The outside of Chungking Mansions

When the guidebook said that the best budget backpacker accommodation in Hong Kong was in Kowloon at a place called Chungking Mansions, I got excited by the name. However, when we pulled up at 12:30am after our flight from Bangkok was delayed I got a fast dose of reality. Built in the 1960s as a cheap place for the Chinese to live, the building has since become a mixing pot for dozens of different races living in various degrees of squalor.

Over the years, the Chungking Mansions has become famous due to a string of fires, robberies, racial flare ups and bad press. It was notorious during the 80′s, but recent events have led to the installation of hundreds of CCTV cameras and the hiring of dozens of security guards. Now, it is more slummy in terms of the filth and dirt everywhere than due to safety concerns.

Chungking Mansions is made up of five different wings (referred to as blocks) that are served by separate elevators and staircases rising up the 15 stories to the roof. Each block houses hundreds of apartments, guest houses, hostels, restaurants, sweat shops, stores and Lord knows what else. The first two floors form a massive lobby and to get anywhere, we had to cross through a maze of shops selling everything from bootleg cell phones to computers, DVDs, magazines, porno, phone cards, gifts and Indian food.

Every time we would walk into the Mansions, we would be surrounded by a group of Indian men hawking their upstairs restaurants and offering us discounts if we went up with them right now. I was good about ignoring them, but Carrie is nicer than me and would say “not now,” so every time we came back they would find us again and ask, “how about now?” We did finally go to one of the restaurants on our last night and, although the food was delicious, our favorite Indian meals were still the little stalls that peppered the first floor.

The ground floor of Chungking Mansions is filled with Indian food, phone cards and people galore

Each of the stalls had pretty much the same food: samosas, naan breads, curries, fried snacks and other traditional Indian fare. However, the question was which of the ten or so would have what we wanted at any given time. The samosas went the fastest and we often had to search around to find these tasty 50 cents treats. The other foods were amazing also and one night we literally pieced together a meal from four different stalls using the freshest bits from each one. Craving anything India, we also befriended many of these stall keepers and got lost in numerous conversations as our food got cold.

Bed Bugs and Closet-Sized Rooms

Me, Carrie, Michelle and Karen in our teeny Chungking Mansions hotel room

The Indian population also ran the majority of the guest houses contained within the towers of Chungking Mansions. When our cab first pulled up at 12:30am, two men ran over to it and helped us with our bags, offering to take us to their guest house. Usually these are the exact people we try to avoid, but it was late and we were tired and they promised us cheap rooms.

Cheap is a relative word in Hong Kong, as we quickly found that the filthy closet sized room with a shared bathroom and bed the size of a cot was $12 per night. Stinking of smoke, I can only imagine it was the room he showed people to get them to say “no way I’m staying here…give me your $20 room instead.” However, we were exhausted and had stayed in far worse so we checked the bed for bedbugs and, after finding none, took the key and said goodnight.

The stairs are the easiest way to get down in Chungking Mansions...and also the most disgusting

About an hour after the bedbug check, I felt something crawling on my neck, slapped it and looked at my blood-stained hand. Sure enough…bedbugs! I guess they must have been in hiding and came out when they smelled my blood, because they were all over the bed and pillows. We immediately packed back up and demanded to be moved to a better room for the same price. Naturally, the staff balked and said that they have never had bedbugs, but the next room they showed us had at least 100 dead ones under the mattress.

One phone argument with the boss-man later, we moved to one of their “better rooms” on a different floor and said that we would talk to the owner the next day. Long story short, while Carrie was negotiating with the owner, I went up and down the stairs and found us a new place for the rest of our time. The price was higher, but at least it was bedbug free and the staff was super nice and helpful.

For an awesome but Chunngking Video that shows what happens on the higher up floors, click here

The porch at the River Guesthouse we were sitting on when the naked Thai thief broke in

My favorite part of our time in Kanchanaburi was our room, which literally floated on two canoes on the shores of the River Kwai. The entire River Guest House was built over the river with wooden walkways connecting the rooms with the reception area and the entrance. One of these walkways led up to a little patio in front of our door with water on all other sides. Our room was pretty small, but it also had a porch out back with two comfy chairs, a hammock and an area to either dip feet into the river or to jump right in. Check out their Trip Advisor page if you’re curious.

Carrie and I spent countless hours relaxing on the porch, watching the river flow and boats come and go. It is one of my most tranquil memories of the trip. However, that tranquility was shattered on our third night there. After spending the late evening watching a movie on the laptop on the porch, we brushed our teeth and returned to our chairs to gaze out at the full moon reflecting in the water at 3am.

Earlier that evening, Carrie had done a little tidying up and put our take out boxes, along with some other trash, in a plastic bag and hung it on the front door knob. This random act of cleanliness is the only reason for what happened next.

Follow the numbers with the story. 1 is the front patio where he entered the room, 2 is where we were sitting before running in from 2 through the room back out to 3, at which point I jumped into the river following the path of the arrow chasing the thief. He made it up to the walkway while I was halfway through the arrow, ending my chase

As Carrie was closer to the screen door separating the porch from our bedroom, it was she who heard the garbage bag rustling. At first she ignored it, but after it continued for a few seconds she got up to see what was going on. To her surprise, a long haired, tall and completely naked Thai man was standing in our bedroom. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING? GET OUT OF OUR ROOM,” she screamed from the porch side of the screen door.

As Carrie remembers it, the man stared at her for a solid second or two looking completely startled, dazed and out of it. Then, he bolted out the front door. While this was happening, all over the course of a few seconds, I had quickly jumped out of my chair and into the room. Carrie had already run into the room and out the front door where the naked Thai thief had jumped off of the patio and was escaping in the river. “He’s getting away! Go after him,” Carrie yelled.

With no idea what he had stolen and no clue what I would do if I actually caught him, pure instinct and adrenalin took control and I jumped over the banister into the waist high river chasing after him. I gave a good run, screaming on the top of my lungs the whole time. “Stop! Thief! Help!” Unfortunately, by the time I made it halfway across the river to the nearest walkway he had already jumped out and was sprinting up a hill next to a house.

A reenactment of me chasing the naked Thai thief

I continued chasing, but realized that there was no chance of catching him as I was still in the water and he probably knew the area in the dark like the back of his hand. At one point towards the end of the chase I felt what I imagined to be a human limb halfway through Lipo brushing against my leg. I immediately began thrashing around, in case it was what I thought it was, and by the time I realized that it was nothing there was nothing else  to do other than get out of the water and return to the room.

During the entire chase, both Carrie and I were screaming on the top of our lungs. Anyone who has ever been to a Mets game with me knows, I can make a whole lot of noise. However, not a single light came on and none of the staff left their room to see what happened. In retrospect, we should have banged on the door of the hotel owner until he woke up…but really, what good would it have done at that point.

The inside of our room at the River Guesthouse...the thief made it as far as the fan before Carrie startled him and he ran

The only thing the thief had managed to nab was Carrie’s little digital camera, which was almost dead anyway after eight months of traveling anyway. Right next to the camera’s last position was my laptop filled with tons of non-backed up photos as well as bags with passports, money and DSLR cameras on the floor nearby. Thank god he didn’t grab any of those!

Had we woken up the owner, all that would have happened is that we would have had to deal with the police and file pointless paperwork. They would never get the guy, the camera would never be retrieved and the deductible on my traveler’s insurance was more than the value of the camera. In the end, all that was lost was two days of photos. Super bummer, but it could have been way worse.

Our chairs and TV used to block the front door from future robberies at 3am at the River Guesthouse

What we did do, however, was take every chair in the room and pile them, along with the TV, in front of the front door. While all the other doors in the room had bolts that could be locked from inside, the main entrance only had a simple push button on the knob. Did the guy pick it? Did he have a key? We had no idea, but spent the night laying in bed, not able to sleep, just waiting for him to come back with a bunch of friends.

Logically, we knew that we were in no danger and that no one was coming back, but that doesn’t stop the mind from working in overdrive. Our room was literally in the middle of nowhere and we knew that our screams would go unheard. I don’t think either of us managed to get any sleep until the sun came up that next morning.

As much as we loved that place, there was no way we could stay another night. So, after getting a couple of uneasy hours of sleep, we packed our bags and headed to reception. At least we wanted an apology and to know that the owner would put a better inside lock on the door. I had also thought it was only fair that we didn’t have to pay for the room. And so it began.

We started by asking the guest house owner, a Westerner, if he had heard our screams the night before. He replied that he was a heavy sleeper and so were all of his staff. As we then began to tell the story, he stood there listening with a big grin on his face the whole time…like he couldn’t care less. Anyone with half a brain could see that we were visibly upset and still affected by the ordeal, but he treated it as a joke. The closest to an emotion he showed was when he became defensive and said, “what do you think, that I sent him? Never! This has never happened before.” We told him that we really loved the place and wanted to stay, but that we didn’t feel safe and had to leave. He couldn’t have cared less.

Our hotel room was the building on the left. We were on the porch on the far left, the thief came in from the patio on the right

Finally, after five minutes of telling our story to his grin, I made the mistake of bringing up the money. This completely enraged him and he began yelling at us, demanding to know why we didn’t wake him up immediately to call the police. I said why, what would have been the point. He then demanded to know about my insurance but when I said it didn’t cover the camera he replied that that was my fault and not his problem. He then brought in the fact that I had bargained down the room price when we checked in (a standard practice in these parts) before yelling at me more and calling me a “cheap ugly fucking bastard.”

Entering the River Guesthouse (taken by Carrie)

When I tried to reason with him, explaining how much we liked the place but were just deeply disturbed by the incident and still wanted to recommend it to others, he replied with “do you want me to pay your fucking shrink bills back home too?” Finally, as the scene had escalated beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, we just gave them the amount due and began to walk out. This didn’t stop him from yelling more insults at us as we traversed the wooden walkway towards the exit. Not ever knowing when to quit and loving to get a rise out of people, I decided to yell back at him, “We just want you to be a decent human being.”

This final response must have sent him over the precipice to coo-cooville, as he now began to run down the walkway after me threatening to punch my face in. Not actually having any interest in hand to hand combat, I turned my back on him and walked up the steps and off his property to a final and long tirade of swears and insults.

The walkway leading up to our hotel room at the River Guesthouse

To this day, I am not sure what initially set him off. Carrie and I can only imagine that he must have other backpackers trying to scam him out of paying and he just thought that we were doing the same? But from the beginning he showed no human emotion to two people telling a harrowing story. It was all very odd. Hopefully, if he thinks it was a scam, he later saw our camera charger in the trash of the room and realized what a jerk he was.

Epilogue: Our final night in Kanchanaburi was spent in a lovely garden guest house with a little patio, one door and bolts in the inside. Still, despite the obvious safety of the room, it wasn’t until we left the town that the anxiety finally began to settle. In all of our time traveling throughout all of our trips, this was the craziest thing that ever happened. The weirdest part was that just earlier that day we had been discussing how lucky we were to have made it through yet another trip without any serious incident. I think Carrie and I must have ESP. :)

Our room, if you can call it that, at The Overstay in Bangkok

Arriving in the capital of Thailand during New Year’s, we figured that Couchsurfing would be the best way to get a local feel for the celebration. Carrie must have sent out more than a dozen requests, but the only one to say yes came from the owner of The Overstay, a bar, who had lots of extra space for couchsurfers to crash. If we wanted to sleep on the floor without any privacy, we could do so for free, but he also had a few rooms available for $3 per night. Charging anything really goes against the whole idea of couchsurfing, but it was still cheaper than doing it on our own and we thought we might meet some fun people.

Little did we know upon arriving that the nap we took by the baggage claim carousel in the airport would be the best sleep we would get until we left Bangkok. We showed up at the Overstay at around 10am the day before Songkran started but the guests had already begun the party and were soaking everyone and everything in sight. The owner was nowhere to be found, but another guest showed us the one remaining room: a little box no more than 8×8 feet small with no light, window or door lock. Oh, and it was about a thousand degrees.

The Overstay may have been awful, but we met some fun people there to celebrate Songkran

With no other choice, we dropped off our bags and began asking the other guests what there was to do in the neighborhood and where the weekend market was. No one had any idea of anything except drinking at the Overstay or walking down the street to get some food. The general idea behind the place is that the owner offers cheap or free accommodation, a fun bar atmosphere and then charges bar prices for beer, that he brings in by the caseload every day. Guests don’t even need money; everyone gets a passport book upon arrival that they just stamp every time they take a brew.

The building itself is a six story fixer-upper in the most dire way one can use that term. A former whorehouse and home of at least two murders and one ghost, the Overstay would be condemned in the USA. The floors were beyond dirty and the dark hallway on our floor had a pane of broken glass pointing out so any drunken fool could just stumble into it. Our shared bathroom’s toilet did not flush and someone made a huge mess the first day that was still not cleaned up when we left four days later. Oh, and that was also where we had to shower.

The floor was a popular sleeping spot at The Overstay

Moving up, the next floor was a wide open room with a sink and bar area, none of which worked, and piles of CDs, art supplies, clothes and people sleeping out in the open. The bathroom had a better toilet, but the urinals drained right onto the floor and my feet. Gross! Moving up some more, the next two floors each had a few rooms, more people sleeping on the floor and more disgusting bathrooms. One of them actually had a usable shower, though the water came out in a trickle from a hose protruding from the wall.

All of the rooms in the place were teeny and hot. There were no beds: only foldable mattresses that offered no real difference from sleeping on the floor. Some rooms had mosquito nets: ours did not. Some of the higher up rooms offered a break from the pumping bass of the bar’s music that pumped until after 5am. Ours did not. One night we even tried moving rooms to one with a window. We literally got no sleep that night as our chests vibrated from the music that just never ended.

This disgusting bathroom was the cleanest at The Overstay

And the dirt. Dirt everywhere. Every day the bar was cleaned by a local woman who never made it past the fist floor. My feet were completely black when I didn’t wear shoes and it had to be the most unsanitary place I’ve ever stayed.

Perhaps the most amazing part about the Overstay was just how happy other people were there. We checked the owner’s Couchsurfing profile and guests just raved about how much fun they had. Sure, we met a few other disgruntled surfers, but for the most part people loved it. Every morning the floors, couches and entire bar area was filled with passed out people. Even the owner rarely made it to his own room. To each their own, I guess. You better believe we were very happy to get out of there!

The train we met Rodney on chugs its way through the Hill Country of Sri Lanka en route to Kandy

Our time in Kandy was also marked by our experience with Rodney, the owner of our guesthouse. Rodney first found us at the Colombo train station, fresh off the plane and looking to head to Kandy. He was very nice and helped us buy our tickets, explained what the local foods were and gave us all sorts of info on Kandy. We kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and it did when he sat down next to us on the train and told us that he had a guesthouse.

We sat on the train, waiting for it to leave, as Rodney continued to pester us. He proudly handed us comment books filled with glowing recommendations from other people he cornered at the same station, but we stood our ground and kept saying no. Desperate for business and not wanting to wait hours for the next train and hope to find other tourists to sweet talk, Rodney agreed to our price requirements moments before the train left the station so we finally said yes.

The sunset from our balcony in Kandy

The guesthouse turned out to be beautiful, had a sweeping view of the mountains and the nicest staff ever. Rodney, however, continued to be a thorn in our side throughout our stay there and by the time we left I was glad to never see him again. Some examples… He had Internet that we could use, but it was on his personal computer so he wanted to know full details of what I would be doing.

One time he just walked into our room without asking permission to talk about tours. Another classic was when he told us that he had a washing machine that we could use for 250 rupees a load, then when we gave him our pile of more than 20 pieces he gave it to his employee to hand wash for 50 rupees an item. We didn’t know until Carrie saw him washing them by hand and he told her the actual price.

Rodney’s favorite subject was tours, though it’s partly our fault because we had asked about them. After first quoting us a way too high for us price we spent hours trying to find a way to make it work and keep everyone happy. It could have been a simple negotiation, but he tried to add money to every single aspect of the trip from admission tickets to hotel rooms, meals and gas. In the end we wound up making a decision that we regretted at first, but wound up being glad we did: hiring a private driver to take us around the Ancient Cities.

An auto rickshaw, which is the most common type of taxi we travel in

For the final bit of fun after our 31 hour train journey, Carrie and I found ourselves with the unenviable task of finding cheap lodging near the world famous (who knew!) OSHO Meditation Resort in Puna during a festival. The first few guesthouses we saw were too expensive and we were exhausted so we decided to go with a rickshaw driver who said he could find us something in our price range. These guys are notorious for only showing you places where they get a hefty commission. Still, if all goes well they do the legwork for you and you get a cheap room.

At our first few stops, we waited in the rickshaw while the driver got out, talked to the owner and returned saying that they were full. When we finally had our first vacancy it was far from the center of town, the side bedroom in a family house and double what we were trying to pay…even after haggling. Back into the rickshaw we went and as our search passed the hour mark Carrie and I concluded that we were being duped an enough was enough. Despite finding us nothing, the driver still demanded money for his effort while maintaining innocence. We gave him a pittance and moved on.

Our eventual hotel in Puna

Our final resort was to ask the first pair of white people we found where they were staying and how much it cost. The first couple we found said they were around the corner and paying exactly what we wanted from the beginning but our rickshaw driver convinced us was impossible.

How surprised were we when arrived and it was the very first one we looked at with our driver. I guess the owner didn’t want to pay commission so the driver lied and said it was full. When we finally checked in it was on our own accord with no help from the driver, yet two days later the owner of the guest house was forced to pay a commission. And that’s the way it works.

A typical bathroom in our hotels with the toilet, sink and shower, though the sink and shoiwer all drain on the floor and out a hole in the cornere

As you know, one of the most expensive parts of traveling is the hotel. Well, in India, just like throughout Central America, we stay mostly in guest houses. These are barely hotels and more a closet-sized room with a bathroom and, if we’re lucky, a hot water shower attached. Sometimes the hot shower is next door. At times these rooms can be quite nice, but usually they have concrete walls that are badly painted and often peeling, one florescent light and you can hear everything from everywhere else in the guest house at all hours (people talking two floors up, someone’s iPod playing loudly, late night check ins, etc).

The “double” beds are usually two singles pushed together with separate sheets and blankets. They are usually clean, but a couple of times we have had dirty or ripped sheets and even once had a blanket with blood on it (we chose not to use it). You usually get a towel to use, but no soap in the bathroom and, for the most part, you have to pay about $1 per roll of TP. However, when you are living on a shoestring, it’s amazing what you put up with.