As I have wrote in previous posts, the dorm where I am living is not within walking distance from the university. One of my first days at Hong Kong I walked from the dorm to a class I had and it took me around 45 minutes to get to main campus. For this reason the university has a bus shuttle system where every certain time, depending on the day, a bus comes by the dorms that are not on campus and picks up whoever want to go to the university at a very good price (25 US cents).
I have classes on Mondays and Wednesdays at 8:30am so I take the 8:00am shuttle to the university on those days and on Tuesdays and Thursdays since I have class at 9:30am I take the one that is at 9:00am. They usually take 10 minutes to get to the university since they only stop once in the entire route. There are also some shuttle buses from the university that take you back to the dorms but I never take them as they have a specific schedule and I just prefer to go back whenever I want, so I take the regular Hong Kong’s public bus, which just takes five more minutes than the shuttle and compared to Boston, stills cheap (50 US cents). Luckily, the dorms that are not on the university are on a hill where there is only one major street that can take you there, so all the public buses that cross the university–more than one every five minutes–stop at the station where the dorms are (Queen Mary Hospital).
Without a doubt the best public transportation system I have seen in my life is the one from Hong Kong. There are three major ways of moving around Hong Kong. The most common is the subway, which covers all major sites of the entire land of Hong Kong, including the airport. The subway is very fast and easy to use, it never gets delayed, it is very clean and students (including exchange) get a 50% discount on the price of it. The second most used method of transportation is the bus system. I usually try to avoid using it as it is very complex (I am never 100% sure where I am going to end up), and different than the subway, the bus constantly stops so it is slower. I only use the bus system for short distances or, as I explained before, to get back to my dorm from the university. And the third big way of transportation are what Hong Kongers call “green mini-buses”. Mini-buses are very interesting, they are–as the name implies–small buses for 12 passengers and even though they have a starting point and a final destination, the mini-buses do not have a stablished route. They go for example from Kennedy Town to Kowloon and they have the information on a sign at the top of the bus so those that want to go to Kowloon or somewhere in the middle of both get in and tell the bus driver where to stop. If a passenger wants to go somewhere between those two places but is not on the major street of the route, he or she can let the driver know and the driver would regularly go there and interrupt the regular route. I only use them to go sometimes to the supermarket but it is not an easy system as it requires telling the bus driver where to stop and they usually do not speak English.
Hong Kong also has some other public transportation systems such as the ferry that connects Hong Kong Island with Kowloon, mainly used by tourists. Also there is a ferry that can take you to Macau in 40 minutes, which is amazing, inside it looks like an airplane. And there is also the Airport Express train that can take you from Hong Kong Island or Kowloon to the airport only stopping twice and it has a decent price compared to taxis ($12.85 USD) and allows taking bags in it.
