Thursday, March 15, 2012

Hong Kong!

So, I have been planning a vacation for 10 days in May for about a month now.  I got the time off, but couldn't decide where to go.  My first thought was to explore more of central America - after all, I put that on my Belize bucket list - but I couldn't get super excited about anywhere.  I've been to Guatemala and Panama during this trip.  I plan to go with my sister and she had spent a few weeks in Costa Rica before.  That left Nicaragua, Honduras, or Panama and none of them jumped off the map for me.

After making central America my back-up plan, I began to look at South America.  Many of my A-100 friends are posted in South America and I have loved looking through their photos.  Tops on the South America list were Brazil, Buenos Aires and Montevideo, Chile, or Peru (Machu Picchu!).  I ruled out Brazil because I didn't want to go there in winter.  Peru was a possibility, but I wasn't really sure if I could hike up to Machu Picchu and I didn't really know what else there was to do in Peru.  Buenos Aires was definitely the leader in the club house, but I couldn't find flights that I liked, so I kept looking.

Then, two weeks ago, I found the perfect flight.  For only $1200, I could fly from Belize to Beijing.  Leave Belize on Saturday afternoon and arrive in Beijing late on Sunday.  My two best foreign service friends are in Beijing.  Spend a week in Beijing and then fly home in the longest day of my life (due to the international date line, the day would last like forty hours).  It would be awesome.  Turns out the fare didn't exist and only appeared online due to an error.  I was devastated.

But, finding that flight got me to expand my vacation search.  South Africa? Tokyo?  Bangkok? Vietnam? Australia?  The world was my oyster.  Finally, last night, I found a great flight to Hong Kong.  It looked just like that Beijing flight from two weeks earlier, but when I called American, I could actually book the flight this time.  I  quickly messaged my sister on facebook to confirm that she would want to go to Hong Kong and booked the flight.

Now I just have to figure out all of the details - do I need a visa for Hong Kong? (no) Do I need a visa to visit the mainland? (yes)  Where should I stay?  What should I do?  Do I want to go to Macau (probably, as I love to gamble).

So, if you, faithful reader, have any experience in Hong Kong, please let me know what I should do in Hong Kong.

2 comments:

  1. Carla blogged about HK not too long ago here. http://carlarunstheworld.com/2011/06/27/hong-kong-trip-the-details/

    I'm sure she'd love to give you more info if you want 'cause she's awesome.

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  2. Ha, I was about to say that I blogged about Hong Kong, but I see that it was already linked (thanks, Becky!). By the way, the answer to Macau is YES, go at least to see it, but I wouldn't stay there overnight, even if you like gambling, because there's not much else to do. It's a 1 hour ferry ride to Macau, you can buy the tickets the same day, there's a ferry every hour (or every half hour depending on the time), and it wasn't an expensive trip. Hong Kong is GREAT, but expensive, but a lot of fun! And yes, you do need a visa to go to the mainland, and you should get it done ahead of time if you decide to fly over to Beijing to see your friends (or another spot in China).

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