Journey back to Hong Kong!

Journey back to Hong Kong!

In 2010 I embarked on an adventure that I would later learn to be a life changing experience. I decided to go on exchange to Hong Kong! I arrived at city university of Hong Kong, and 6 months later was forced to leave a city I had grown to love, and friends from all over the world – but I knew i would be back! With a couple friends I made on exchange returning to Hong Kong in November (Nico Boivin – France, Martin Dinh – Australia), I figured might as well make a trip of it – and so began the planning process for my journey back to HK!

Where it all began – HK 2010

I was convinced that Hong Kong was going to be the destination of my vacation, but obviously it would be nice to travel with a friend on the 20+ hours of transit and also just to have a buddy to explore the city with. After asking ten friends and being shut down 10 times, I was losing hope that I would find a travel buddy for this journey and started realizing that my vacation to Hong Kong might be better suited as an all-inclusive beach stay in Mexico! Then finally on one random summer evening, while waiting to pick up an order of wings from Wild Wings I asked a friend, Kadeem, if he wanted to come to Hong Kong with me. His response was simple, “ya sure, my birthday is coming up and I haven’t travelled much. I would love to, I will ask my parents and let you know”. I was just thinking, what a load of BS, such a textbook answer that is probably not going to solidify into actual plans…until a few days later I received a call from him saying that he is ready to go to Hong Kong and that we should probably book our flights – I couldn’t believe it, and didn’t believe him for about a week! And just like that my hope to revisit Hong Kong was confirmed and we were on our way!

While on exchange I took part in a program called ‘the English mentor program’ which assigned a few local students to an exchange student and throughout the term are encouraged to participate in fun activities in an effort to improve their English speaking and learn about each other’s culture. I was fortunate enough to have a great group of students and we had an instant connection. Over the years we have kept in touch via Facebook and although I was unable to meet them on this visit I was happy to hear that they all graduated from City University of Hong Kong and their commencement was actually the day after I left Hong Kong! Congrats again Carol, Helen and Olivia!

Reunited At Last – 2012

As Easy as 1,2,3!

It was very easy to book my entire trip online from start to finish. I have used vayama.ca in the past for many of my travels and find it to be very reliable. We were able to find a return flight using vayama for $1017 – an amazing price for any flight to Asia! Booking hotels was the next challenge, and because I was staying in university residence on my last visit I was excited to explore the numerous options of boarding Hong Kong has to offer. After searching countless hotel sites I decided to book my stay with agoda.com. I chose Agoda because of its cheap prices, and extensive reviews that I found helpful in making my decisions. Even though I knew much of what I wanted to see on this trip back to Hong Kong I wanted to be prepared before going because once you land you are forced into the hustle and bustle that is Hong Kong! With no time to waste, I was able to find everything I needed on gohongkong.com, a great website that provides detailed articles that share Hong Kong’s finest attractions. I used this website extensively even while on my trip as a reference for all activities and found it to be extremely accurate, and up to date! And with these 3 simple tools my journey back to Hong Kong was set in stone…Let the countdown begin!

Hurricane Sandy!!!

Just when we thought everything was set in stone and we were ready to embark on our two week adventure, Hurricane Sandy decided to show up on the east coast and dominate the city of New York. Just my luck that we booked our flights to Hong Kong via a connection in Newark, New York. In the frantic days leading up to our trip we kept an eye on the flight status and overall state of the Newark airport and just when we thought Sandy was going to clear up, United Airlines confirmed that our flight from Toronto to New York was cancelled, leaving us with no way to make the connecting flight from New York to Hong Kong…great!

Thankfully we were able to reschedule our flight to depart via Chicago, where air traffic was unaffected – but this meant that we would be leaving a couple days later and lose a full weekend in Hong Kong. Finally on Friday November 2, 2012 we were on our way to Hong Kong!

Octopus Card!

The first and only thing you need upon arrive in Hong Kong is an Octopus card – the key to getting around the city using the incredibly efficient public transit system, aka the MTR. The Octopus card is extremely easy to use and can be picked up from a transit desk located in the Hong Kong airport, all it requires is a HKD$50 deposit and then you can load it up with as much money as you need to get around. All subway stations have user friendly kiosks that make it easy to top up your card.

Hong Kong Public Transportation (MTR) Map