full lunches and dinners with rice at the malls and streetside in Mong Kok. We had a blast walking through a fresh-produce market we discovered in Sham Shui Po, gawking at the monster-sized cucumbers, carrots, and starfruit. We even hopped on the ferry to Macau, had an egg tart and corn on the cob, and shuttled from one casino to another just for the free ride. The PokerStars souvenir shop was closed, so I saved several hundred HK dollars, which I blew on three tiny but tough Kaweco Sport fountain pens back at the City Super in Kowloon; Beng got herself a pretty caftan at a closing-out sale in Central, where we sat on a bench watching birds and people go by.
By the time we staggered back to the USA Hostel at the end of each day, we were too tired and happy to worry much about curry and garlic smells, and flopped down onto the bed and fell asleep. Maybe former prisoners make terrible hotel reviewers, but if you’re on a tight budget and not too finicky about the neighborhood, the USA Hostel might just be in your traveling future.
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E-mail me at penmanila@yahoo.com and visit my blog at www.penmanila.net.
