Take with us or buy there?

[want2go]

What do most people do with furniture etc? Do you bring household items with you, or does it make more sense to buy things over there? I would think there would be a pretty big market for used items, with all the expats moving in and out. As far as electronics, can you just use converters? Also,we're wondering what to do about a car.

Does anyone also know if serviced apartments will accept pets?

[carang]

i would say unless you know that you're going to get a nice big housing allowance that you know will get you comparable space to where you are coming from, leave your furniture at home... you may not have room for it here.

in one of your other posts, you mentioned that you are considering DB... if that's the case then there is ALWAYS stuff available second hand.

buy your electronics here, much less hassle than trying to buy converters/transformers for everything...

as for a car... .what do you mean? do you want to import your car?(a crazy idea, i think)

again, in DB there are no private cars allowed...besides, most people in hk do not have cars. the public transportation system is excellent and very cheap. i've been in hk for 11.5 years and have never owned a car. the only time i miss it is on weekends when i'd like to visit my aunt who lives clear across the territory... takes me 2.5 hours to get there from where i live. just not feasable to go and have lunch...

[Yani]

if your comming from the UK then you don't need to buy a converter, they use the same plugs and the same voltage here.

[larac]

whether or not to bring stuff depends really on who is paying the bills both for shipping and your housing. We only bought a few small boxes of personal effects in addition to our clothes and got everything else here. Our furniture from home simply wouldn't have fitted and having nothing gives you the flexibility to live anywhere you want including serviced apartments. Everyone here delivers and the turn around times are super quick - 2 weeks to get a couch custom made. We bought everything new as that was one of the nice things about coming here - getting rid of all our old stuff, but there is always lots available 2nd hand.

[nina_70]

Regarding your question on serviced apartments and pets. The answer is most probably "no". When we moved over from USA ~1.5 yrs ago we asked ~9 different serviced apartments about our 2 cats. None of them accepted pets at the time (of course, it's possible some have changed their policy). Instead of using a serviced apartment we signed a lease and moved directly into our apartment. Basically we just came over ~1 month before to find the apartment so it was all ready to move in with the pets when we arrived.

Also, agree with the other posters. Don't bring over too much stuff. You'll find that the apartments here are much smaller, and may not fit your furniture (for example we found that HK Queen size beds are a different size than American Queen size beds and some bedrooms won't fit the bed). 2nd hand stuff is availible everywhere. If you have a chance to sign the lease ahead of time you can measure your flat and bring the items that fit.

[carang]

there is one service flat that accepts pets... Shama (but only one of them and they fill up really fast!)

[Sleuth]

Where are you moving from? This will impact your converter question, as Yani pointed out, as well as your car question.