Renting a [Flat] in Hong Kong - 1

I left Miami without settled accommodations. A few weeks before I left, I spoke to a Hong Kong "apartment negotiator" who told me that it might be slightly inconvenient at first, it would be the best way to get into something suitable, or minimally acceptable, to take a look around in the first few days, then make moves.

I landed on a Saturday night and did not get to my hotel (Central Park Hotel at the intersection of Hollywood Road and Possession Street) until about 11pm. I planned to hit the ground running but then realized that night that the next day would be Sunday and found out that real estate, like pretty much everything else besides food service, retail, entertainment, and transportation, is closed Sundays. Taking it in stride, I trekked around Hong Kong Island on foot and even had the energy to go to the Peak on the cable car that goes up the incline (reminded me of Pittsburgh's).

I got a sense for a few of the neighborhoods and felt confident that I preferred to live on Hong Kong Island. Bosco, the "apartment negotiator," sent me an email around 8pm that night that I could go see an apartment by myself if I got in touch with the tenant occupying the other room. The apartment was in Wan Chai behind the Times Square shopping mall. Although that mall is pretty modern and western, the street separating it from my apartment was the border to another world where Chinese men are out on the street until after sunset, with buckets and crates of live crabs, boxes of fish, some of them still flopping around, and a million other things. The 'fruits de mer,' and their smell intimidated me almost as much as the generally chaotic atmosphere of this neighborhood. I have not been to Wan Chai since.

The apartment itself was a dump and it scared me because I thought I was destined to be in such a dump. For 5000 HKD (approx. 660 USD), I would have a room that barely fit a kids bed and nothing else. The bathroom was disgusting and the kitchen area looked like it had been used by the merchants to get their crab-stock ready for market. I left, bought a phone, and decided that my search needed to branch out the next day.