New Posting: Hong Kong?
07-05-2014, 12:34 AM
I worked and lived in HK for 1.5 years.
My overall conclusion is that it is a very fun place to visit, especially an extended visit (1-4 months), but not a good place to live.
This is mostly because it is not a very comfortable place to live, and the locals are just a negative bunch overall. I'll go over the bad first, and then the good.
Lack of Comfort
1) Like one poster noted, it is incredibly crowded. Much more so than NYC. Morning commutes on the MTR (Subway) or buses are super packed. You'll often have to wait for 2-3 trains/buses to pass to actually get on one during the commute.
2) Housing is a huge problem here. Re-read this section if you have to.
The apartments are extremely small, the buildings are poorly maintained and rent is prohibitively expensive. Most buildings there are at least 30-50 years old. A 30 year old building in NYC or Chicago is for the most part, kept up well. A 30 year old building in HK looks ghetto as hell. You'll often walk through parts of the city and glance at the buildings and say to yourself, this looks worse than the hoods in American cities, by far. In fact, my friend from the barrio who visited remarked that the place was worse than the hoods he grew up in.
The interiors of apartments are often done well and refurbished, but there can be problems, such as pests (cockroaches) and plumbing issues. On numerous occasions the toilets in the two buildings I lived in would not flush for a day (perhaps one day every couple of months) due to nearby construction affecting the pipes.
This isn't just me. One guy I worked with would get a day every now and then where he would not get hot water at all, due to building maintenance and construction issues.
Finally, the cost is prohibitive. If you want to live by yourself anywhere near Central, Sheung Wan, Kennedy Town, Causeway Bay or some other nicer area on the main island, prepare to pay at least USD1800-2000/month for a good place (think closer to 2500). This is the minimum for a place that you can reasonably rely on to give you shelter.
Even if you go off the main island, to a place such as Olympic (which is a popular place to live in Kowloon, since it has direct MTR train access to HK station on the main island), a studio 15-20 minutes walk from the station can cost USD2000/month.
If your gonna live there, you need to push to get your company to help you with housing as much as possible.
Also, to enter an apartment lease, you need to pay 3.5 months rent up front.
So basically, you better have 8000-10k in your bank account just to get into a place. This will cover 1) first month 2) TWO months deposit and 3) half a month to the leasing agent you used. This is standard. Also, most leases are 2 years, and can only be broken early after the first year.
Landlords, especially if they are local Cantonese people, are not helpful if you have problems with the place. I had a huge problem with leaks, and it took 4 months to get fixed. My friend had a problem with AC, and they did nothing about it. Try to get a place owned by an expat if possible.
The worst part is, landlords can and customarily do raise the rent considerably after the first year of the lease is over. Thus, people in HK are constantly moving every year. I had one friend who paid a rent of about 1700/month. After the first year, the landlord doubled it. This sort of practice happens consistently.
3) Pollution - HK has some nice beaches, great places to hike, and some amazing views of the skyline, which I'm sure you already know about. However, the pollution in the city is real bad. Its perhaps not Mainland China bad, but its pretty bad, so much so that your stunning views of the city will often be marred by an ever present haze.
Due to the bad pollution, many people have terrible respiratory problems. You'll often hear locals with bronchitis, coughing all nasty on the bus or train. They don't cover their mouths either. I know two expat guys that got pneumonia. I got a respiratory infection that lasted two months. Its a real problem and what eventually drove me out of HK.
Unfriendly Locals
I want to preface this part by letting you know that I am not white or Asian. But before people start claiming that the locals weren't friendly to me because I have light brown skin, I should state that my best friends in HK were Japanese and Taiwanese, and reported the same - the locals are just not friendly at all. This presents itself in a few ways:
1) Just being miserable - Locals won't want to talk on the bus or MTR very much (though every now and then you can meet a cute girl in these situations if you try). They won't speak much in the club or bar. They are always in a hurry. The taxi drivers are very rude and don't speak English well, and if you are slow even getting your ass into the taxi, you will get yelled at.
The service in restaurants is not very good, and even friends of mine who ordered in Mandarin or Cantonese would report that it doesn't matter, the waiters are rude. They will often get your order wrong - I've never been to a place where they got my order wrong so often.
2) Shun outsiders - More than just being rude, HK locals just aren't very open to outsiders, no matter how international the city is. While many of the younger, richer ones have studied abroad and people generally speak pretty damn good English, they just don't prefer outsiders.
At work, don't be surprised to have locals come up to you and tell you how much they hate mainlanders. That's fine, they may have valid reasons - but they will constantly tell you about this over and over again. Growing up in L.A., I just didn't feel like listening to hate, regardless of who it was directed at.
Its also no secret they treat their filipino and indonesian housekeepers terribly, and there were at least 3-5 stories that came out while I was there where the housekeepers were either abused or outright killed by their HK local bosses.
The Good
1) Great Expat Scene - My social life in HK was pretty darn nice. I had friends from England, France, Taiwan, China, Japan etc. The expats are more sophisticated overall than Japan (where I also lived for 1.5 years) mostly cuz they have jobs requiring advanced degrees, rather than English teaching.
The benefit of this is that people always want to go out. You can always find someone who wants to go to lunch, dinner, clubs, bars, hiking, etc.
I had so much going on that I'd often have to make plans with people 1-2 weeks in advance just to keep it organized.
Regarding expat girls, there are two types: White, and Asian. Don't expect many latinas or black chicks like you might see in Tokyo. This was a downer for me. While the reputation of the white expat girls is generally good, its not going to be better than a top tier American cities. Most of the expat girls are from England, Australia, France and while you will see a good amount of cuties, its not nearly as good as any night out in L.A. or shit ,even Arizona where I live now.
The Asian expat girls are generally better looking and will be more open to dating than the Asian local girls.
2) Travel Hub - There isn't a better place to take off from to anywhere in Asia than HK. The airport is incredibly fast and efficient, and there is a bullet train from downtown to the airport that takes a mere 30 minutes. Amazing.
Also, if you end up working in HK, you will get an HK ID card, which allows you to bypass immigration in and out. Huge time saver.
3) Low taxes - I saved a buttload of money in just 1.5 years even with the horrible rent and high price for western food in HK, because the tax was laughably low. Laughing to the bank? Shit, I was straight crying from tears of joy to the bank.
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But overall HK, was not for me. Its a nice place to party, but its too crowded. The clubs are not comfortable at all, it almost becomes a wrestling match to get through. The locals were extremely negative, very focused on money and in love with themselves. Ironically my two best friends in HK were mainlanders, and I even dated one for a short time. Listening to local people spit poison about everyone they hated just got tiring.
The apartments are, for lack of a better word, ghetto. House problems will crop up and you never want to feel bad about the place where you eat sleep and shit.
Its a fun place to visit for an extended stay, but you will need to be patient and make a solid salary to get by if you live there for longer than a few months.
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