HECO, what the heck

I've been slowly consolidating my BINANCE spending due to the difficulties getting more BNB through anything other than cards, and the fact everyone and their mother seem to be piling into Binance with regulations. I still have a few projects on smart chain, but no where near as spread out as it once was. 

Then I won an airdrop for 2 NFT's on the HECO main net via Torum. Why the heck not, lets have a look at HECO. 

First things first, I need to transfer some crypto to get HT, the native token so I can actually unwrap these NFT's. Sounds easy enough.  I previously held MDEX, so knew this exchange, but was not aware it also stretches into HECO. Great.

I bridged some BNB across to HECO, and it was pretty painless. Then I ran into trouble. To change hBNB to HT, I need HT, to send it back, I also need HT.  Bum.  The fees seem pretty low, so I looked for a HT faucet, similar to what's on MATIC.  Nothing. 

Then I decided lets just go to the source, Houbi exchange and get the HT token directly.  They accept fiat transfers with zero fees, great. But only in selected currencies. So I can only load up using USD, KZT, UAH or BRL. 

This is going to be trouble isn't it. 

So they accept Tron?  Ok cool, trade the odds and sodds to TRX, transfer in.  Ok, currency in the exchange, but need to go via a few coins to get to my target, and it is just under the minimum amount. 

So that's where I am just now. If anyone can give me hints and tips about getting a small amount of HT tokens, I would great appreciate it.  Once I am firmly on the chain, I will let you know about any good sites or earning potentials I find.