A 24 hour sight seeing opportunity in Hong Kong with complimentary hotel suites at the airport. Sounds like a dream come true, right? Read along, to find out Hong Kong experience with Urjil Sanghvi. Urjil is pursuing his undergraduate studies in University of California, Berkley, USA and plans his weekends and holidays brilliantly so as to explore new places and travel.
As a college student studying abroad, I keep pondering over new ideas to explore cities in a fun and affordable way. And since traveling from SF to Mumbai, India usually includes a stopover, I try to strategically choosing travel routes where I could visit cities by taking a long layover.
In the summer of 2019 I had planned one such trip which involved a 36 hour halt in NY, and convinced my friends to do the same. Unfortunately, I had to cancel my trip back home to India and could not go through with the plan. My friends, on the other hand, had a great time.
Nevertheless, the opportunity arose on my next journey home wherein I planned a day trip to Hong Kong. But just as luck would have it, just a month before my travel, protests engulfed all of Hong Kong and the government shut down the airport. The closer we got to the date, the bleaker our chances of a stopover seemed. However, a week before my flight protests died down as Christmas approached and fortunately my trip became a reality. Not only that, our flight got postponed by two hours and as an apology the airlines booked us complimentary hotel suites at the Hong Kong airport. It really was a Christmas miracle.
I had already been to Hong Kong as a kid but visiting it again seemed equally exciting. My friends and I quickly changed and got ready to tour Hong Kong for a day. We took the airport express to Kowloon and embarked on our 24 hour sightseeing tour. We went to Victoria Harbour, Victoria Peak and looked over the city from the Observation wheel at the Vitality Park. We walked through the small tourist stores and the Infinity Plaza Shopping Arcade. And we ended the trip with a ferry ride across the bay. All tired we headed back to the hotel room to take a 3 hour break before heading back to the airport for our flight back home.
Looking back, it was a great and affordable trip that everyone should try out for themselves.
