Our time in Hong Kong has gone really pretty smoothly, I don’t think I can bemoan anything about the country apart from the appearance of meat in my dinner when I think I’m ordering something that sounds completely vegetarian. However, this evening we got a bit of a, shock shall we say, whilst preparing for our early morning flight to Beijing. Turns out the airport express we’d already booked a return journey ticket for doesn’t run 24hrs a day or almost 24hrs a day as we had somehow manage to assume but actually stops from 00.50 until 5.50am. Cutting it a little tight for a 7.40am flight but being ever optimistic I thought well we can make that, it’ll be a rush but hey it’s doable. Another google later and it turns out the MTR line we need to use to get to the Airport Express line doesn’t start running until 6.13am and there went our hope of making it in time for our flight.
A few more googles later (how would we survive without google) we discover a taxi all the way to the airport is WAY out of our traveler budget, a taxi to the MTR to catch the 5.50am train 6x the price of going early and the bus, well we couldn’t even find a time table for that! So the only option we decided was 100% safe even if horrendously uncomfortable was to head to the airport at 11.30pm, 8 hours before our flight and bed down there for the night. Ever persons dream! Better start digging our travel pillows and sarongs out.
So my question MTR owners/timetablers/organisers, why on earth does the airport express start running after the first flights of the day have started when it’s sold as the best way to get to the airport? And two what’s te point in the connecting trains starting after the first airport train has left?!
I expect no answers to the above and am also fully aware that technically unless they ran 24hr service across all lines it’s not possible, I’m not sure we even have 24hr train lines to the airports in London, but right now were two very tired, soon to be very uncomfortable travellers who have to navigate Beijing in 10 hours time.
What we’ve learnt for the future, never assume anything and always always check your transport timetables, even if it is literally the night before you fly! I think we’d have died of panic if we’d realised when we got up in the morning! For anyone who stumbles across this and happens to be in Hong Kong soon here’s a link to the Airport Express/MTR timetable.
We have another MTR travel story but i think that’s for another time :). I’m off to enjoy unlimited free wifi, yay, and a not so comfy bench bed, see pictures below.
Where Katie went next 