5 Things Hongkongers won’t miss about travelling

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An essential and irreplaceable element of travel in Hong Kong, taxis are ideal for commuters, tourists, or even those staggering back home from a night out. But whilst Hongkongers often take the affordable prices of our local taxis for granted, most are given a grim reminder of how expensive a private ride can be when on vacation overseas. Even if we were to ignore devious drivers looking to scam vulnerable tourists out of their holiday money, legitimate fares for trips from the airport to the city could cost anywhere from $500 to $1,650 HKD for places like Tokyo, New York, and London. Suddenly your 100-or-so dollar ride home from Lan Kwai Fong doesn't seem so bad, huh?

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Unless you’re accustomed to travelling to places directly via tour buses or taxis (with the latter being highly unlikely given our previous point), you’ll know that more often than not, it takes an agonising amount of time to get from one attraction to another. Meaning you'll end up spending most of the day in a car or on public transport. We’re just accustomed to living in such a convenient city like Hong Kong, but wouldn’t it be so much more helpful if everything was just a 20-minute MTR ride apart? After all, there’s just so much to see and so little time!

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Picture this: you’ve just finished a delicious meal at an authentic, local restaurant, so you signal to the friendly waiter for the bill. Of course, the waiter comes over, sees you struggling with unfamiliar foreign coins for the eighth time that day, and politely tries to shift the attention off you. Showing warm hospitality, he asks your companion where you guys are from; then your partner instinctively tells them that you are from Hong Kong. The mood thickens for just half a second, but alas, the enthusiastic waiter’s eyes light up, and the dreaded words begin to escape the waiter’s lips. “Ni Hao!”. What do you do? There’s no way you’re going to correct them in Cantonese – you’re barely understanding them as it is – so you have no choice but just awkwardly to laugh it off. Exit scene. 

Whilst this trivial misunderstanding is definitely more of a personal pet-peeve of ours than anything else, we still can’t deny how annoying it is. Though, we certainly appreciate the effort!

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Hongkongers already don’t get enough sleep as it is. So, having sleep deprivation being forced upon you when you’re in another country certainly isn’t ideal. But what can you do? Tis’ the price to pay for jumping on a 10-hour flight (or more) to see the unique wonders the rest of the world has to offer. Even if you bite the bullet and force yourself to sleep with the help of local late-night TV, you’re still going to struggle to stay awake at your next work meeting once you get back. But hey, it’s not like you can just vacation around Asia forever.

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We always seem to forget about the concept of money – especially foreign money – when on holiday. Whilst you would happily bring home gifts for friends and family, you might end up questioning yourself why you thought buying that cheap-looking tiki mug was a good idea, or why you paid so much money to bring home a silly Japanese gadget that you’ll just forget about in a month. And let’s not forget about gifts for the office. It’ll seem rude if you don’t bring back anything for your colleagues to enjoy (even for the ones you don’t like), so you end up splashing cash on the same expensive, generic biscuit gift set anyway. Well, at least now that overseas travelling is out of the window, we’ve all managed to save up quite a lump sum of money that would otherwise be carelessly thrown around on holiday.