In Hong Kong, claude.ai sort of works. Not in the sense that it loads — it loads. In the sense that you sign in, you ask one question, you get one answer, and then the next request times out. Sometimes Anthropic returns a polite 429. Sometimes Cloudflare prints a generic "access denied." Sometimes the page just spins until you give up. ChatGPT is worse: OpenAI doesn't even pretend to support Hong Kong, and the app refuses to log in from a local IP.
This is not a problem you fix by buying a VPN. VPN apps assume you want to toggle the whole world through a slow exit node every time you talk to one service. That's the wrong shape for the actual need, which is: route a small list of domains through a stable foreign IP, transparently, from every device I own.
I solved this in April 2026 for $6 a month. The fix is one line in a private network's routing config, applied once, and then Claude and ChatGPT both work from my phone, my Mac, my iPad, anywhere on Tailscale. No VPN button. No app to toggle. Nothing slows down. Spotify still streams from Singapore Edge. Banking still works from HK. Only the domains I picked re-route, and they re-route through a $6 Vultr box that I rented once and forgot about.
This post is the build. Top to bottom, mid-2026 state, $6/month.
Why a VPN is the wrong shape
A VPN routes everything. Every DNS query, every HTTP call, every WebSocket — pushed through one endpoint somewhere in the world. The blast radius is enormous. Your banking app sees a foreign IP and asks for two-factor reauth. Your streaming subscriptions throw geo errors. Your latency to local sites doubles. The VPN button becomes a thing you toggle on and off depending on the app you're using, and the day you forget to toggle it back, half your stuff breaks.
The real ask is narrower: only when I talk to claude.ai, claude.com, anthropic.com, openai.com, chatgpt.com, exit through Singapore. Everything else, behave normally.