We need your help. We moved from one of the most expensive rental cities in the world to the most expensive rental city in the world. Living here is going to be great, but we’re going to have to suck it in and spend a bigger chunk of our meal ticket than we ever have before.

Which gives the real estate search that much more… excitement? Is that the word for the churning feeling down in my gullet? It’s like a contact sport. Like American Gladiators. With a whole army of Nitros coming down and you, and all you’ve got for a defense is your frightened smile.

We begin our journey on a sweltering hot Saturday afternoon, when the humidity level hasn’t quite reached 100%, meaning there’s still some air floating around in that watery stuff that here tthey call an atmosphere. We’re looking in Kennedy Town, on the western end of the island, where it’s affordable because the subway hasn’t quite made it out this far yet, and where there’s a nice mix of both Western and Chinese.

Building names here, by the way, are awesome. A buddy of ours used to live in Joyful Mansion. All but one of these places had regular old Chinese names. If they mean anything I remain clueless of it.

We begin at Wing Tai, located on the steps between Kennedy Town and mountain-dwelling Hong Kong University. And I mean steps:

I’m gonna have great calves.

It’s an old building on the outside:

“Hey, 1965 called. It wants its metallic green paint back.”

But totally redone on the inside:

The real estate agent, Frankie, in the kitchen.

How can you tell? Wonder of wonders, an oven:

Now we’re cookin’.

People don’t bake here. It’s a fact of life. “This for foreign people,” Frankie says. I know she doesn’t mean it, but “foreign people” just sounds so alien.

The Wing Tai apartment is 750 square feet, or roughly the same size as our Brooklyn pad, and it has two small bedrooms:

…with a nice view of the buildings along the stairs:

Even the bathroom is nice. You can’t see it, but there’s also an electric blue modern light spilling from underneath the sink:

In a place where a toilet is sometimes just a hole in the floor, a nice bathroom matters.

How much for this lovely place? HK$18,000 a month. With a conversion rate of 7.9 Hongkie dollars to one U.S. dollar, that puts the monthly at $2,280 a month. You know, it doesn’t matter how many times I see that price, or see even higher prices, that’s still a sphincter a-tightening that I feel.

So, what if I want to spend less? Far, far less? Well, down the street there’s Ying Gia Garden, so named because there’s a frond-and-concrete garden separating its two main buildings:

The photos don’t do it justice, and I don’t mean that in a good way. I guess I didn’t snap a photo of the kitchen, but it was cramped and kinda sad. And no oven.

The floor! It blinds me!

The bathroom gives the best sense of the kind of place it is. Ok, there’s a toilet, which is nice. But no bathtub, and it’s clearly seen better days:

For 619 square feet, we would pay Hk$14,500, or roughly $1,700. Not bad. Apartment? Not good.

So we go on to the next place, Ying Fung Garden. It’s near the water but on a busy, industrial street, and across the street is a dirt-covered parking lot. The building is in the Urals Classic style, perfect for your comrade who thanks to his excellent job at the Propaganda Ministry gets to take home an extra helping of Borscht on Fridays. I’m not hopeful:

In Soviet Russia, building enter YOU!

But inside? If outside and the neighborhood are 1960s Soviet Union, inside is 1994-era, I-just-stole-a-brand-new-Frigidaire-off-the-back-of-the-truck new capitalist Russia:

Can you trust a dining room table you can see through?

Being on the 15th floor, it’s well above the street noise. And hey, about that view:

Whoa.

I was so captivated by the view that it took me a while to notice that all those ships out in Hong Kong Harbor are warships!

We’re being invaded!

Chinese? American, to my surprise. The U.S. Navy was in town after a bit of a political kerfluffle. I saw the sailor boys later that day in Lan Kwai Fong, Hong Kong’s swing Western party district.

More views:

The bathroom features the kind of decor you usually associate with people in movies who have bad taste:

I know Dr. No will love this.

Plus, new kitchen. With oven!

Counter space is for losers.

This place is 650 square feet, which is decent but not great. And only one bedroom. Not good at all for a couple that’s expecting lots of guests. (Price: HK$20,000. Yowch!).

So Frankie takes me downstairs, to the 11 floor, where there’s a two bedroom. Now, remember how I described the 15th floor place as new-capitalism Russia? This place is from a year later, when Russia was teetering under the excesses of cocaine-fueled robber barons:

Boris Yeltsin slumped here.

Modern kitchen? Check? Breakfast bar? Check. Enough throw pillows to fight off all those Navy boys out there? Check.

Where throw pillows go to breed.

Here are three more photos. Tell me what’s wrong with this whole sitch:

Nice, glassy bathroom.

Nice, glassy main bedroom.

Nice, glassy guest bedroom

If you guessed, “hey, the whole place is made out of glass!” then yeah, pat yourself on the back you observant galoot you. That’s a bathroom built for exhibition. Plus, if you come to visit the Guapos and while there decide to get busy with your honey, you will have an audience.

Frankie pointed out there are blinds you can pull down. And she said we could lose furniture we don’t like. So with two bedrooms and a slightly lower HK$19,000 a month, maybe not bad. Especially since the 11th floor view isn’t all that different from the place on the 15th floor:

Ah, commerce.

So the final place is on the other side of Kennedy Town, at the very end, on Davis St., across the street from a major set of high rises call the Merton. Lots of Westerners live there, so this block has three — count ‘em, three — bars. Bars as a concept are pretty Western, I’ve concluded, unless you include karaoke places as bars, which no good soul should.

Like Ying Gia Garden, this place is disappointingly decrepit. You climb up three sets of dingy stairs to get to:

No oven.

Did I mention no oven?

Bathroom is oldish, and no tub:

No bath for you.

Only one bedroom. There’s a view, but you gotta strain to see it:

Hi there, ocean.

So why even mention it? Well, for starters, it’s huuuuge:

Echoechoechoecho…

That’s 900 square feet of absolutely nothing, folks. And the price: HK$15,000 a month. Now we’re talking.

What do y’all think? It doesn’t really matter because Dr. No will damn well make the decision by her damn self, thankyouverymuch.