Travel restrictions in and out of China have (at last) eased! To celebrate this, I took my first trip out of mainland China with my friends in almost three years, testing the waters and my passport by booking a city break in Hong Kong for a few days. The price of flights were astronomical over Chinese New Year but luckily Cathay Pacific opened more flights with reasonable prices. As of February 1st, they’re flying from Shanghai to Hong Kong five times daily. In this series of blog posts, I will go through what I got up to during my few days away in Hong Kong.
After checking in at the airport, I had to fill out a health declaration for international travel and have a 48 hour PCR test. It was all relatively straightforward and before going through security at Shanghai Pudong Airport, you scan the code and fill out your health declaration. Once you show this to security, you can pass through. Very recently (as of a few days ago), there is no longer a requirement to complete a COVID test to enter Hong Kong from mainland China, if you have been there for longer than 14 days.
Our plane landed at Hong Kong International Airport 2.5 hours later. We passed through immigration quickly, picked up our luggage and took a taxi (approx 270 HKD) to our hotel. The Best Western Plus, in Central (Sai Ying Pun) was 282 HKD per night. Hong Kong is colder than Google told us, so bring layers if you’re planning to go during February!
After being in mainland China for so long, I couldn’t get over how there were so many flights from all over the world up on the arrivals/departures screen and how I could just speak in English (along with a little bit of Cantonese) to communicate for the first time in years. Furthermore, there were so many familiar shops (e.g. Marks and Spencer) which to be honest I had almost forgotten existed over the last while.
We dumped our stuff and went for a walk down along the Central and Western District Promenade towards Victoria Harbour. As it got dark, it became full of people walking their dogs and preparing most likely for the Hong Kong Marathon which is coming up. After that, we got dinner at Tsui Wah Restaurant which was a very cheap but cheerful meal and probably had the most atmosphere of everywhere we went past.
We bought Octopus cards which were a great option so that you can use the MTR, the Hong Kong metro. This unfortunately didn’t exactly cross our minds yet and we walked back to our hotel. The promenade is an easy way to walk by the river. That said, we learned very quickly that Hong Kong is not the most pedestrian-friendly place. We reached many a set of traffic lights and realised that there wasn’t an straightforward option to cross the road or else we came to a set of steps which would take you off in another direction.
By the end of the day, we were shattered. The first day of our trip was done and dusted. Our step count was well over 20,000. We were fit for bed, but also ready to take in everything this city has to offer.
Click here to find out what we got up to on day 2!
