Today I’m going to talk about the very basic survival ways in Hong Kong as a backpacker!
Surviving in the large city, first thing first
Apart from ensuring you do not lose anything while packing yourself out of the airplane, you need to do this right after you get off of the plane. Remember to grab whatever-paper-newspaper-brochure-map-guide that you can see once you touch down. They are FREE but yet highly informational! It’s especially useful to me as I forgot to bring along my Lonely Planet’s Guide to Hong Kong and Macau. Pathetic!
A map is really what you need to kick off your trip! It’s particularly useful when you need to plan your day, see if your desired locations connect to each other in geographical sense.
Get Octopus
That’s really what you need to kick off your trip (also!). We can use it to pay at (very) wide range of merchants across the city and at almost all means of public transportation. Here is how it works.
- First of all, pay HKD50 as initial deposit for the Octopus card. It’s available at all MTR stations and major transportation hubs.
- Top up with the usable value you need, say HKD100. (You have actually paid HKD150 including the deposit)
- You may use continuously until your usable balance finishes.
Overdrafting
- Let say that your usable balance now is HKD10. We may tap into the initial deposit as much as HKD35.
- This translates to amount of HKD10+HKD35 = HKD45.
Example below…
Card balance : HKD 62.40
Transaction amount: HKD 76.80
Balance: HKD62.40 – HKD 76.80 = – HKD 14.40
As you can see, the card now has a value of negative 14.40. We will need to reload it to its positive value before we can use it again.
PS: Over-drafting it is the second best way of spending all the money possible inside the card just in case you forget to return the card before you leave Hong Kong. Just like me.
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