After our last night in India, we flew out from New Dehli airport for a five-hour flight to Hong Kong, where we were scheduled to stay for 72 hours. Hong Kong is an amazing city, so it will probably seem strange we are only visiting for 72 hours – well, over six months ago, we booked a round-the-world flight ticket, and the terms and conditions of this ticket mean you have to be very clever with your itinerary:

• You can fly out of a total of 15 airports
• You have to travel the globe in a single direction (for us, from West to East)
• You can only visit each continent once
• From each country, there are only a certain number of other countries you can fly to (the ticket only covers a handful of airlines)
• If a flight has a connection, then it counts as two airports – so you can very easily only visit six countries and have exhausted the ticket

We spent a long time creating our ideal route, which would allow us to visit as many countries as possible, follow the sun where we can (so we don’t have to carry about thick winter jackets as well as summer clothes). One way to achieve this is to pick some locations, such as Hong Kong, as hubs to explore. As far as our round-the-world ticket is concerned, we will spend five months in Hong Kong, but in reality we will be making our own way through Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Russia, Mongolia and China (and our time in China will conclude with us being back in Hong Kong for another few days, thus meaning in total, we’ll have more than 72 hours in Hong Kong).

Another complication is to do with VISAs: being British we are already very lucky that we can travel to many countries VISA free. That said there are still lots of countries that require a VISA. Some require an electronic VISA (e-VISA) which can be completed online, others have complicated application systems (which require visits to London or Manchester to provide fingerprints for example).

China is one of the more complicated countries, you have to fill out a lengthy application form, provide fingerprints in Manchester, provide proof of where you’ll be staying whilst in China and proof of how you’ll be leaving China. Although the paperwork can be time-consuming, and going to London or Manchester inconvenient, neither is insurmountable. However, there is a further catch, you can only apply for a VISA three months in advance – our original itinerary meant we wouldn’t visit China until June (when we finish our Trans-Mongolian train ride that goes from Russia, through Mongolia and into China). As we left the UK on the 3rd of January, we are well outside of the 3-month window. So a visit to Hong Kong in February was almost perfect (the VISA is valid for two years, they just will not issue a VISA if your first entry into China is more than three months in the future). I say almost perfect, because Hong Kong isn’t really counted as China, so it doesn’t meet the VISA requirements, we instead had to book three nights outside of Hong Kong, and use this is our proof of where we’ll stay (even though we later cancelled this booking, as we were advised to do).

Going through airport security at Hong Kong, we were ever so slightly worried, it had been such a long and complicated application process, we had told them we were staying somewhere we are not, we were expecting lots of scrutiny and question, but, to our relief, they took a quick look at our passport and VISA and waved us through! Success, we were in Hong Kong. Gemma was happy to find out they were celebrating Year of the Dog which meant there were Asian Style dogs dressed up in window displays and public ornaments everywhere.

We were given a hot tip of where to eat, Din Tai Fung, which is a Michelin Star restaurant, yet priced reasonably, we ended up eating here twice within three days, and prior to this, I’m not sure if either of us had eaten at any Michelin Star restaurants, so maybe our palettes have become more refined with travel (our chopstick skills have forced to become more refined)!

The people that spoke to us in Hong Kong were all so friendly, in the restaurant a lady helped explain to us how to eat some of the dishes and noticing Gemma struggling with chopsticks, asked the waiting staff to bring over a knife and fork. She suggested that after dinner we should go to Harbour City to see a light show. It was one of those things which are hard to capture on camera, but of course, that didn’t stop us from trying.

Something we were excited to experience in Hong Kong is the Ngong Peak 360, which is a cable car which travels 5.7km in 25 minutes, providing amazing views as you climb up to Ngong Ping Village, where you can see the Big Budduh that sits towards the peak. Oh, and the cable car had a glass bottom…

Although it was only a flying visit to Hong Kong, we both really liked the city – one thing we weren’t so keen on is how expensive everything was! A pint of beer was around £10 (or $14 at time of writing). Gemma needed to replenish some of her beauty supplies, and jumped at the opportunity to visit Lush in Hong Kong, however, she had never seen the shocked face Steve pulled when the cashier asked for £50 for a few pots of creams and lotions!

Next stop Vietnam, home to beautiful landscapes, tasty food, and parties which never end.

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