| By d'Artagnan on Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - 05:50 pm: Edit |
YMCA Harbourview International
4 Harbour Road, Wan Chai
http://www.harbour.ymca.org.hk/e_index.php
harbour@ymca.org.hk
The Harbourview International is a 3star hotel in Wan Chai. I chose Wan Chai because of it's proximity to the Wan Chai clubs where I planned to spend most of my late evenings. More 141s are on the Kowloon side, but those are primarily day and early evening, so it was easy to travel by MRT to those. Since the MRT shuts when many of the Wan Chai clubs get kicking, this turned out to be a good strategy.
Harbourview was one of the less expensive of the 3star and over hotels. I liked the location. Fenwicks and the rest of the clubs were only several blocks away and an easy walk. There was also a 24 hour internet cafe nearby and many restaurants.
The room was smaller than I'm used to and may be of concern to some people, although I understand that in general most Hong Kong rooms are small. Wireless internet access was available with a pre-paid card. Rates were as follows:
1 hour: 40 HKD/$5 USD
4 hours: 60 HKD/$8 USD
24 hours: 100 HKD/$13 USD
7 days: 300 HKD/$39 USD
14 days: 400 HKD/$52 USD
It was kind of expensive, but looking at the 141 sites at the internet cafe was awkward. The 7 day seemed to be reasonable deal, but I passed on it because I was only going to be there 4 days. Fortunately I was well prepared with 141 printouts, otherwise I would have definitely purchased the 7 day pass.
The hotel is guest friendly and I brought several girls up without having to check them in. I never tried bringing up more than one at a time.
I was able to get a rate of 800 HKD/$100 USD via http://www.precisionreservations.com for each night of my stay. I wanted to extend the stay, but they wanted 1500/$193 for additional nights. This may have been due to rooms fill throughout HK because of a conference. I ended up staying in a tiny room at the Nobel Hostel for a few days instead.