Landing in Hong Kong was a very strange sense of deja vu, as it was Hong Kong that we left from in December when our year of no flying ended. Landing here is a treat as you come in directly over the many islands and the city itself, all covered in apartment blocks and other high rise buildings. It’s such an amazing view.
Once we landed we were ready to hightail it to Shenzhen across the land border as quickly as we could, to meet our friend Felix for dinner. Travelling from Hong Kong airport to Shenzhen is pretty straightforward, and takes around two hours depending on which route you choose.
We took the direct airport train into Kowloon, where we planned to jump onto the high speed rail across the border. However, we should not have assumed we could just “jump onto the high speed rail” on a Friday night at rush hour, as all the trains were booked! Instead, we took the metro which took considerably longer, but still got us to the same place. It was exactly the same route we took when we left Shenzhen in December, so again, a weird sense of going back in time.
We crossed the border into China for the fifth time this trip, and this time Josh was questioned extensively. We’re often asked about what we do for work, and our answer of “nothing, we’re just travelling” has the border agents in this part of the world suitably confused. They also asked Josh about what we were doing in Afghanistan (we have a giant full page Afghan visa in both our passports), and again they looked confused at his answer of tourism! After his passport disappeared to a back room for 15 minutes or so, he was stamped in and we were back in China! We only have a week here this time, so we were ready to hit the ground running and make the most of every moment.