Hong Kong – The General Advice Bit

Apparently there are 5 days a year when it drops below 10 degrees, and these are usually in Jan or Feb, although you can cop it in December – so bring a jumper and an umbrella. Otherwise expect it to be like Edinburgh on a nice week in late spring/early summer.

People are rude. You often just need to ignore it, and don’t take it personally. I think it’s because of the density – if you try to be polite to everyone you’ll spend so long holding doors open and shuffling around people on the pavement that you’ll never get anywhere. Service in shops and restaurants and stuff is generally efficient, sometimes polite and rarely friendly. Don’t take it personally, it’s not because you aren’t Chinese. Everyone is rude to everyone. There are a lot of tourists about, mostly from the mainland. They are, if anything, ruder, and don’t be surprised if you see them taking photos while you enjoy a beer in a bar. Gweilos (white devils) going out and getting hammered seem to hold the same fascination for them as pandas do for us. Tour buses actually stop at the central booze street to let mainlanders get off and photograph the westerner’s debauched antics.

Almost all bars and restaurants charge a 10% “service charge”. This isn’t actually a tip, its just a ten per cent mark up on the bill that goes in the boss’s pocket. If you are feeling generous you can tip on top of this (I get the feeling this is sort of expected if you live here as you should know the service charge isn’t really a service charge) but… YOU are stupid Gweilos and are not expected to know this – so take advantage and don’t tip! Apparently staff get full wages and don’t rely on tips in the same way our poor American cousins do, so no-one’s going to spit in your food if you don’t tip. Leave taxi drivers any change but don’t over-do it – they’ll just look at you confusedly and try and give the money back.

There is no crime in Hong Kong. You may get groped on the MTR if you are lucky, but that’s about it. The local polis are pretty tolerant but apparently give hammered pale-faces short shrift so if you’re completely buckled and spewing get in a cab and go home. Don’t piss on the street, don’t make a racket, don’t pick fights.

Purely for the attention of our single readers. Most western burds are either here on a dependants visa (i.e. married) or here on secondment so see themselves as high powered career types and, I would assume, generally have pretentiously high standards, so probably best avoided. Local burds are generally unimpressed by Gweilos who are seen as boorish drunkards. On Sundays Hong Kong’s huge population of foreign domestic workers get released from their tiny cells and congregate in Central (Phillipinos) and Victoria Park in Causeway Bay (Indonesians). I assume/have heard they then go out in search of foreign meat in Wanchai afterwards, so maybe worth a look. There’ll probably be a bunch of backpackers about round new year too.

Cantonese is the local dialect and is thoroughly impenetrable. Even the universal greeting of “2 beers please” is far beyond my ken. Most people in the (Western biased) service industry speak good English, but don’t expect it from cab drivers or waitresses in local noodle shops or dim sum houses. All public signs are in Chinese and English, although some menus in particularly local spots will only be in Chinese. I’ve been visiting these with my local colleagues so have a small pile of receipts with the Chinese names of tasty stuff on to show the waitress in lieu of ordering like a proper grown up. Don’t worry about just pointing at what someone else is having if you can’t get your point across – the good thing about everyone being rude is that everyone is rude and so doesn’t care if you rude too. No-one will bat an eyelid.

Image Credit: Joncrel Flickr