Hong Kong - Arrival, Chung King Mansion

Uneventful flight to Hong Kong. We chatted with a British couple on the bus to our guesthouse in Chung King Mansion. They were a week late returning home from their 2 week Hong Kong vacation due to the volcano, and had been at the airport trying to figure out when they could go home.

From Hong Kong

When we arrived at Chung King Mansion, Mary felt like she'd arrived on Coruscant. For those of you not up on your Star Wars, Coruscant is the capital of the galaxy and the whole planet is one big city of buildings built on top on each other so deep that no one knows quite how far down the ground is. It was the big city planet featured in the prequels, but it is also featured extensively in the books that Mary was always reading in high school, and Coruscant was a bit of an obsession
of hers.

Chung King Mansion is a large run-down high rise that has been subdivided into many independent guesthouses and other businesses catering to tourists. It's not in the backpacker district, it is the backpacker district. It's a whole little multilevel indoor city! It gets a bit of a bad rap on WikiTravel, some saying it is a badge of honor to stay, and others saying it is a horrible memory.
The consensus was that it was funky and the touts were bad. So we were prepared for the worst and pleasantly surprised. The great thing about traveling to India is that everywhere else just seems so nice and up scale in comparison.

For comparison, here's a drawing of Coruscant, compared with Chung King.

From Hong Kong

From Hong Kong

From Hong Kong

From Hong Kong