Traveling on $100 versus $1,000 a day in Hong Kong

Years before YouTube became our full-time job, we saved up $35,00 to travel the world until we ran out of money. One of the very first places we visited was Hong Kong, where we traveled on a budget of $75/day.

This year, we had the opportunity to visit Hong Kong for 48 hours as part of the Cathay Pacific stopover program on our way to Beijing. To celebrate this full circle moment, we decided to give ourselves a little challenge. We would spend 1 day on a $100 budget and another day on a $1,000 budget.

Is it even still possible to visit the city for $100? And how much luxury can $1,000 buy you in Hong Kong for one day? Let’s dive into it!

$100 Day in Hong Kong

Our $45 hostel really took us back to our first trip to Hong Kong in 2016, although this one was even smaller than the room we stayed at back then.. The room was teeny tiny, just big enough for a bed, and decorated with giraffe stickers on the linoleum-tiled walls. We decided, though, that if we thought of the room like the futuristic capsule hotels in Tokyo, the small amount of space we had seemed like a lot more fun!

For breakfast, we stopped at a locally-populated corner diner for some coffee and pineapple buns. These pastries originated in Hong Kong and have no actual pineapple, but instead have a crunchy sugar shell that looks like the fruit’s skin. They’re fluffy and served warm with a thick slab of cold butter inside. The meal cost $7.85 for both of us.

Next, we paid $1.54 on the metro to get to our first free activity of the day! Lion Rock is Hong Kong’s most iconic hike, climbing 495 meters above the city for views of the harbor, skyline, and mountains. We had to climb what felt like thousands of stairs to reach the top, but the view was well worth it! Our $4.12 snack of water and Snickers fueled us as well.

Hong Kong is home to 76 Michelin-starred restaurants. How, you may wonder, does that fit into a $100 day? Well, the city is home to Tim Ho Wan, the world’s cheapest Michelin-starred restaurant. We feasted on baked pork buns, red rice rolls stuffed with shrimp, deep-fried bean curd, truffle and mushroom dumplings, and fried avocado wontons. Every single dish was fabulous, and it only cost $26.52!

Over at Victoria Harbor, we partook in our favorite Hong Kong budget hack. Instead of paying for the expensive tourist cruises, we spent $1.03 total for a ride on the public Star Ferry across the harbor. The sun had just set, and the skyscrapers were lit up all around us.

Before heading back to our hostel, we ended the evening with a $5.15 Ferris wheel ride. If you’ve been following us since the early days, then you’ll know that this was something that didn’t fit into the budget on our first trip to Hong Kong, so it felt very nostalgic finally getting to finally ride it a decade later.

And with a $3.99 metro back to the hostel, our total for the day was $96.74!

$1,000 Day in Hong Kong

When the clock flipped onto our $1,000 Hong Kong day, we immediately left our hostel behind for a room in the Ritz Carlton. Our room was on the 107th floor, towering over all of Hong Kong, and let’s just say that the bathroom in this room alone was bigger than our entire hostel room from the day before. This stay typically costs $580/night, but we have an American Express card that provides us with $600 in hotel credits twice a year, so the total cost was $280.77.

After checking in, we spent a couple of hours floating around in the hotel pool, which we learned is the highest indoor pool in the entire world! All that relaxing was probably not good for our jet lag, but it felt so nice to swim with a skyline view and enjoy some poolside fries.

Our afternoon “splurge” of the day was a reflexology appointment. Reflexology is a form of ancient Chinese medicine dating back to the 2nd century. It utilizes pressure points in the feet to alleviate pain in corresponding areas of the body. The massage was absolutely incredible and we ended up adding on pedicures while we were there. The appointment in total cost $219.

Something about all that relaxing made us hungry, so we grabbed a $15 Uber to Yuan, a Michelin Guide (not Michelin Star) restaurant known for its modern Chinese vegetarian fine dining. We opted for the 12-course tasting menu and will spare you the extensive details of all the many dishes, but wow, the presentation and flavor were immaculate. The total meal cost $400, which was twenty times more expensive than our meal the day before. But it was worth it for this once-in-a-lifetime experience.

To finish the night, we grabbed some drinks at the Ritz’s Ozone Bar, the highest bar in the world, with a DJ. The $100 we spent hanging out with drinks overlooking the dazzling Hong Kong skyline was the perfect end to our stopover.

The Cathay Pacific Lounges

If you get the chance to end your Hong Kong stopover in a Cathay Pacific lounge, we’d 1,000% recommend it! In our previous travels, we often planned layovers in Hong Kong just to visit the lounges here, because they’re that good. This layover, we opted to hang out at The Pier lounge simply for their unlimited dumpling and noodle bar, which honestly tasted better than the ones in the Michelin Guide restaurant from the night before. Seriously, we’re obsessed with the Cathay lounge food!

To see our full Hong Kong experience (and see a sneak peek at our China adventures), check out the video below!