We started looking at apartments. This is nothing like finding an apartment at home. First of all, nobody on the apartment hunt speaks English. Everywhere you go in Hong Kong, signs are in English and lots of people at restaurants and tourist sights speak English – and practically everyone at Disneyland speaks English. But we haven’t found any English speakers in our apartment search. I guess the landlords don’t need to know English if all of their tenants are Chinese.
Second, the apartments are tiny. I mean tiny. We don’t need anything huge, but we looked at one that was the size of our old bedroom – the entire apartment. Too many apartments don’t even have bathrooms. I don’t need much, but I need a bathroom. One building had a bathroom on every floor – and it was coin operated. You had to pay to share it.
Nothing we’ve seen had anything close to a kitchen. Most just had a hot plate on a table. Some didn’t even have a sink.
These are the apartments in our price range. I’m sure there are better options out there, but they get very expensive very fast. Even what we looked at wasn’t cheap. We want to save money while we’re here, but it looks like we’re going to have to spend more than we bargained for on rent. Compared to Minneapolis, Hong Kong is a ridiculously expensive city.
When I returned to Hong Kong in January, I saw a fraud case on the news. The fraud case wasn't about the price of the highrise, but the inside construction of the apartment. When I look closer, the 600 sq feet place cost more than 1 million US dollar. I can only call this crazy! We can live in a "castle" by spending that much in the US. What are they doing here?? I feel sad for my friends working here. Right now, owning an apartment seems to be the privilege of the riches.
ReplyDeleteI really don't know why apartments are so expensive here. You can easily buy a nice 2 story, 4 bedroom house in MN for less than a tiny 2 bedroom apt in Hong Kong. It's crazy.
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