Arriving at the Airport

Once you arrive to the terminal building of the Kai Tak airport, you can push your carts past customs or hire a porter (they are free, but a tip of HK$2 per piece of baggage is normal). A Hong Kong Hotel Association's reservation desk is available to assist travelers as are foreign exchange facilities. Free phones are in the buffer halll immediately past customs, make good use of them because they are free!

Students save big!

In addition to discount air tickets, the Hong Kong Student Travel Bureau offers limited accommodation services. Holders of official international student, teacher or youth identity cards can get advice, assistance in booking, access to local university facilities and, occasionally, preferential hotel rates by visiting the bureau's office at 1021 Star House, 10th floor, just off the Star Ferry Concourse in Kowloon. If you have an International Young Hostel card, you will be eligible for their accommodations and activities. Contact the Hong Kong Youth Hostel Association in A Block, 14th floor, Watson's Estate, North Point, Hong Kong. Please be aware that the summer season is the busiest season for the Hong Kong Youth Hostel Association.

Hong Kong Tourist Association (HKTA)

This is a bubbling fount of information both verbally and in the form of numerous brochures advising about everything from eating and shopping to hiking and horse races. Frontline HKTA staff seem genuinely interested in helping visitors. For brochures, maps or any kind of questions, as well as souvenirs and gifts, the HKTA has walk in visitor's centers at Kai Tak Airport (just outside customs) at the Kowloon Star Ferry Concourse (8 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily), Empire Center, East Tsimshatsui, Kowloon (9 a.m. to 6 p.m., weekdays, 9 a.m to 1 p.m., weekends) and in Connaught Center, 35th floor (8 a.m. to 6 p.m., Saturdays until 1 p.m.) on Hong Kong Island. The center at the airport stays open from 8 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. daily. Overseas the HKTA maintains offices in Chicago, Frankfurt, London, New York, Osaka, Paris, Rome, San Francisco, Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo, plus all Cathay Pacific Airways offices.

Money Saving Tips

• The best trips are usually the simplest, notably half day circular tours of Hong Kong or Kownlon and the New Territories.
  
  
• Particularly with three or four people, the higher priced limousine tours are well worth the extra flexibility and speed. Most will happily alter itineraries to suit particular tastes.
  
  
• Outlying island excursions are just as easily and comfortably done by ordinary ferry, at as little as one quarter the cost, even including a splendid gourmet shop picnic lunch.
  
  
• Tour group dinners and nightclub shows are invariably awful, even more so at the Aberdeen's infamous floating restaurants. Save the often considerable sums of money and have a first class meal at a real restaurant.
  
  
• Avoid driving on Saturdays and Sundays, when time spent sitting in heavy traffic is subtracted from time spent in enjoyment.