Brett,
I lived in Hong Kong, for just over 3 years, ..yes it's pretty much a cheap place to live and work. The one area of being Expensive, is ''property'' which in turn reflect downwards thru to rental and hotel room tariffs. They are in most cases much more expensive than the rest of neighbouring Asia, yes you can get cheaper rooms, but they were generally not in the best of areas etc... The general standard of most of the available better hotels were 3 stars and above. I can still remember the rental cost of my 3 bed apartment in Yau Yat Chuen garden city, to my company from that time in the late 80's, early 90's as being 19000 hk dollars a month, which was then around 10 hk to 1gbp so around 1900 gbp. what that cost would be now?? ...god only knows ...hahaha!! When i couldn't be bothered to cook at home, i used to frequent my local Spaghetti House outlet, great Spaggetti and Pizza's and other Italian fare...
But at that time, you could clothe yourself for a year, for around 150 gbp, at the fabulous markets, and it would be all good clobber. ...haha!! I used to take advantage of the factory outlets too, in and around Lai Chi Kok too, getting huge savings on top designer clothes. ...Alas most of those factories have now moved operations to mainland China now.
Hahaha, ... you just brought back a lot of memories there Brett. ...lol!!
Oh, one more thing, it wasn't Nerita i used to fly into, for Tokyo, it was the other one!! ...If anyone was scammed it was the company, My travel arrangements were all pre-arranged and pre-paid, i just looked at the price on the train tickets... haha!!
David....