HK Airport
25 April 2015
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airport runway
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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.
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| HK airport |
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
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| 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.
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
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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
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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