Yau Ma Tei aka: 油麻地

I stayed here for 3 nights at the YMCA hotel (yes it’s a hotel, not a hostel, even though it’s a YMCA). It was a great place at good value, and the staff were really friendly except for a minor altercation over a diet coke (I was sitting waiting for the shuttle bus and they told me I wasn’t allowed to have drinks in the lobby, then motioned to the snack bar that sells drinks, which was at this time closed, so I said ‘ok, I’ll take it outside’, then I sat on the curb to drink it, and they came up and said I couldn’t sit down there, so I got up and walked off acting grumpy, and they tried their hardest to be polite).

There are lots of cool things within walking distance of this area – a temple, a jade market, bird market, flower market, the temple street night market and ladies’ market, Nathan Road.

Not far away, closer to the Jordan end appears to be some kind of red light district, in that they have saunas with pictures of women in bras etc., but it all seemed pretty tame as far as red light districts go (nothing on Amsterdam, which is where I had just come from).