Early the next morning, we took the subway (couldn’t have been easier!) to the Yuen Po Street Bird Garden, where old men walk their birds and socialize. We bought a bird cage, and set off to explore the flower market. On a weekday there wasn’t much going on here – just a couple of flower stores, but nothing that special.

 

Almost all backpackers stay in either the Mirador Mansion, or the Chung King Mansion. These ‘mansions’ are in fact just large buildings, with various floors owned by different guesthouses. We stayed at the Cosmic Guesthouse. Be aware that certain elevators go to odd floors, and others to even.

Although the floor that the guesthouse is on isn’t that clean, once you enter the hallways of the guesthouse proper, it’s spotless. The rooms are tiny, but very clean. We ended up with 2 “single” beds instead of a “large” bed, because the large bed was in fact the size of a twin American bed – definitely not big enough for us!

The hotel included Air Conditioning and TV for under $20 US a night. It was still relatively quiet, despite being in the “thick of it” in Kowloon.

We wandered the Golden Mile for a little bit, got some dinner from a delicious bakery, and went to bed.

See our Hong Kong slideshow

We flew from San Francisco to Hong Kong. Our experience as we arrived in Hong Kong couldn’t have been better. It is an incredibly well organized and run airport (and city). An express train took us from the airport direct to downtown. The airport express is very well set up, with lots of room for suitcases, spotlessly clean, and very modern. (The stop indicator not only indicates the next stop, but also the train’s progress towards that stop!)

When we arrived at the airport express train station downtown, we transferred to a free airport express bus. Although the train station is connected to the subway line, it was easier and faster to take the buses. The buses ferry airport passengers to various big hotels in Kowloon, where we were staying.

We spent 2 weeks in China.  We visited Hong Kong, Beijing, Xian, Guillin, Yangshuo and Longshen.   We also spent 3 days on the Yangtze River and cruised through the 3 Gorges.  We are backpackers and stay in budget places, and use Lonely Planet and Let’s Go guidebooks as our main travel information sources.