Chungking Mansions

Arriving in Hong Kong from Phnom Penh we hadn't looked into places to stay or areas to go to.  In Cambodia all the towns were small enough that the tuk tuk drivers would show you to a couple of hostels before having to decide.  In Hong Kong we would be taking public transport and there was a plethora of places to stay and areas to check out.  After looking in our Lonely Planet and reviews online, we decided to head to Kowloon, which is attached to mainland China, as opposed to Hong Kong island.

Our initial destination was Chungking Mansions (from here on referred to as CKM) which had several hostel options in our book.  We didn't realize the scale of chaos that would meet us at the door.  There has been no place in Asia that we have encountered that compares.  From what I understand, the first two or three floors are all merchant shops and restaurants and above that (I think 20 floors in all) were residences that were originally built as apartments but have since been converted into multi bedroom guesthouses.  There are five blocks or sections on each floor which are serviced by a specific elevator, a person could not get from Block A to Block C on the same floor without heading down to the first two floors and switching elevators (unless there are some floors specific to transferring).

Upon walking into the first floor of the CKM a guy held out a business card and told us we should stay at his guesthouse.  We told him we would check out the rooms and then decide.  He loaded us onto elevator E and out we got onto floor 5.  There were probably 6 doors on the floor, one of which led into his guesthouse.  Our room was big enough for a large single bed (or a small double bed), enough floor space for our bags, and a bathroom that was just big enough for a toilet and sink (there was a shower but we would have had to stand on the toilet to use it).  It was surreal.  After we had checked in we immediately used the free internet to look up better places to stay for the next two nights so as not to be stuck in the Mansion again.

For dinner we read about a good indian place somewhere in the Mansion.  Not understanding how the block system worked at the time, we wandered around uselessly on the first floor until someone approached us with a business card for Taj Mahal Club, the exact restaurant we were looking for.  He loaded us onto elevator C and up to floor 3 where we found this little indian restaurant that was hopping.  Almost every table in the room was filled (probably 15 tables).  We had an excellent, although pricey, vegetable curry, rice, vegetable samosa, and garlic naan with a mango lassi and sprite.

This post does nothing to describe the craziness that this building contains.  You could try and look up Chungking Mansion on wikipedia or google but until you experience it, you won't fully understand.