Is HK a great relocation choice?

Am considering moving to HK early next year with my 14 y.o. daughter. Am a secondary English/History teacher with 10+ yrs experience in private schools and some tertiary teaching. BA, Grad Dip (Secondary) Education, and half an MEd. Just trying to establish potential income v. cost of living, education for my daughter and availability of well-paid position.

Poppy - all prices in HK dollars.

here are a few links that may help you to do some further research.

www.esf.edu.hk which is the English schools foundation which has several high schools both on HK island and Kowloon side. They advertise in January and recruit by the March for the next September - 2 year contracts. They follow the English syllabus although are just beginning to introduce the IB. There are lot of other international schools in HK also, Japanese, German Swiss, French, American International School, Norwegian, etc. if you google international schools in HK you should find some useful sites. Or look on the resources link to the left here. Salaries start around 30K per month and go up from there depending on experience.

Tax rate is around 16 - 17 per cent after around the first 90K. You will need a work permit which will be arranged by the employer and applies only to that employer and precludes any extra work like tutoring etc.

Schooling for a 14 year old will be about 7 - 8K a month at ESF for high school for the ESF depending on wether you need bus transport or not. This would be the cheapest option I think as the international schools tend to be much more expensive. Also you need to consider her birth date and what school year that would pop her into as it may be different to home country and distrupt here a lot if you are only planning on being here a short time and also how it affects her major uni entrance exams etc. Availability of a suitable place and wether you would need to pay an expensive debenture at an international school is also a key factor. Perhaps they would give you a discounted place at a school if you were teaching there?


Housing is one of the most expensive outgoings here, especially if you want to maintain evem a semblance of the standard of housing as per Aus/UK/US. Check out some of the real estate websites or have a look at the find a home section here. You have to get used to working in sq ft as that is how they list each apartment.

Electrcity - around 1 - 2K per month

Water, gas about 400 a month.

Internet costs me around 500 per month.

Full time live in domestic helper is arond 3500 per month plus say 400 per annum for minimum insurance, a flight to her home country every two years, and food etc, as well as any bonuses etc. This is minimum wage and many people pay more than this. To hire a local chinese housekeeper/cleaner is about 60 dollars an hour. I think without young kids you would not need a live in maid.

Cable/satellite TV around 500 per month and our TV from aus did not work here so had to buy new ones and you may need to purchase dehumidifiers (2K each).

Health insurance should be inlcluded in any package you take - attending a private GP is around 400 - 500 dollars for a visit if you are not covered and the local system is fine but that will be a personal choice.

Flights home will need to be considered - the expat community can tend to travel a lot and so that can leave you with no one much around during holidays and also people tend to be gone much of the long hot humid summer.

Moving costs and insurance, storage of excess furniture in the long term.

Running a car here is not a necessity as public transport is excellent but it costs around 4000 per year for registration, 900 dollars for a ten year licence, petrol is 12 dollars a litre and third party insurance for a five year old mazda 626 is 800 per year, full insurance about 3500 per year. Servicing etc is pretty standard prices compared to UK / Aus.

Imported food is more expensive - that again is a personal thing but if you were to shop at western style supermarkets and by imported foods your food bill will go up - not prohibitive but pricey.

Level of education is quite good academically but the transition for a teenager would most likely be quite difficult and amongst the expat community this age is when even more kids are going to school abroad etc. or families are returning home for schooling. Also need to check how it will affect here entrance to university in your home country. Some countries like UK and NZ require you to have been attending school in that country to qualify for resident status at uni, otherwise you may find she has to pay overseas uni fees.

Education section of the South China Morning Post www.scmp.com probably the main english language newspaper here is the best bet for seeing jobs that are becoming vacant not during the main round of advertising or the schools websites will have jobs posted.

I love living here but it takes a while to settle in and first year was full of frustrations as moving to any new place will provide.

On the negative side is the humidity and the air pollution is getting to riduculous levels some times. On the plus side I have met some great people and travelled a great deal and as I have three younger children I love the full time live in domestic help and me and hubby have a much inproved social life compared to back home where it was hard to get out because of finding a sitter. We essentially however came up here like a lot of other expat families because it was also a very sound financial decision. Without that I don't think I would enjoy the place nearly so much. Culturally it has been interesting but we don't partake in many truley local activities becase our cantonese is too poor, so the kids mostly do activities in expat run schools, clubs etc. You might need to post in the Mum's and Dad's section to see what it is like socially for a 14 yo here in terms of social activities and making friends. We are a very close family and do a lot together - people come and go frequently and with only weeks notice here so depending on a best friend can be quite hard on kids.

Dear Ness and Rossbear. Thank you so much for your info. Am living in Brisbane. Just looking for a cultural experience for about 2 years until my daughter is in Year 11 although the IB is certainly a consideration. Love Brisbane but bored career-wise.

Spent a weeks holiday in HK in 2000 and loved it but yes, the humidity and pollution a consideration.

Thank you again.

Well one advice from a local - dont forget about the foreign exchange rate. Hong Kong dollars are getting weaker so salary paid in HKD sometimes is a pain in the bxxx when you need to send it back to Australia.

Ness..that was excellent information from you. Hope you copied that...many people would benefit greatly with such information :)

Overall, think you would probably be better off here as a senior ESF or international school teacher financially despite current cruddy AuS exchange rate. There are several cheaper places than HK Mid=Levels to live, which are taken advantage of by many teachers, including Lamma Island, Discovery Bay, Clearwater Bay, Sai Kung, Sheung Wan on Hk island etc. Many of the people on this site have huge salaries, but, when you're doing your budget, bear in mind that the average salary is $10,000 a month... that wouldn't be great compared to

Aus obviously but the point is that if you need to you can live cheap. To give you an idea, a 350 (tiny) and 700 square foot flat (small but survivable for two people)are respectively $2800-3600 and $4800-9000 on Lamma. (Lamma does have a webiste, think it's either lamma.com.hk or lamma.com.)

People here always talk about places in HK Island but yes Lamma Island is a nice place and also dont forget we have the New Territories as well. Places like Shatin, Taiwai, Tai Po and Yuen Long etc are nice places too. Rents are much cheaper. Air is fresher.....

Another thing I thought about the other night... the ESF has an upper age limit for hiring teachers - I think it is under the frequently asked questions section. Don't know why - perhaps an immigration issue. If you could wait until you daughter was safely off hand at Uni - that would be an ideal time to come up by yourself and have a couple of years or more in asia - your costs would be a lot cheaper and you would be footloose and fancy free for lots of travel and the social life up here is pretty good. As you may see on another post we are seriously planning to go to Singapore as our three kids hit teenage years as we don't think HK is that great for teenagers.