Arrival in HK

Arrival in Hong Kong was great.  Of course, it doesn’t hurt that there was no overhead storage requiring us to schlep the bag down.  Everything was conveniently at ground level and we just had to gather up, figure out how to work our “party favors” (Pajamas, new toiletries, etc) into our already overpacked luggage and beat the rest of the crowd through immigration and customs.

Hong Kong’s airport is large, but nothing like what we’d encountered earlier.  Plus, since we were leaving we didn’t have to make it to another gate.  They had people pointing you to the place to go. 

Immigration was a piece of cake.  The young man took our passports, looked at them, scanned them, then attached a little receipt to our arrival document we had to fill out on the plane and gave it back – all without saying a word.

My only complaint?  I really wanted a “Hong Kong” stamp on my passport and that didn’t happen.  Maybe on departure.

We hit a money exchange booth as we were leaving the airport since we’d been told that, unlike Caribbean and some European countries, “Benjamins” don’t work here.  I suspect that is largely due to the nature of HK’s china connections.

$100 US gets you $725.60HK.  That means that $1.00 US is worth about $7.25HK, a little lower than the published $7.75 but not enough to sweat.  We always print out a handy referral chart (because even though there’s an app for that, if you have no internet you’re stuck, and math is neither of our strong points.)

Bargaining rule - $10HK is $1.25US.

HK money is different sizes, depending on the denomination of the bills.  They also don’t fit well in US Wallets.  Score one for the guy with a money clip on his wallet.  Also, anything under $5.00HK is a coin; bills don’t start until $10.00HK.