My parents and I bought the air tickets from Philippine Airlines, and we arrived in Hong Kong on the evening of August 26th, two days before the check-in date for the student residence at the City University of Hong Kong. We booked a hotel room at the Regal Riverside Hotel in Sha Tin on trip.com before we arrived in Hong Kong, and as soon as we passed through the Hong Kong customs at the airport, we went to the bus station that is right outside of the airport exit to catch the bus to the hotel. We had some spare Hong Kong dollars from our prior trips to Hong Kong, and we used it to pay the bus fare according to the stated amount posted on the sign at the airport bus station.
During these two days, we visited our relatives in Hong Kong. After nearly four years, we could see each other again in good shape and form. We had lunch and dinner together and had a lot to catch up with one another on our recent lives. Along the way, my uncle from Hong Kong took me to stores to purchase body wash, shampoo, toothpaste, toilet paper, and other necessities. Then, on Monday (8/28), we packed our suitcases and headed to the City University of Hong Kong. To get to the City University of Hong Kong from Sha Tin, we took the East Rail Line of the Mass Transit Railway (MTR) bound for Admiralty for about twenty minutes to get to Kowloon Tong. Starting from Kowloon Tong Station, we walked towards Exit C and entered a large shopping mall called Festival Walk. After about three to four flights of elevators, we entered the corridor connecting the City University of Hong Kong and Festival Walk and headed straight to the campus entrance.
The campus entrance has heavy security officer presence and many card-reading machines, and without a student ID, I could not use these machines and had to show my admittance letter, a visitor QR code for each of my parents (since they were visitors), and passports (for identity verification purposes) to the security officers to obtain approval to enter the campus. As someone with no experience with where everything on campus is, I decided to ask one of the security officers patrolling the campus about the whereabouts of the student's residence. He recommended we take a taxi to get there instead of walking there strenuously with all the luggage since the student residence is towards the top of the mountain. We followed the officer's advice and found a taxi whose driver took us to the student residence. The entire trip from the campus to the student residence took about ten to fifteen minutes.
At the student residence, the check-in area to get my assigned bed and room card was inside the multi-function hall at the center of the residential community. Aside from my assigned bed and room card, I received a box of tissues and a small hand sanitizer, which was very caring and practical. My room was on the 14th floor (equivalent to the 15th floor of the U.S.) of residential hall #1 (there were 11 residential halls) since people in Hong Kong called the first floor "ground floor" and the second floor "first floor." My parents helped me bring all the luggage to my room and unpack them at the proper places before we went to the campus canteen to have lunch together. Each residential hall has several paid-to-use washers and dryers in the laundromat on the rooftop floor, and the air conditioner in each room also requires monetary payment before activating it. There are several card-reading machines on different floors of each residential hall where a student can select the payment amount and tap their Octopus card on one of these machines (a Hong Kong-only debit card with money deposited into it) to pay to use the air conditioner, washer, and dryer. The amount one pays correlates with the specific number of minutes one can use these machines (HK$8 for every 40 minutes for the washer and HK$1 for every 4 minutes for the dryer). If you have questions, you can contact the hall and floor masters in your residential hall.
Last, if you ever dorm at the student residence and have great artistic talent, you should sign up for the biweekly busking event! The event gathers singers and players of various musical instruments to play harmonious and melodic music and showcase their vocal skills. Most importantly, it is a way to help people get to know one another since the residential community is always ethnically diverse.
Comments