5 Days in Hong Kong on a Budget — What We Did and What It Cost
Filmed on : May 2025
Filmed in : Hong Kong
Budget Overview (2 people)
Accommodation: €250
Restaurants: €88
Groceries: €68
Transportation: €33
Other: €31
Total: €470
Roughly €47/person/day all-in, or €22/person/day excluding accommodation.
We stayed at Mini Central HK — €49/night, small room, no window, but clean and well located. It's one of the cheaper options we felt comfortable leaving laptops in.
Getting Around
Get an Octopus card at the airport. It covers metro, buses, trams, and ferries. You can only top it up with cash — figure that out before you run out mid-trip.
The historic tram (Ding Ding) costs €0.68/ride and crosses a large chunk of the island. Slow but useful and cheap.
What We Did, Day by Day
Arrival + Evening — Victoria Peak
Hiked up via the jungle trail (free, skip the cable car). Good views over the city. On the way back, ate at a sandwich place near the bottom — the first street food stall we tried had a €11 minimum charge per person, which we skipped.
Day 1 — Kowloon + North Point
Hong Kong Aviary, Kowloon Park — free. Birds land on you. Worth an hour.
Museum of Tea Ware, inside the same park — also free. Small, well done, bilingual.
M+ Museum, West Kowloon Cultural District — free. Large contemporary art museum with harbour views. We spent about an hour but could have stayed longer.
Monster Building (Montane Mansion), North Point — residential complex, famous as a photo spot. Free to walk into the courtyard. We took the tram there and back.
Day spend (excl. accommodation): ~€30 for two, including food and transport.
Day 2 — Mong Kok + Wong Tai Sin
Breakfast in Mong Kok — pineapple bun with cold butter and French toast at a local café. €8.78 for two.
Flower Market — free to walk through.
Wong Tai Sin Temple — Guinness World Record for number of fortune tellers in one place. You can try Kau Cim (fortune sticks) yourself, there's a free app to translate the result.
Symphony of Lights (harbour light show) — free but not impressive.
Day 3 — Gallery Day
Wandered between free cultural spaces in West Kowloon and Central.
Galerie du Monde, Hauser & Wirh, Tang Contemporary Art Hong Kong, JC Contemporary, 10 Chancery Lane Gallery...
Ended up in a free photography exhibition where they gave out free prints. Spent almost nothing except food.
Central–Mid-Levels Escalator — longest outdoor covered escalator in the world (since 1993). Good way to explore the Mid-Levels neighbourhood. Free to use
Day spend (excl. accommodation): ~€26 for two.
Day 4 — Big Wave Beach
Metro + bus + 1hr hike each way to get there. Clear water, surfers, BBQ tables (bring your own charcoal). Not crowded on a Sunday. Water is cold but people swim. Surfboard rentals available.
The hiking trail back is paved with stone steps — normal trainers are fine.
We brought beers and snacks from the supermarket. Total beach day spend on food and transport: ~€18 for two.
Day 5 — Lantau Island (Tian Tan Buddha + Tai O)
Lockers at Tung Chung Mall (connected to airport) — useful on your last day. Large lockers fill up fast, go early. We paid €5.71 for two small lockers for the afternoon.
Tian Tan Buddha — It's a major tourist site, not a hidden spot, but the statue is genuinely large and the views are good.
Tai O Fishing Village — stilt houses, dried fish market, much quieter than the rest of Hong Kong. Worth the trip. The ferry from Tung Chung only runs a few times a day and the schedule is hard to find online — check before you go or you'll be taking the bus like us.
