There are two types of travelers: those who would go out of their way to avoid a place like Hong Kong‘s notorious Chungking Mansions – and those who would elect to stay there.
I’d probably put myself somewhere in the middle.
Nestled between luxury emporiums on one of Hong Kong’s most expensive thoroughfares, the Chungking Mansions is a chaotic complex of shops, food stalls, restaurants, wholesalers, budget guesthouses and low-income apartments. The 17-story compound is home to around 5,000 permanent residents, most hailing from South Asia and Africa. That’s not to mention the estimated 10,000 people that pass through its halls each day, trading in currencies, refurbished electronics, counterfeit bags and other slightly less legal commodities. TIME Magazine called the Chungking Mansions the “Best Example of Globalization in Action” because of its extensive network of informal trade, while The Economist compared it to Spaceport Cantina in the original “Star Wars” film. Travel articles alternately refer to it as a “heart of darkness,” a “den of iniquity” or, simply, a “hellhole.”
Naturally, I was hesitant to check out the Chungking Mansions for myself. But I was also intrigued. With single rooms running from HK$150 (US$19.35) to HK$500 (US$64.50), Chungking Mansions is one of the cheapest budget accommodation options in town, stairwell drug deals notwithstanding. Anthropologist Gordon Matthews estimates that more than 129 different nationalities pass through each year.
%Gallery-174068%What I found was … anticlimactic. After a number of high-profile deaths and disappearances in the 1990s, the owners of the Chungking Mansions installed an extensive CCTV system and employed round-the-clock security guards to monitor the complex. There are regular police patrols, and I witnessed no fewer than five crackdowns during my visit.
Because of the heavy monitoring, Chungking is actually a quite safe place to stay, compared with other Asian backpacker ghettoes. It is also conveniently located in the heart of Tsim Sha Tsui, a lively district in the Kowloon side of Hong Kong. Luxury hotels like The Peninsula and The Sheraton are steps away, along with malls, restaurants, museums, MTR subway stops and the scenic Tsim Sha Tsui promenade. If you don’t mind the cramped quarters and chaotic surroundings, it’s not a bad budget option. Some even claim it’s a quintessential Hong Kong experience.
Not all Chungking Mansion guesthouses are created equal, though. Quality varies wildly, and photos on booking sites like Hostelbookers and Agoda are often heavily edited. The best way to score a good value room is simply to show up and make the rounds of Chungking’s 80-plus options, most of which are clustered in blocks A and B. The Ashoka Hostel, consisting of nearly 100 rooms across three floors, is a popular option; their head reception desk is located on the 13th floor of Block A. The price per night depends on the month (or even the day) so don’t be afraid to negotiate, particularly if you’re traveling during off-season.
The reward? A chance to experience not only a different side of Hong Kong, but also the world. One guesthouse owner showed me his logbook of guests, hailing from Ghana, Bangladesh, Holland, Malaysia, the Philippines, Germany, Japan and even America. “People from everywhere come to stay here,” he boasted. Globalization in action.
[Photo Credit: Jessica Marati]
“Budget Hong Kong” chronicles one writer’s efforts to authentically experience one of the world’s most expensive cities, while traveling on a shoestring. Read the whole series here.
With very few exceptions, I’ve spent the last 17-plus Christmases going out for dim sum. No matter where I’m living at the time, once December rolls around, I start researching the best places to indulge my har gow habit. Why? Because I’ve worked in the service industry for over two decades.
I’ve either waited tables or worked retail (usually in the food industry) since I was in my 20s. In layman’s terms, it means that the holidays ceased to exist for me starting in 1995, when I started culinary school.
I’d always loved Christmas as a kid and in college. Yet, I willingly sacrificed the holidays, because it meant I’d finally embarked upon the career path I’d long dreamt of: becoming a cooking teacher and food (and eventually, travel) writer. I naively failed to realize that decades of restaurant work, flogging farmers market produce, and slinging cheese and meat would be required to supplement my occupational pursuits.
I’ve been able to travel overseas a couple of times over the holidays, and the Christmases spent in Thailand and New Zealand were memorable from both a cultural and universal perspective. If I had the financial means, I’d always travel during the holidays. In general, however, being in the food industry means you stay at home this time of year, even if home is somewhere most people would kill to visit (I’ve been fortunate to work the holidays in Vail and Telluride).Unable to take Christmases off to see my family (they always get Thanksgiving, which is extremely important to my parents), I started going out for dim sum as a way to pass the time, stave off loneliness and get a good meal.
Dim sum parlors and Cantonese restaurants are always packed Christmas Day, with Chinese-Americans as well as diners of varying ethnic and religious persuasions. I’ve learned over the years that many people have a Christmas dim sum tradition, usually because they don’t celebrate for whatever reason (not having kids is a big one).
In my case, I’m single and childless, but that’s not why I do dim sum. Ethnically, my relatives on both sides of the family were immigrant Russian Jews, but my agnostic parents celebrated Christmas when my brother and I were growing up. To them, it was a way to unite family and allow us kids … to be kids. As a child, I never imagined Christmas and I would part ways.
As an adult, I shun Christmas not because I have to work, but for the same reasons many people do: it’s a stressful, bank account-depleting, heavily commercialized guilt-fest. I don’t miss it, although I do my best for my teenaged niece (who received a rescue kitten from me this year) and nephew.
The truth is, if I’m unable to travel, I relish having one day a year where I can have 24 hours off and not feel bad about it. I eat delicious dumplings, maybe go for a hike or see a movie. Call family and friends. It’s unabashed me-time, and until or unless I meet someone I want to create a more traditional holiday with … please pass the bao.
If you’re not on an expense account, eating breakfast at a nice hotel can cost you a bundle. I had a voucher for a free breakfast at a hotel in Los Angeles a few weeks ago, but when I saw the bill totaling $94 for my family of four – two adults and two toddlers – I almost had to adjust my glasses.
This summer I wrote a column about how disappointing the breakfast experience can be at most American hotels these days – mediocre or outright bad food and don’t even get me started on how some people turn up in the breakfast room in bare feet and pajamas. My point was that free breakfast offerings are often of low quality and aren’t really free, because the cost is factored into your room rate. Pay breakfast options are usually overpriced, and I’d very much like to see hotels offer discounted room rates for guests that don’t want the “free” breakfast.
The piece generated 160 comments and most of you disagreed with me, some vehemently. I got the point, many of you like to get a free breakfast at your hotel and what’s on offer doesn’t matter to much so long as there’s something you like. So with that in mind, I contacted all of the largest American hotel chains to ascertain which brands are offering free breakfast these days. I also studied your comments about the breakfasts you like and checked out other sites like Hotel Chatter for other opinions on free hotel breakfast options.Gadling readers seem to think that Embassy Suites has the best free breakfast, but there were also kudos for Drury Hotels, Hampton Inn and Residence Inn. I’ve also heard good things from people I trust about Hyatt Place’s complimentary breakfast Skillet™ breakfast that includes hot breakfast sandwiches including low-carb options. Hotel Chatter gives props to Hilton Garden Inn and Courtyard but both of those brands charge for breakfast. Below you’ll find a list of hotels that offer free breakfast. In addition to these hotels, almost any independent bed & breakfast will provide you with a free breakfast, and many of these are of very high quality. Please let us know about other hotels that offer free breakfast in the comments section and be sure to tell us what you think about their breakfast offerings.
As I squeeze the last bits of orange garnish into my pint of Blue Moon, a man to my left is having his nostrils plugged by a gyrating set of female genitals.
Releasing him from the flesh cave, the attractive blonde stripper – to the immense enjoyment of the sophomoric and semi-erect set of friends he’s brought with him – suddenly doubles around and stiffly slaps a hand across his clean shaven face. This is my fourth strip club of the night, and even I didn’t see that coming. It’s all part of her shtick, however, and from the look of things the two are no more than 10 minutes from a trip to a private room.
No, this isn’t some testosterone fueled frat party, it’s just another night out in Portland, Oregon, strip club capital USA.
Despite the fact that this northwestern city is lauded for its microbrews, coffee and eco-friendly public transport, believe it or not, Portland is also home to more strip clubs per capita than any other city in America. Not Las Vegas. Not Detroit. Portland.
So just like the brilliant minds that put together Strip City, the documentary featured above, I, too, came to Portland on a mission to try and find out what it is that keeps the city so excessively nude.
—
“Well, the girls are definitely hotter than in Bangkok.” The woman making the observation is my wife, an oddly willing participant in the evening.
We’ve entered into Stars Cabaret in the suburb of Beaverton, and through info gleaned from local friends, the place is meant to be slightly more upscale. From the way a customer is strategically inserting a $10 bill, however, I question the level of class.
With dancers operating on four stages, to the far right of my table a dancer is removing her red thong with a tool called another man’s teeth. No expert on yoga or anatomy, it appears as if she’s tearing something potentially used in childbirth.
Like many other PDX establishments, Stars offers a fairly wide variety of food to accompany the cocktails and nipples, a service I haven’t encountered in the seedy strip joints of my past. Amongst the specials being advertised is free prime rib on Wednesday’s (a $20 value, apparently), and I question the morality of luring customers to a strip club by offering free chunks of meat. The promo seems to be a common one around town, however, so I figure it must be alright.
As the DJ switches into an up-tempo house beat, I ponder my own personal theories on why this Northwest city has such an affinity for poles and panties. Is it the weather? Are the 10 months of gray drizzle an excuse for erotic indoor fantasies? Perhaps it’s an extension of Portland’s well-known arts scene, an avenue for exercising freedom of expression and the beauty of the human form? Or, maybe it’s as simple as Portland is just full of a lot of really kinky people hopped up on microbrews and ready to get weird.
The answer I get from a woman named Diane who is working the entrance paints a far more logical picture:
“I think it’s simply because of the laws.”
Disappointed by its blandness, I’m amazed it’s a reasoning I hadn’t thought to explore.
“Yeah, Portland just has some really lenient laws when it comes to the ability to serve liquor and stay open late. Plus, the girls can be fully nude.”
Intrigued by the legal leniency, I decided to delve deeper into the issue and discovered that, yes, Portland does in fact have remarkably casual laws. I could give you the legal jargon that I discovered (which pertains to Article 1, Section 8 of the Oregon constitution), or, I could simply allow you to ponder over the blunt quotation I found on the Portland Bar Fly site:
According to Mr. Bar Fly, “our laws kick ass in that strippers can show their beaver while you drink whiskey and eat steak. You’ll never, ever be alone”. Yeah. Pretty much sums it up.
I thanked Diane at Stars for their hospitality, and I decided to take the question downtown to where the Portland stripping scene all started: Mary’s.
Originally a piano bar owned by Mary Durst, new owner Roy Keller decided in 1965 to spice his shows up by having topless girls rile up the crowd between piano sets. When it became apparent that customers were far more interested in girls than the piano, Mary’s Club changed tacks to become Portland’s first official strip club, swapping to fully nude shows once the law allowed it in 1985.
Closer to a historical landmark than a glitzy new club, I enter the dimly lit room to find a buxom blonde requesting money for the jukebox in three different languages.
That’s right. A jukebox. I told you this place was old school.
I order a Pabst Blue Ribbon and a plate of fish tacos (which were phenomenal), and sit back to watch the show. Adorning the walls are the famous hand-painted murals that Roy used to attract customers prior to realizing a set of bare breasts would do the trick. Unlike Stars, where the cocktail waitresses prance about in neon excuses for clothing, the staff at Mary’s is conservatively dressed.
I speak with our waitress, a daughter of the family-owned and operated establishment, and she agrees on the theory that the laws simply allow a lot of, shall we say, flexibility in their ability to give people what they want.
A man in the front row tells the dancer she’s sexy and slides her a $20 bill. Ultimately, it seems they’re both getting what they want. More than just seduction, at the end of the night, this is still just business as usual. A standard case of supply and demand, for every man (or woman) out there who’s in need of some immediate nudity, there is a woman (or man) who is need of some hard earned cash.
According to “Rocket” of the “Rocket Report” column that appears in Exotic Magazine (yes, Portland has its own erotic magazine that features ads, maps, and directions to 52 different clubs), “in Portland, strippers can achieve a level of public status that rivals rock stardom. If you play your cards right, it can also equal big money.”
One of the cocktail girls at Stars tells me that the girls at Casa Diablo across town are making some real good money right now. She says it’s one of the current hotspots, and it’s got a reputation as being one of the “dirtiest” clubs in town. I find this to be ironic seeing as it’s also an all vegan establishment, which according to their site, is the first of its kind in the entire world.
I look up their ad in Exotic magazine and notice that they promise, amongst other things, live “girl on girl” shows.
Vegan food and lesbian fantasies, you ask? In a town with dozens of strip clubs I suppose it’s a constant battle to stand out from the crowd, a malleable science from which I am sure the patrons of Portland greatly benefit.
Unable to make it all the way across town to Casa Diablo, I instead walk down East Burnside to a club called Union Jack’s. Recommended by a friend with an intimate history of Portland strip clubs, he claims that the last time he visited “the place totally fired me up.”
I pay my $5 cover to the doorman and head inside, my expectations running high. Within 30 seconds I can tell the place is completely lawless, and it does, in fact, totally fire me up.
A dancer fresh off of her turn on the stage casually walks to the bar and orders a drink with the rest of the crowd, her completely naked body a stark contrast to the clothed pack of gentlemen conversing with her. As I head to the bathroom I’m bumped by a door I didn’t even notice was there. Again, a completely naked woman scurries out from a backroom, apparently in the middle of something and needing some assistance.
While some of the other clubs I’d visited had a semblance of professional separation between dancer and patron, this scene is little more than a souped-up frat party gone awry. You have the feeling that at any moment you might get lucky, an atmosphere, which I’m sure contributes to the place being packed.
And then, as I watch a man nearly suffocate while fully ensconced in a young girl’s breasts, everything suddenly begins to clear: the lenient laws may seem to be the reason for the explosion of fully nude clubs in Portland, but they are simply a catalyst for greater human tendencies.
To sell your body is often referred to as the world’s oldest profession (though by no means are strippers prostitutes), and for thousands of years humans have paid money to tickle their most primal urges. For those who are doing the disrobing, many times it’s more than simply the money, as many strippers I know have told me there’s also a sense of beauty, confidence, and empowerment that goes along with the job.
On both sides of the stage, these are all emotions in a human’s life that need addressing, and the laws simply allow the greater root cause to express itself in its overtly lustful form.
So here’s to you Portland, Oregon, for managing to keep an entire city sexually sated and passionately intrigued; when it comes to celebrating the beauty of the flesh, your frosty pint of microbrew decidedly runneth over.
Want more travel stories? Read the rest of the “Vagabond Tales” over here.
Tourists come to Hong Kong for a number of reasons: business, shopping, sightseeing.
Me? I came to eat.
I have long heard about Hong Kong’s famed cuisine, with its unique blend of Chinese, Western, Japanese, Southeast Asian and international influences. The city is home to dozens of celebrity chefs and boasts 62 Michelin-starred restaurants. It’s regularly called the culinary capital of Asia, if not the world.
I wasn’t interested in Hong Kong’s chichi gourmet restaurant scene, nor did I have the budget for it. Rather, I was intent on sampling the city’s dizzying array of cheap eats. Dim sum. Wonton. Noodles. Tea with medicinal properties. Bakery tarts that melt in your mouth. My mouth waters just thinking of it.
Here are some of the highlights of my Hong Kong eating extravaganza, each costing less than US$5 a serving.
%Gallery-173830%Pork Siu Mai with Quail Egg at DimDimSum Dim Sum Specialty Store
Four steaming pork dumplings, each topped with a small, perfectly boiled quail egg. It’s no wonder The Daily Beast named this small dim sum chain one of the 101 Best Places to Eat – in the world.
Cost: HK$18 (US$2.32 at US$0.13 to HK$1) 7 Tin Lok Lane, Causeway Bay
King Prawn Wonton Noodle at Tsim Chai Kee Noodle
The wontons at this Central District noodle shop contain succulent pieces of juicy king prawn. Select the yellow noodle option and spice to your heart’s content.
Cost: HK$22 (US$2.84) 98 Wellington Street, Central
Vermicelli Roll Stuffed with BBQ Pork at Tim Ho Wan
The wait at the world’s cheapest Michelin-starred restaurant is worth it: simple, home-style dim sum classics like the BBQ pork-filled vermicelli roll, prepared to perfection and drizzled in soy sauce. Though I didn’t try them, the pork buns are also said to be excellent.
Cost: HK$18 (US$2.32) 2-20 Kwong Wa Street, Mong Kok
Aloo Paratha at Waka Sweets in the Chungking Mansions
Hankering for curry? Look no further than the ground floor of the Chungking Mansions, which is filled with South Asian specialties like curries and sweets. The aloo paratha at Waka Sweets is greasy, but it hit the spot.
Cost: HK$8 (US$1.03) Ground floor, past the first staircase on the right, Chungking Mansions, 36-44 Nathan Road, Tsim Sha Tsui
Coconut Sago at Ying Heong Yuen
This coconut milk drink with tiny tapioca beads is the perfect way to beat the Hong Kong heat. It’s available for a pittance at most street stalls, but the version at Ying Heong Yuen in Causeway Bay is particularly good.
Cost: HK$8 (US$1.03) 3-7 Cannon Street, Causeway Bay
Chrysanthemum Tea at Good Spring Company Limited
The herbal teas doled out at century-old Good Spring Company Limited are said to provide energy, eliminate bodily toxins and promote general health. The chrysanthemum tea is mildly sweet and refreshing.
Cost: HK$7 (US$0.90) 8 Cochrane Street, Central
Milk Tea at Tsui Wah Restaurant
A legacy of British colonialism, milk tea is a must-drink in Hong Kong. Tsui Wah’s is smoother than most versions and pairs well with the home-style diner’s sweet toasted bun.
Cost: HK$16 (US$2.06) 15-19 Wellington Street, Central
Egg Tart at Tai Cheong Bakery
Bakeries around the city vie for the title of best egg tart. By many accounts, including that of former British governor Chris Patten, Tai Cheong takes the cake. The secret is in the buttery cookie crust, honed over more than six decades of operation.
Cost: HK$6 (US$0.80) 35 Lyndhurst Terrace, Central
Steamed Milk with Ginger Juice at Yee Shun Milk Company
This dessert, ordered hot with ginger juice, has a consistency somewhere between warm milk and pudding. The ginger adds a spicy kick to the sweetness. It is, quite simply, one of the most delicious things I have ever eaten, with a taste that stays with you long after you leave. Though there were tons of cheap eats to try, I ended up returning for seconds.
Cost: HK$26 (US$3.35) 506 Lockhart Road, Causeway Bay
[Photo Credit: Jessica Marati]
“Budget Hong Kong” chronicles one writer’s efforts to authentically experience one of the world’s most expensive cities, while traveling on a shoestring. Read the whole series here.