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For the whole next week, I will be in the Hong Kong. ShenZhen and GuangZhou. My dad, younger brother and I are going to China for holiday. We do not follow any travel agency tour. We travel at our own, kind of backpackers. We will spend 3 days in Hong Kong, 1 day in ShenZhen and 2 days in GuangZhou.

Planning a tour online

Basically, we did everything online, such as booking AirAsia flight tickets and hotel rooms. There are many websites for travelers on hotel booking and travel guide. My brother and I did online research for a couple days to find the good one. I also asked for friends advices.

The AirAsia return flight tickets (Hong Kong) is about RM1,000+ for each person (not the recent RM0 promotion). The Hong Kong hotel room is HKD450 per night for 3 pax. ShenZhen is slightly cheaper. We will stay in a 4 stars hotel in GuangZhou with river view.

As for the attractions, we didn’t plan much about it. We have a list of attractions of each city but we haven’t planned a traveling route. Freestyle!

"The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2008 (Unofficial Guides)"

Shopping, shopping, shopping!

Hong Kong is well known as the shopping heaven because it is duty free for branded stuff. I checked a Canon camera listed price, Hong Kong is few hundred bucks cheaper than the listed price in Malaysia! That’s around 20% cheaper!

However, please be aware that the electronics products that you buy in Hong Kong might only carry local product warranty (China/HongKong). You might risk the warranty benefit for the cheaper price. Make sure you ask for International Warranty if you need it.

If you follow my Twitter (@liewcf), I am planning to get a digital compact camera, probably Canon IXUS 860 IS or Canon IXUS 960 IS. Canon IXUS 970 IS looks great but it is rather expensive considered that it only has little improvements over IXUS 960 IS.

Anyway, I will try to get International Warranty if I would want to buy a camera in Hong Kong. I don’t wanna fly back to Hong Kong just to repair my camera!

As for my younger brother, I guess he will get some branded apparels and sport shoes. Hong Kong is always on the top of fashion and has the latest designs. I might get a pair of sport shoes as well.

"The Lucky Shopping Manual: Building and Improving Your Wardrobe Piece by Piece"

How about dad? I noticed that he was reading some digital camcorder brochures recently. I think he has high interest to get one. Anyway, he will never miss the chance to buy BOOKS, a lot of books! I expected that we will return with an extra bag filled with books.

Money, currency, cards

Malaysia Ringgit is not accepted in other countries. Make sure you have exchanged enough notes before you goto other countries. China Renmimbi is slightly expensive than HongKong Dollar. I spend about RM1,500 for both Renminbi and HongKong Dollar. It should be enough if I am not getting a camera or other expensive gadget.

If the cash is not enough, I still have a couple of cards: visa/mastercard credit card, mastercard debit card, and visa electron debit card. For Maybank Visa Debit Card, one have to make free call to 24 hour service centre to active the usage in other countries. It is advisable to increase your card’s spending limit at ATM too.

Geotagging my travel photos

I am using a N95 that has GPS function. I think it would be nice if I can geotag my travel photos. However, most methods I found are using N95 build-in camera with N95 geotagging software. That’s not what I wanted.

I want to shoot photos with my camera and geotag them using N95. No luck. N95 has GPS function but it is NOT a GPS data logger. Anyway, I found an alternative and low tech way on MAKE Blog: take photo then take photo of GPS with latitude and longitude.

When I am back from the trip. I can upload the photos to Flickr, tag them, import to Google Maps and show the geotag map on any website.

"GPS For Dummies"

Getting connected while touring

I found it difficult to “unplug” me from Internet. I have N95 with 3G and WiFi support but I try to not use it because I don’t want to drain the battery. I wish I have a ultra portable laptops like Asus Eee PC or MSI Wind. Maybe I can get one in Hong Kong?

"ASUS Eee PC 20G (8.9″ Screen, 900 MHz Intel Mobile CPU, 1 GB RAM, 20 GB Solid State Drive, Linux Preloaded) Pearl White"

Anyway, most Hong Kong hotels have free Internet. The one we are staying even has a computer for you! Hong Kong is on its way to wireless city to offer free wireless Internet access service, but it only has limited covered areas now. Hopefully, there are other free wifi hotspots available.

Do you have any advice/suggestions for travelers to HongKong/China?

Tags: airasia, camcorders, camera, guangzhou, holiday, hongkong, hotel, shenzhen, travel

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