A Night at Chungking Mansions, Hong Kong 重庆大厦
Hong Kong’s cheapest accommodations — Kowloon Walled City lives on.
I arrived in Tsim Sha Tsui just after midnight after traveling nearly 20 hours on China Eastern Airlines — San Francisco to Shanghai, Shanghai to Hong Kong. The hostel I was planning on staying in was fully booked, and at this time most receptions had closed for the night. To put it nicely, I was shit-out-of-luck. So where does one go when they’re in Kowloon and don’t have a bed for the night? Chungking Mansions, the backpacking central of Hong Kong, of course!
As I stepped up the front stairs into the main arcade, I was greeted by numerous salesmen, offering their wares. They were selling everything from fake Louis Vuitton bags to international sim cards, and in less than 20 seconds I heard the word “guesthouse?” I traced the voice back to a middle-aged Indian man, who immediately began guiding me to an elevator toward the back of the building. I stopped him in his tracks and demanded a photo of the room before going any farther, and he refused. “Free WiFi, private bathroom, AC, and TV, come with me!” he responded, which is everything I needed, but I still demanded a photo. Finally, he relented and showed me a wrinkled business card with small photos in each corner.
