Adrian's Special Hong Kong Trip!

Planning starts 3 months before the trip! After discussion with my travel pal Brian, we decided we wanted to do something different from most of the people who visit Hong Kong...

We decided to save on air fare and spend more on hotel and thus we booked tickets from Jetstar online and decided to try Mongkok's Royal Plaza Hotel.

Jetstar online is good! Got to choose seats and of course we choose the window ones... hehe.

Royal Plaza Hotel rooms can be booked online and per day charges are about S$200.

We arrived at Changi Airport Terminal 1 at about 0430hrs (our flight is at 0640hrs) and after some yawning... we checked in our luggage with little fuss and hopped on to 3K691 flight. Seats on this budget flight are okay, with enough leg room but on flight was very boring... food and beverages have to be bought and luckily... we ate prior to boarding.

Touched down at Hong Kong Airport at about 1020hrs and we took a Taxi to Mongkok. Was very surprised by the level of security because the even station a Policeman at the Taxi waiting area!

Taxi drivers in Hong Kong speak only Cantonese (most) so it will be good to write down your hotel name and address in Chinese on a piece of paper.

The trip to our Hotel takes about 20-30mins and the fare is HK$300.

Check in took about 20mins and when we entered the room, it was wow! For only S$200 per day, we got a big room, with 37 inches LCD TV, plus the bathroom floor is marbled and we even got a bathtub! This is something special for Hong Kong, which is quite famous for small hotel rooms.

Adjacent to the hotel is a modern shopping mall called Grand Century Place, with 7 levels of shops, and also the bus interchange is right beside the mall.

Walking through the mall, there is also a walkway which is linked to Mongkok MTR, which took us about 10mins of walking to get to the MTR. By the way, right below our Hotel is also the Mongok East KCR station.

We bought a Octopus Card (can be used in many different places, do get it) at HK$150 ($50 deposit, $100 stored value) for future use.

After walking around to area to get familarised with the area, we went back to our Hotel for a well-deserved rest, and catching Saturday's English Premiership League games in our room.