While In Hongkong - Transportation Mode

Hongkong surely has a complete and integrated kind of public transportation mode. All of the transportation mode are connected one to another from different point to point. Being a visitors to this country, there will be no such thing of getting lost. Not only because of the transportation, but also because of the complete information is very easy to find. 

Before go deep about the transportation mode, there is one important thing that needed to enjoy the comprehensive transportation, that is the Octopus Card.

Octopus Card

Octopus card is the name of the card that we need to have to travel around Hongkong. Named after the octopus, it describes the function of the card. Can be use for every kind of transportation mode also as a replacement for cash in lots of stores in Hongkong. 

The octopus card actually produced in several type, but for the travellers used, just buy the rent card one. The initial price for this card is HKD 150, contains of HKD 50 deposits and HKD 100 credit. After finished the travelling, we can got the refund for the amount left inside the card and return it, with HKD 9 charge if the time holding for the card is less than 3 months. The refund can be made at the customer services booth at the MTR station. 

If you decided not to have the Octopus card, taking MTR is no problem at all. Simply buy the MTR ticket at the customer service. But problem will occur if you are going to take the bus. The bus will not give you the change, so you must be ready with the exact amount of fare, or just bear the loss from paying more than the fare. 

Transportation Mode
Like I said before, that HK is doing very well in serving public transport not only for the citizen, but also for the visitors. The common public transport used are bus, MTR, taxi, tram and ferry. As the example, I will tell how we decided to choose our transport to get to the hotel from the airport. The airport actually provided all kind of transportation as I mentioned above. 

Airport Express

Airport Express is the express train that will only stop at the Central station and or the airport. Pros of using the airport express is because it is the fastest way to reach the Central station, only 40 minutes. The only problem in using it is, the train will only stop at the Central Station and we need to transfer to the different line to get to our hotel. With a lots of luggages, I strongly not recommend to use this way, because to get to the different line, we need to walk so far. Other than that, the fare for this train also quite expensive, it is around HKD 60  for a single journey. Can check the fare in this link.

Bus Stop..

Public Bus

There are a dozen of public buses that we can choose from the airport. The one with higher fare with less stops, or the one with the lower fare with more stops. The pros of riding the bus is with lots of luggages we do not need to go up and down the bus until we meet our stops, the fare is very cheap, last time it is only HKD 21 per person, and also we can see the city view by riding the bus. The cons is the bus will take about 1 to 1.5 hour to get to the places, but still it depends on the destination. The complete information can be find in this link. 

Taxi

Same with the bus, taxi also a hassle free way for a lot of luggages. The only thing is the taxi driver will count the luggages and put the extra charge HKD 5 to every luggage. The other thing with taxi is, we really need to know the exact address of our destination. Sometimes the taxi driver only know the area but not the exact building that we are looking at, so it will be much better to have the map to the place. 

Ferry

Ferry services from the airport only destined to Macau or Shenzhen (if I am not mistaken), so that is the reason why we do not choose this mode. But we did experiencing the ferry to Macau on the other day, also from a different harbour, called Hongkong Ferry Macau Terminal. The name of the Ferry is Turbo Jet. Will put the details in my Macau trip :) Other than that, the ferry also served us to come across Hongkong Island, Kowloon and the Outlaying Island.  

Tram
Other than all of that transportation above, they still have the tram called the Ding-Ding Tram. The trams journey divided in to West Bound and East Bound Tram. The tram start working on 5 am and will only stop at 12am. Even the rate is also cheap around HKD 2.3 per single journey.

For the recap, to go around Hongkong, we can choose the transportation mode that we want. I have been travelling using the bus, MTR and ferry. But my favourite one is bus, not to tell that I am too lazy to walk so far only to get transferred to the different line, but it is also much  cheaper compare to the MTR. And one main reason, for a traveller I really need to see the city, taking pictures from the bus, getting to know about the road and area that I passed through. 

So this is a wrap for the transportation mode in Hongkong!!