There’s no doubting the fact that Hong Kong is a difficult city for the budget traveller. Most hotels offer very high room rates and room sizes are much smaller than you would normally receive in other cites.

Yet Hong Kong has so much variety. the city is home to several youth hostels situated across the island. The hostels I stayed in were all a part of the YHA organization, and you can have a sense of security knowing that they will have to meet basic standards of accommodation.

You might not imagine there being many rural youth hostels in Hong Kong. or hostels in general. but the city is home to many youth hostels. the most famous is in SHAM SHUI PO. The site is a former social housing block that was renovated to make the current building that houses the youth hostel. Part of the building has been given over to a museum which documents the history of the city when the street housing caught fire. it was the Mei Ho House that was built to house some of the residents who had lost their homes in the fire that left 30,000 people homeless.

the other prominent hostel is located on the city’s Lantau island. most of it is is rural, and you will see the Buddha Statue at the bottom. Although the hostel is basic, there are advantages to staying in this location. For a start, there are several barbecue points dotted in the outside area, which are ideal for warm and dry weather. the bedrooms are basic, but when you are staying here you find that this is all you need.

perhaps another ideal rural hostel is located close to Kennedy Town, the furthest point in Hong Kong Island. The Jockey Club in Mount Davis is reached up a steep climb along a mountain path. Once you reach the top you are afforded incredible three-sixty views of the city. Although there was heavy rain the weekend I stayed at Mount Davis, I appreciated being in the sturdy accommodation that was clearly designed for all weathers, and may even have been designed to withstand bombing.

The final hostel I want to point out to you is the Bradbury Jockey Club. the hostel is at Tai Po close to Plover Cove Reservoir. With the interior painted in bright yellow, it s a very colourful place. With it’s nearby outdoor sports area, it’s like Friday the thirteenth , but without all the killing.
it’s worth noting that the country hotels in Hong Kong often include kitchens where you can prepare food on the hotplates. there are not many places to buy food, so If you are staying here it would be ideal if you come with some supplies.

Booking the youth Hostels.
All hostels mentioned in this article can be booked through booking platforms such as Booking.com , but if you use the Youth hostel Association website you can choose which dorms to stay in, you have the convenience of contacting the hostel directly when you book. it’s also possible to book at a discounted rate by selecting the members’ discount.

If you are just arriving in Hong Kong and need to transit to Guangzhou there are some things you should try to avoid. Number one would be to make sure that you have some rest at the airport. Maybe a couple of hours in the airport bar, especially after your 12-hour flight. 

If you are heading for China, may I suggest you take a train? You really don’t want to have to drag yourself and your luggage to the 3hours + bus, with a one hour wait at the border in Shenzhen. If this is the first time in China, you really must try to book a hotel where the staff can speak English. 

Unfortunately, I was guilty of all of these. Although in my defence, I hadn’t booked the bus or the hotel. These were arranged by my employer, and I had little say in the matter. 

When you sign up with a teach abroad programme, your head gets full of wild ideas of trekking the Himalayas, the great wall of China, exotic romance. But the first couple of days were spent doing mundane tasks that amazed me only in that they were done with the most mind-numbing bureaucracy imaginable.

That terrible bus journey, all the way from Hong Kong to the inner city of Guangzhou , made me realise how much concrete I was going to see. Not only that but the place looked like Korea did before it became cool. 

After eventually finding the hotel (tip: for gods sake choose somewhere central)I then had to think about eating. What’s that smell? When you can breathe something other than pollution, you’ll see that food is all around you. You choose between eating in one of the cheap canteen style places, or somewhere more upmarket, like a shopping mall restaurant. the first meal I had was some kind of beef offal noodles and it was totally delicious.

After the first night in Guangzhou, I was soon to discover just how total and all encompassing tool the Chinese system was. It seems that all long-term visitors are required to submit to detailed medical checks. This could not be done at a small private clinic, but a vast public building. The main task was to process us as quick as possible. This meant that the blood tests were carried out in the open, not behind closed doors. It’s more efficient, though less private way of carrying out procedures. In less than two hours, I was given kidney, lung, heart and urinary tests. This was done with the maximum of efficiency and the minimum of bedside manner or privacy. Yet they msut have taken care of 250 +arrivals that morning alone. I was forced to admit the sheer task of it was something to admire. 

Back at the hotel, I was starting to appreciate the extra touches that were available. A pool would have been a boon on the stuffy afternoons. In Guangzhou, the heat stays on the ground , and never moves from morning to night .

But the hotel offered a gym, and a laundry room And every afternoon, staff laid out fresh cakes and fruit in the restaurant area. There were still surprises when it came to breakfast. Sometimes , there would be croissants, other times not. Egg came hard boiled or fried. And there were only a couple of cereal options. 

It was fun to open up the large steaming serving dishes and think of what to have. There was a choice of rice porridge, and several condiments that seemed to make the bland dish jump alive with flavour. 

I followed my cue from the mostly Chinese diners.  Every so often I would spot a non-Chinese face, this was extremely rare however. They were mostly as bemused by the situation as I was . the situation was not like t standard international hotel that could have been anywhere. Instead, this was strictly a Chinese hotel that made few allowances for non-locals.

Another shock was seeing that the bedrooms on one side of the building did not come with an outward facing window. The only opening window opened to the landing, the only air flow then came from opening the door, and the air-condioning. If you’re a light sleeper, you’ll find it difficult to sleep if the bed is near the AC unit. 

My first impression of China was extremely negative. Partly this was my fault. If you go to a country knowing nothing beyond some loose ideas from what you’ve heard or seen, you are going to be surprised. In my case, I believed that reading too much would possibly cause me to have ideas that China was worse than it really was,. 

In any case, you don’t really know how it’s going to feel until you live in a country. And however much you can read, when you get there the place you come to is often not the one that you pictured.

On my third night, I took a walk to the Pearl River Bridge. Across the street next to the underground metro is a giant shopping mall. It was full of teenagers, dressed in their best clothes and seeming to be moving around, excitedly taking photos, milling in and out of shops but never buying anything. It was a common sight wherever I went in the next few weeks. A few scrappy street vendors selling things on skewers, but inside, teens waited in front of restuaurants for a seat inside. The old Chinese style was giving way to shiny comsumerism. 

There were coffee shops, American fast food restaurants alongside more traditional Chinese tearooms and roast duck restaurants.

I walked past stalls selling durian and piles of CROCS. Inside the old restaurants sat mostly older men, their chaests bared,  smoking and eating from steaming cauldrons. Most of these restaunts only had signs in Chinese. But I could tell from the shiny pictures what I was going to be given. At one beef noodle restaurant, I paid less than two pounds for a glossy bowl of beef soup, vegetables and rice. 

I went in to a gleaming Starbucks occupying a prime location next to the Pearl River. Coffee was marketed as a luxury product, with prices to match. One medium freshly brewed coffee was nearly double the price of my noodles. None of the well-heeled locals seemed to mind. 

The Canton Tower, a recent addition to the city (finished in 2008) was brightly lit and stood out from the boxy grey towers.  Right next to it is another major Guangzhou landmark. The National Theatre, designed by Zaha Hadid, was one of several new buildings by so-called star-chitects. the sloping steel concrete design looks like the body of a giant whale. Inside, the walls represent the pebbles smoothed by the Pearl River, all very poetic.

China may be currently facing a mass retirement with the largest group of pensioners in history, but with the easing of the one child rule, there are babies, children, and teens everywhere. And whilst the young are squeezing themselves into packed subway trains, their elders live a slower life, pushing babies in strollers between dancing Tai Chi in the park. 

At night I read more about China’s history. In 1979, Deng Xiaopeng singed reforms allowing limited free trade in China. Wham played the first rock concert EVER in 1985 a few years before THE LAST EMPEROR was filmed in the Forbidden City. A period of modernisation led to the democratic uprising that was brutally crushed. But nothing could stop the rapid industrialisation. A country that hadn’t changed for centuries hosted the Olympics and had the highest steel production in the world, rising to 1 billion tonnes in 2015. 

I suddenly had to reformulate everything I thought I knew and develop a new understanding, and it was going to take much longer than a few weeks.