Hong Kong’s post offices are open Monday to Friday between 9.30am and 5pm and Saturday from 9.30am to 1pm. The GPO is at 2 Connaught Place, Central, Hong Kong Island – poste restante will go here (collection Mon–Sat 8am–6pm); make sure you take your passport along. Airmail letters take around a week to reach Britain or North America.
Macau’s GPO (Mon–Fri 9am–6pm, Sat 9am–1pm), where the poste restante mail is sent, is on Largo do Leal Senado; there’s also a post office at the Jetfoil Terminal (Mon–Sat 10am–7pm). Letters to Europe and North America take the same time as from Hong Kong.
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In Hong Kong, local calls from private phones are free. Public coinphones cost HK$1 for five minutes, and credit card phones considerably more. For overseas calls, buy discount phone cards: you dial an access number, enter a PIN supplied with the card, and then dial the overseas phone number; costs are just HK$1-2 per minute. The cards, sold in newsagents and small stores, are region-specific, so shop around until you find the right one.
For mobiles in either SAR, buying a local SIM card (with a new phone number) is the cheapest option, though some can’t handle calls to the US or Canada.
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Hong Kong cafe chains, such as Pacific Coffee Company, have free Internet access for their customers.
Libraries also have free Internet access, but you may have to wait in line.
Business hotels and Net bars charge varying fees.
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Communications