Onto the final part of my trip – time to visit Hong Kong for the first time! I had a great few days in Chengdu to round up my time in mainland China. When I was looking at flights, there are no options from Chengdu directly back to Europe, so I was going to need to transfer somewhere like Shanghai or Beijing – I’d already started my trip in Shanghai, and I was in Beijing back in September 2023, so I had a look around and found Hong Kong was an option. With both pandas and Disney to see, I was sold!
I managed to get a quick breakfast in the hotel before taking a taxi to the Chengdu South Railway Station – it’s much cheaper, and I think possibly a little quicker, to taxi to the station and then take the train to the airport (Tianfu) than it is to take a taxi all the way there. The train is comfortable – there are direct options which I think run on the hour, then a slightly slower option that makes a few stops on the way. The train has plenty of seats and a reasonable amount of space for luggage. Once getting to the airport it was pretty quick to drop my luggage and get through security. There weren’t many shops or cafes/restaurants open, so I just stopped at a vending machine for some water and headed to my gate.
The flight wasn’t full so I ended up with a row to myself, and it was pretty uneventful getting to Hong Kong. Once arriving in Hong Kong it was a pretty long way to get to passport control – overall getting there, filling in an arrival form and getting through control took almost an hour, and I still had to wait at the luggage belt after that! Luckily it wasn’t much longer and I was on my way. I had thought about taking the MTR, but I was feeling pretty exhausted – the lack of sleep and always being on the go had caught up to me, so I decided to take a taxi to the hotel. And it took most of the journey for me to realise we were driving on the ‘right’ side of the road (as how I’m used to in the UK).
For one night I decided to stay in the centre of Hong Kong, just so I could see a bit of the city and also be relatively close to get to Ocean Park the next day – so I picked The Kowloon Hotel. It was pretty busy when I arrived, but it didn’t take too long to check in. I was very kindly offered an upgrade when I checked in – I had booked a standard Superior room and was upgraded to Deluxe, which comes with a little more space. This was a good thing as the room was pretty tight anyway! It was fine for one person, but two people along with two people’s luggage would be very snug for space. It was only one night and I was really only there to sleep, so this didn’t really bother me much. The bathroom was an ok size, but I found the ceiling quite low (I’m 5’7″).
The location was great, I was able to go out and be in the main thoroughfare almost immediately. After dropping my luggage I headed out for an evening stroll. I went to a nearby mall to check out the Disney clothes in Uniqlo and picked up a few cute t-shirts. Then I headed to McDonalds to see what Hong Kong-specific items I could get, in the end I just got my usual nuggets, then went back to the hotel for a relatively early night for an exciting next day at Ocean Park!
