Getting to Hong Kong

At Thanksgiving my family went to Hong Kong. Fortunately, our trip fell during a rare week of safe travel. We visited during a lull in protests after the local elections and before the pandemic. Even though the timing of our trip was lucky, getting to Hong Kong was hard.

Taking the Long Road

Hong Kong is very far from Seattle, so there’s no such thing as a quick trip. But you can definitely get there easier – and faster – than we did. Others in our group flew nonstop. They left Seattle late at night and arrived in Hong Kong in the morning. The flight was a bit more than 12 hours, although a day was lost in transit thanks to the time difference. They also spent almost the exact same amount on two tickets as my family spent on four. We saved a thousand dollars, but we took the long road.

Our Tickets

I refuse to spend a penny more on airfare than I have to at the best of times. I had already bought tickets to Norway when I found out about the kung fu school’s trip to Hong Kong. So when it came time to book flights for Hong Kong, I literally didn’t have a penny to spare. If I didn’t get the cheapest tickets, I wouldn’t get tickets at all.   

As I did the last time I flew to China, I found the absolute cheapest tickets using Google Flights, departing from Vancouver, Canada. The best fare was on Air China and had to be booked through online travel agent ExploreTrip. Because I was departing from Canada, my credit card purchase was made in Canadian dollars. Thanks to the exchange rate, my tickets came in just under $500 each.

This was my itinerary:

• Saturday morning drive from Seattle to Vancouver (est. 7 am departure)
• Depart Vancouver 1:50 pm Saturday – Arrive Beijing 4:25 pm Sunday
• Two Hour Layover in Beijing
• Depart Beijing 6:15 pm Sunday – Arrive Hong Kong 10:05 pm Sunday (or 6 am Sunday Seattle time)

It was a brutal plan. By the time we got through customs and took the bus to our apartment, we would have been traveling for more than 24 hours straight. And that was if everything went to plan. Which of course, always happens when you’re traveling, right?

Before We Left

I was anxious before we left, because I had never booked through ExploreTrip before, and I had never flown Air China before. Every time I tried to confirm our flights, the Air China website redirected me to a different page for overseas passengers. Every time my browser gave me a pop up warning that I was headed to an unsecured page. I’ve heard of travelers having their flight information stolen and showing up to find someone else had already used (or refunded) their tickets, so I refused to use the redirect site.

I tried calling various phone numbers I found on my e-ticket and on the translated Air China page and the Canadian Air China page. Every time I got an automated hold message that disconnected after 3 minutes. So up until it was time to check in 24 hours before my flight, I was slightly worried that I didn’t even have tickets at all.

How the Tickets Worked Out

I set a timer and logged on to check in exactly 24 hours before the flight. I had no trouble checking in, and we even got our seat assignments all together for the flight to Beijing. Unfortunately, thanks to the length of our travel day, we couldn’t check in for the second leg of our flight until after we were already on the road.

On the Road

We started with a road trip. Vancouver International Airport is about 2 ½ hours’ drive from my house. SeaTac is only 20 minutes, so I’m spoiled. But a lot of people live 2 hours from an international airport. Most of them don’t have to cross a border though. I wasn’t worried about traffic on a Saturday morning, but you just never know how long a border crossing is going to take. And, the last time I flew to Asia out of Vancouver, we had a different president. I wasn’t quite sure what crossing the border would be like these days.

Fortunately, there was no traffic at all that morning. We got to the border a bit after 9 am, there was literally no line, and the border agent was completely unphased by a multiracial American family driving to Vancouver for an international flight. The biggest hassle of the morning was figuring out how to use our prepaid parking receipt to enter the long-term parking lot at the airport.

At shortly before 10 am, we were wandering the airport looking for the Air China check-in counter, which was still setting up when we got there. We were among the first dozen people to check in for our flight. Our gate agent was a trainee with a hovering mentor showing her how to do every step of the check in. So it took forever. But we had plenty of time, and even got our bags checked in and seat assignments for the flight to Hong Kong. Which turned out to be unnecessary.

Flight to Beijing

We had plenty of time before our flight and ate lunch before we boarded. Boarding took forever, but we were all seated together and left nearly on time. I had not been able to preorder special meals, but there were vegetarian meal options, and they weren’t even bad. Eleven hours is a long flight, though, and my anxiety levels, as always when traveling with family, were high. I didn’t get any sleep at all on the flight, and none of us got very much. When we arrived on time in Beijing, we were all exhausted.

“Missed Flight” in Beijing

When we landed in Beijing, the plane taxied for what seemed like hours. Then, as in Reykjavik, we deboarded on the tarmac and took buses to the terminal. We were dressed for Hong Kong, while the official costume of the Beijinger is a full-length puffer jacket for a reason. It was literally freezing.

When we finally arrived at the terminal, we followed the crowd for what felt like miles (all the while looking for a bathroom) until we reached the sign pointing to transfers. Where the domestic transfer split from the international ones, two men in uniforms were holding signs. One of them had our Hong Kong flight number on it. We approached him and he told us we had missed our flight. I checked the time – it was 90 minutes before our flight was scheduled to depart. But we went to the counter he indicated. There a woman informed us that we could choose to be rescheduled for a flight two hours later than the one we had planned on, or we could spend the night in Beijing. We chose the night in Beijing. My visa from last time was still valid (so was my teen’s, but her passport had expired, and I forgot to bring the old one). So three of us filled out temporary visa forms.

A Night in Beijing

When our paperwork was in order, we headed out to the arrivals area. The next hour or so was a blur. We found another counter where they put stickers on us and directed us to a crowded little seating area. Just when I started to fear we were going to spend the night there, a man came and collected about a dozen of us, walked us out to the street, and put us on a short bus. We were driven to a hotel where the panicked and exhausted people from our bus jockeyed to check in first.

Finally, we got to our room. And it was sweet. So much nicer than the place we stayed after missing a flight in Shanghai. We had a king-sized bed in the main room, a second bedroom with two twin beds, and a shared bath between them. We had been given meal vouchers for the hotel restaurant, but we were too tired to eat. Just when we got settled in, someone knocked on our door. They had brought us a massive amount of take-out. We put it in the minifridge.

By now it was after 10 pm Beijing time. So we all put on our pajamas and went straight to bed. (I had experience with missed flights in China, and packed our pajamas and a change of clothes in our carry-ons.)

We had to be up at four to catch our next flight. I was already in the shower when we received our wake-up call. We rushed down to the lobby for our ride back to the airport. We brought the food with us and ate some of it while we waited. It was delicious. So was the chrysanthemum tea that was free in the lobby.

Flight to Hong Kong

Slightly refreshed from our short night’s sleep, we retraced our steps from the night before. Unfortunately, we couldn’t bring the rest of the food through security with us. I still feel bad about wasting that delicious meal. We checked in without trouble. Then we bought overpriced coffee and pastries to finish our breakfast, and even after getting lost got to our gate more than an hour before they staffed it.

This time we only got three seats together on the smaller plane. I sat one row behind. We were grateful for our overpriced airport coffee and pastries when they served a breakfast congee and century eggs. Still, the flight to Hong Kong felt short and easy after our long previous day.

Arriving in Hong Kong

We arrived on time, in the late morning. I connected to the wifi and discovered the elections the day before had been a landslide for pro-democracy candidates. Even though we were exhausted, we spent a lot of time in the airport. We bought duty free liquor, sim cards, and Octopus cards. Then we stopped at a dumpling place for lunch.

Finally, in the early afternoon, and after several false starts, we found the bus terminal for Discovery Bay. Our bus came shortly after and delivered us almost directly in front of our apartment. Forty hours after leaving our house in Seattle, we arrived at our home away from home in Hong Kong.