Hong Kong Getaway Part 2 - Touchdown HK

HK Airport

25 April 2015

airport runway - photo courtesy of
 m00nchildr0cks

Touchdown Hong Kong!

I got a little worried at first when I saw the people at the HK airport almost all wearing surgical masks. So, I thought, if I missed out reading about any sort of outbreak in Hong Kong recently or something. They even have an advisory posted at the airport about flu symptoms and that If you are experiencing the symptoms to urgently approach the airport people about it. What made it sounded more serious is that they also have announcements via their paging system. I told my sister If this was a good time to indeed travel to HK after what we learned. We noticed later on that out tourist seemed to just shrug it off so we thought maybe it was just a precautionary measure perhaps.

We tried to look for the travel agency representative at the airport-Arrival Hall pole #6 but we did not find whoever the person is. They usually have this placard that bears your name but that did not happen this time so we got a little worried since we have no way to contact whoever the person was since we haven't purchased any local sim card as of yet.

HK airport - photo courtesy of m00nchildr0cks

Oh by the way as soon as we found an atm machine we immediately tried to withdraw funds from our local BPI atm cards. We were under the impression that we could use just about any local atm machine in HK bearing a cirrus logo. That's when the dilemma kicked in, we can't withdraw any money from our BPI atm cards simply because (as per further research using the airport's free wifi access) we did not activate our atms for international use. It has dawned on us that this only happens when you leave your country unprepared which we were back then. We felt so all over the place upon reaching the airport, we don't know who's supposed to pick us up, we can't withdraw money from our local banks and we can't figure out how to activate the sim card we bought at the airport.

All went well after we had lunch at McDonalds airport our brains finally started working because we were both starving that's why. I finally was able to call the travel agency contact person. We approached the person from the travel agency (he was local) and was advised that the person who's supposed to pick us up already left because it took us some time at the arrival hall since we still needed to purchase our Octopus cards and sim card.

Octopus/MTR Card

the ever useful HK MTR map.

As soon as we walked passed the Immigration counter we decided to purchase their Octopus/MTR card. Lesson learned during our first time in Singapore years back, we did not purchase any train card at first so we looked like idiots not knowing how to pay for the bus after reaching our destination. The good thing was there were three of us so the bus driver just let it go and advised we should purchase an MTR card, how embarrassing really.

photo credits to m00nchildr0cks

Going back to HK, we bought our Octopus card from this customer service kiosk. The girl at the kiosk wasn't so friendly although she speaks english her chinese twang made it quite difficult for us to understand her aside from she's not even smiling the whole time as if she's carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. The MTR card cost 150HKD; 50HKD is the refundable deposit and the 100HKD is the preloaded value for you to consume. It was pretty expensive hadn't its refundable.

Note: In the event you're no longer coming back to HK or it would take a while for you to go back there, you may visit the MTR kiosk at the airport and surrender your Octopus card. The 50HKD will be refunded back to you along with whatever unused credits you have left with your Octopus card.

Mobile Service

CMHK prepaid sim purchased from
HK International Airport for 80HK$.
It's pre-loaded with credits btw.

Again my Globe Prepaid roaming service did not work in HK which was the same thing when I was in Cambodia after I requested via SMS to have it activated it still did not work! So, to save us from all the troubles we bought this prepaid CMHK sim card at the airport as well for 80HKD.

It took me a while to figure out how to activate it because I got confused with the sim sleeve which has both cantonese and english translations. I was only able to figure out later on (after bickering with my sister 'cuz we were both starving already) that I need to make a phonecall to have it activated.

I called our contact person in HK as per our travel voucher and advised we're already at the airport, again she wasn't very friendly as expected. She told me that the hotel-airport pickup guide is waiting at the pole #6 across McDonald's, so we finally found the local guy from the travel agency who eventually took us to the hotel along with our fellow Pinoy tourists. It was quite a long drive from the airport to Silka Far East Hotel in Tsuen Wan actually. At first sight, I did not fall in love with Hong Kong because of the dirty old buildings and the not so clean surroundings compared to Singapore.

In about half an hour we finally reached our hotel called Silka Far East in Tsuen Wan. The area did not impress me because it was reminiscent with that of Quiapo or Binondo in Manila, it looks like the original chinatown of course because of the tarps hanging outside every food shops there. The hotel surely is just few walks away from the MTR station.

Day 1 – Arrival at Silka Far East Hotel

photo courtesy of m00nchildr0cks

The front desk people speaks english although a little incomprehensible as expected because of their usual Chinese twang but they were very courteous though. We were asked to pay a refundable 300HKD deposit which is understandably for incidentals. We got our keycards with the wifi username and password instructions. They even laid down these laminated letter sized papers with disney packages on it which we eventually declined since we already had our itinerary set up with the travel agency. We were glad to learn that the hotel + tour package we availed comes with free breakfast at the hotel as opposed to what's on the travel voucher which states outside hotel breakfast. It was a good savings considering the hotel charges 55HKD for their breakfast buffet per head. Not bad really.

We settled at our cramped up hotel room. It was a little too small for two but we were ok with that because compared to Tune Hotel at least they are generous with toiletries. They even have complimentary coffee & tea, a mini fridge and a minibar. The room was airconditioned of course with in room safe, phone, many towels, unlimited wifi access regardless of how many gadgets you have, wall mounted flat screen tv with unfortunately only 1-2 english movie channels.

photo courtesy of m00nchildr0cks

We were assigned a twin corner most non smoking room on the 15^th floor (so we expected the room and beds to be much more smaller than the ones we have back home). It does not have a view so that's a set back and there were little noise when we arrived due to the ongoing repairs close to our room. I know that's a bummer but what the heck the room may be cheap that's why. The room was too small that we can't even move around that much without tripping on our luggage bags but it was not that big of a deal because we're not gonna be home most of the time anyways.

photo courtesy of m00nchildr0cks

Since we got to our hotel room around 2pm we just busy ourselves figuring out how we could withdraw money from our atm cards so we called BPI from our preloaded CMHK sim. We were advised we should be able to withdraw in 3 minutes after activation. We went out of our hotel room and tried the nearest atm machine from our hotel called Bank of China. It DID not work. So, we just decided to buy a liter of bottled water at this local convenience store to keep us hydrated and a pack of locally made pastry.

photo courtesy of m00nchildr0cks

The bottled water cost 11HKD whilst the pastry bread about 18HKD I think. We were worried the whole time since we only have about 400HKD each which is really not enough for four days. To make the long story short, as a work around I decided to transfer funds to my other BPI atm account and tried withdrawing money from it as a last resort but still no good even if it was already activated for international use. We just accepted the fact that things don't always go as planned if you travel still partly unprepared. I thought we just couldn't isolate if it's our atm cards or the atm machines fault that we couldn't withdraw money because there isn't any other non BOC atm machines around.

We weren't totally empty handed actually, we just couldn't go on with our lives in HK with just very little money in our pockets though. The good thing about availing a tour package is that you don't have to worry about paying for hotel room as it has been taken cared of for you, all you need is shopping money to enjoy your stay further.

Related Posts:

Hong Kong Getaway Part 1

Hong Kong Getaway Part3

Hong Kong Getaway Part4

Hong Kong Getaway Part5