Hong Kong apartment living at its finest, loudest

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Doesn't look right does it? That's because its not right. Not even close to right.

When you live in a large city such as Hong Kong, you become accustomed to the various noises a city makes. Buses, cars, garbage trucks at 12:18am, horns, loud cell phone talkers, thin walls and randy neighbors, loud water pipes, shouting and, of course, construction.

That is living in a large city. That is living in Asia.

But there are those moments when you just have to sit back and consider your incredibly bad luck in selecting an apartment.

I recently had one of those moments.

Having lived in Shanghai for two years, I thought I knew what it was like to live through some serious noise. Drilling through tile walls and pipes at 5am, concrete slabs tossed into truck beds at 2am, neighbors whupping up on their kids, air conditioning repairmen falling to their death outside my ground floor window (true story.)

But not until Hong Kong and my current apartment did I understand what living with noise is about. One morning on my way to work, I heard a commotion just outside my building on Caine Road.

By this point I was used to dealing with noise from the building being demolished next door, but had no idea what else I was in for. After six months of constant construction, I was witnessing what could only be described as my impending doom. Two heavy tractors being lifted six stories up and into the building next to mine.

Doomed.

This was weeks ago, and every morning since, at 8am sharp, that mean-looking jackhammer tractor thing starts hammering away about 20 feet from my bedroom window. What did my landlords have to say about this when I showed them the pictures I snapped on my Blackberry?

"We're raising your rent in March when your lease is up."

Have a story of a loud apartment in Asia? Let's hear it.