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Hong Kong, Central Hong Kong is one of the most expensive cities for expatriates, not only because of its notorious housing problem , but also due to the price of food and clothing. According to a recent survey, in 2017  Hong Kong was the 9th most expensive location in the world and the 2nd most expensive location in the Asia-Pacific region after Tokyo.  Nevertheless, there are many ways to save money in Hong Kong, if you really want to. Although many Hongkongers claim that eating outside is not much more expensive than cooking at home, in my own experience making your own food will help you save a lot of money. In this post, I would like to share some tips about eating on a budget in Hong Kong. 1- Avoid Convenience Stores Many people are tempted to buy food from convenience stores like 7-Eleven because they think it's cheap and easy. Well, it might be easy to pour hot water into a cup of instant noodles, or heat a prepackaged meal in the microwave, bu...

Several years ago I wrote a post about how difficult it is to find budget accommodation in Macau . Indeed, I was planning on spending a few months in the former Portuguese colony, and I believed it should be cheaper than neighbouring Hong Kong. Nothing could be further from the truth. Despite looking like a small, sleepy town, Macau is more expensive than Hong Kong. The only budget accommodation I found was San Va Hospedaria , which is an old-style guesthouse.  It is located in an old building on the beautiful  Rua da Felicidade , about which I wrote a post years ago. San Va was originally a private club house built in 1870s. In the 1930s it was turned into a guesthouse catering to merchants and workers from mainland China. San Va became famous when Hong Kong film director Wong Kar-wai chose it as the location for some of the scenes of the film 2046.   San Va has maintained the flair of old Macau. However, if you decide to give it a try, you m...

I am always stunned by how many nice buildings and little corners there are in Macau, the former Portuguese colony that looks like a piece of southern Europe transplanted into Asia.  A few days ago I was strolling around in Macau's city centre when suddenly I spotted from afar a church at the end of a side alley. I decided to walk up to that street, without knowing that it would lead me to a beautiful small square named after the Portuguese writer Luis de Camoes. Here are some picture of my short walk. 

On Sunday, exhausted from my first day in Macau , I went to sleep at around 2 am (relatively early by my standards). I planned to wake up at 10 am. Eight hours sleep would be sufficient, I thought. I felt weak, dehydrated, and had a headache, probably the result of too much walking and too little drinking. As I put my head on the pillow, I immediately drifted off. At 10 am the alarm clock rang. It went on for half an hour until it stopped. I felt as if I couldn’t move, I had neither the energy to get up, nor to perform the simple task of grabbing the bottle of water inside my bag to quench the thirst that made my throat burn. I was aware that I was sleeping too long, but my limbs simply would not obey my brain's commands. All of a sudden, I heard a noise, so loud and persistent that I could not ignore it. I slowly came round and realised someone was trying to open the apartment door. Repeated sighs and the nervous tinkling of the key resounded from the staircase, tokens of...

Since I could find no hostels in Macau , I decided to use Airbnb, which is a more expensive, but interesting alternative, as you can live with locals (or long-term residents), explore the neighbourhood and see how flats look like. But once again Macau proved to be less convenient than Hong Kong. The cheapest accommodation I found in Macau was HKD 279 (around 30 euros). This wasn't the price for a room, but for a sofa bed in the living room. In Hong Kong, you can find a single room with private bathroom for HKD 264, or a single room for HKD 202. However, the location was good: Rua da Ribeira do Patane, just about 10 to 15 minutes on foot from Senado Square . The HKD 279 bed was available only for three nights, so I decided to book this bed for two nights and then move to a nearby flat. I rented a single room for about HKD 383 (around 40 euros) per night. The price for these two flats for four nights, including Airbnb fees, was about HKD 1,600 (circa 180 euros). With HKD 1,7...

Once I met a Dutch guy who had flown to Macau on a visa run, planning to stay there for a few days or weeks. He believed that Macau was much cheaper than neighbouring Hong Kong , the latter being known as one of the world’s most densely populated cities as well as a major global financial hub. It didn’t take him long to realise that he had made a mistake. The first thing he did upon arriving in Macau was, of course, to look for a cheap hostel. Little did he know that Macau has no hostels!  To his surprise he could find no cheap accommodation and had no choice but to spent around HKD400 for one night at a hotel. Macau turned out to be so expensive that on his second day he moved to Hong Kong. Despite having heard his story, I did not learn the lesson. I still believed I would find a hostel. After all, I had been to hostels in small cities like Triest, Krakow, Salzburg. How could Macau, whose GDP depends entirely on tourism , have no hostels? Probably, the guy should h...

In 2013 I visited Macau with two friends of mine. We stayed there for two days and engaged in intense ‘touristy’ activities, as we went to the major sights, ate local food and strolled around the busy streets of the picturesque, European-style historic centre. After so much walking we were exhausted, but we accomplished our goal: to see as much as possible, as quickly as possible. Those two days were nice and I had a lot of fun. But I left Macau with that kind of feeling that always accompanies me whenever I visit a place for a short time. I thought we had merely caught a glimpse of the surface, but had not got deeper into the soul of the city. We had seen churches, Portuguese-style houses, temples and nice squares; casinos, alleys and skyscrapers. But it was all too quick, too much. All I could remember of Macau was an incoherent patchwork of images, like pieces of a puzzle scattered around a table.