Shanghai/Hong Kong - Travel Day (12/16): 27 hours

Friday night I ended up sleeping around 2:00 a.m. I was packing, getting ready for my trip to Hong Kong and cleaning up my home. It was earlier than I’ve been going to bed as of late, but it was still a bit on the late side since I had to wake up at 7:00 in the morning to catch my flight to Shenzhen.

I woke up, showered, finished up my packing (quite efficiently, if I do say so myself) and caught a cab to the airport. Unfortunately the flights to Shenzhen only go through Pudong Airport, which is the farther one. But since it was early on a Saturday morning the traffic wasn’t too bad and it only took 40 minutes to get there.

The flight to Shenzhen was pretty uneventful and after I got out of the airport I started to time my travel to Hong Kong. There are several ways you can cross the border from China to Hong Kong after leaving the airport in Shenzhen and I was going to try different ways during my travels to Hong Kong (assuming I have any in the future) to see which is the most efficient (i.e. cheapest, quickest and less problematic). So this time I opted for the easiest way I could think of.

Here is the breakdown:

12:30: The plane lands on the tarmac.

12:40: I depart the plane and make my way out.

12:50: I get in a taxi and head off to the Lo Wu border crossing, about 40 minutes away in downtown Shenzhen. (120 RMB)

13:30: I arrive at the border crossing and start my journey through customs.

13:35: Chinese immigration

13:40: Crossing the bridge across the river

13:45: Hong Kong immigration

14:00: I’m on the KCR train and on my way into Hong Kong. ($21.8 HKD)

I think the reason I went through immigration so quickly is because I went in the middle of the afternoon. Generally the evening and morning times are pretty hard to squeeze through. But 30 minutes through the border isn’t bad at all.

14:25: I arrived at the station for Raffi’s place.

14:33: Catch a bus to Raffi’s ($3.5 HKD)

14:40: Exit the bus and walk to Raffi’s

14:45: Arrive at Raffi’s.

So, the taxi - train - bus route took 2 hours, 15 minutes and cost roughly $18.57 USD. That’s not bad at all. In fact, it might be hard to top that speed-wise. I think another good alternative would be to take the ferry from shenzhen to TST in Hong Kong (about 1 hour) and then take the KCR up to Raffi’s place. That would be about $185 HKD for ecconomy fare on the ferry and around $30 HKD to take the KCR. It would certainly make it easier on the shenzhen and immigration side and might save me some time that way, and cost-wise it’s not toooo much more expensive. I’ll have to try that one next time I’m down here.

Anyway, enough about travel. On with my first day in Hong Kong. And by day I mean “DAY!”. Probably the longest day I’ve spent in a while.

After I arrived at Raffi’s place I knocked on the door and rang the doorbell but no answer. I figured Pat hadn’t arrived yet so I waited in the hallway for them to get there. After about 30 minutes I went downstairs to use the restroom and get something at the store. I tried calling Pat’s cell phone several times but just got a busy signal. Then waited in the lobby for about 20 minutes, tried Pat a few more times, then back up to the hallway again for about 5 - 10 minutes. It was an hour since I arrived by then. I knocked on the door a few more times and then just to try it pulled on the door knob.

Low and Behold it opened. I cautiously pushed the door open and said “Pat?” into the room. Stephen came out of the second room and said “Hey … you’re here”. What turned out happening was that they had had a late night in Xiamen the day before and arrived at Raffi’s about an hour before me. They took a nap (not together, of course) and Pat was waiting for me to call them. I guess they couldn’t hear me knocking at the door and the doorbell didn’t work. Also, Pat had given me the wrong number for his cell so I would have never gotten through to him. It’s a good thing I tried that door knob (and a good thing they didn’t lock it).

After a while Pat woke up and we all hung out for a bit but the hunger pangs were getting to us so we walked around the corner to get some sushi at the mall. They had just eaten sushi in Japan so of course it wasn’t that great for them, but I had last had sushi in Shanghai so it tasted awesome to me. After dinner we waddled back to Raffi’s and then got changed to catch the 9:15 shuttle bus to TST and then took the ferry to Central where we met up with a friend of Kevin Morris’ from back in the day, Tommy (and his friend Louis). It was pretty coincidental since Raffi was, at that moment, visiting Kevin Morris in Seoul.

Pat on the phone

We first went to a bar called “Lotus” where a friend of Tommy named Joe was having a birthday celebration. After an hour or so of that we headed over to Dragon Eye, the infamous den of Hong Kong’s ex-pat elite. I had been there once before with Terrence for Dim Sum in the afternoon, but the evening scene was, as reader’s of etchy’s blog can attest, much different. Terrence showed up after a while with a friend from Taiwan named Michelle. After hanging out there until about 2:30 we headed over to HomeBase, a bar owned by Aleric (the party wizard) who was celebrating his 4 year anniversary. HomeBase was an after-hours bar/club where people would go to once the other bars/clubs would close. When we got there around 3:00 it was pretty dead but by 4:30 it was getting pretty crowded. When we left at 5:30 it was super packed and there was a line of people waiting outside to get in.

When we left at 5:30 we went to Wan Chai to get some street grub with Terrence and his two friends. The girl was from Canada and was in Hong Kong for 3 years and the guy was quadlingual speaking Cantonese, Mandarin and English, but had spent a year in Nagoya and was super good at Japanese — like pretty much fluent. Amber, a girl from Korea who went to middle school in Chicago, went to the same university as Jisue in Seoul and then studied in Paris for a year.

Terrence on the phone

Amber and Pat

Stephen

After eating it was light out and time to head home. (It’s an interesting experience eating street food in Hong Kong while the sun is rising) Pat, Stephen and I caught the MTR to the KCR and then made our way back to Raffi’s. I finally got to bed around 9:00, 27 hours after I had woken up (after only 5 hours of sleep).

It was the end of a very very very long day!