Peace Guest House - Hong Kong

We left after just one night because we couldn’t get comfortable. There were three of us, and once we opened our luggage there was hardly space to move. The room and bathroom were extremely tiny, with the room only a little bigger than a standard US bathroom. The hard mattress and pillows made for a poor night’s sleep, and we spotted several cockroaches in the room. Disgusting. I wouldn’t recommend Peace Guest House.

The location is about the only thing this place has going for it. I got fed up with seeing cockroaches and moved to another hotel for the final two days of our trip. If I could do the holiday over, I’d happily spend another 30 minutes on the MTR for somewhere nicer. Chungking Mansion gets extremely crowded. Around 8-11pm, you may wait as long as half an hour just to get an elevator back to your room. The guest house was dirty, and I saw cockroaches every day. The attendant’s first instruction was how to flush the toilet: the tank kept running, so you had to use the shower to refill it. That was fixed within a couple of days. The public areas were another hassle, with people constantly touting currency exchanges, rooms, restaurants, and other things. Don’t stay here. Pay more or take the extra subway ride.

You can hear every clink, drip, and other noise from the building, and smells seem to reach the bed too. The room sits along a hallway inside another hallway, in a huge building full of local families, and the elevators can have queues. It’s a no-frills budget place that leans into its local character, but the room barely has space for a bed. If you sleep heavily and don’t mind a room that might not meet fire codes in some places, it could work for you.

I booked through Expedia, so I couldn’t simply cancel after the first night and move elsewhere. The room was tiny, and the bathroom was barely usable. Worse, there was broken glass in the room and it cut my foot. The stairwells and hallways were dirty and smelled bad. The business practices felt shady. Don’t book here, or at another hostel or guest house in Chung king mansion, since they’re all under the same management.