Hong Kong on a Shoestring! (Pre-departure)

I ❤ HK. 
Let me do this first attempt to write a travel blog before I completely forget about how awesome my experience was in Hong Kong. Oh! On second thought, who can ever forget his first trip abroad? Not me. ;)

It seemed like I only got a taste of it, but I savored every moment I was there. There's something about HK that keeps you wanting for more. It's like a microcosm of the world, which is maybe why it is called Asia's World City.

Free brochures at HKIA.

I had a chance to do a 4-day, 3-night tour of HK last October 11-14, 2012. (Well, technically it was a 3-day, 3-night tour beacause of the 9 AM flight back to the Philippines on our fourth day.) We flew via an Air Asia flight which we actually booked on a promo fare last July 24, 2012. It was a roundtrip flight CRK-HKG-CRK. With only a meager budget to spare and only few days to spend for our itinerary, we decided to skip the theme parks for the trip--i.e. Ocean Park and Disneyland--and also a possible Macau or a Shenzen side-trip. Essentially, it was just us immersing into the HK culture for a good 3 days.

Honestly though, I had to redo our itinerary right before the day of our flight. I had to tailor it just to fit our budget which got further cut off following several emergencies. But then I believe, you don't really need a big budget just to enjoy Hong Kong. Besides, it is my first trip outside the country. That alone is already exciting.

Pre-departure to HK

I searched online for various ways to commute to Dau on an early morning, but apparently those were already outdated which I only began to realize soon as I arrive at the Victory Bus terminal in Cubao at 1 AM. I immediately asked the dispatcher and she said that there is already a 2 AM trip to Dau; whereas, my online research tells me only Dagupan Bus offers the earliest trip at 3 AM. Good thing we arrived early, and we got to hop on the Victory Liner bus just in time.

We arrived at Dau (Mabalacat Bus Terminal) at around 3:15 AM and decided to take an early breakfast at Chowking. Again, online research tells me that the DMIA Jeep Shuttle is somewhere in the terminal, I'm just not sure where exactly. And so we asked some people around the area where do we find it, but they keep on telling us that the shuttles to the Airport were in Marquee Mall; some even offering us a ride to the DMIA at a steep price. I'm sure they understood our inquiry because right after our quick breakfast, another man approached us saying that the shuttle is about to depart for DMIA. I wasn't even sure that this was the DMIA Jeep Shuttle he was referring to. Because we even asked some of the Chowking crew and they were obviously clueless about it as well. Haist. Until... Bazinga! They were really the green DMIA shuttles! Parked right beside Chowking, left side facing the fast food chain. How convenient. Argh. I mean come on people, how could you not know?!

Another funny thing was that we noticed familiar faces from the Victory Bus and Chowking earlier (co-passengers and co-diners), they were already in the shuttle for more than 30 minutes. It seemed like they waited for the VIPs to finish their breakfast first before leaving for the Airport. Hahaha. Thanks guys! Good thing the VIPs finished just in time.

Travel time from the Mabalacat Bus Terminal to DMIA was around 15 minutes. We arrived at the Airport at around 4:30 AM. It was still closed, but we waited for only a few minutes before they finally opened the entrance doors.

The queue to the airline counter's baggage drop

We started processing of travel documents at around 5 AM. Here's a walk through for those of you who are first timers like me:

• Pay the Travel Tax: Php 1620
• Fill up the Immigration Card
• Drop baggage at your airline counters for weighing
• Pay International Terminal Fee: Php 450
• Proceed to Immigration for questioning (I remember I was only asked for the date of my return flight and if it was my first time abroad; that's basically it.)
• Proceed to the designated gates and BE ATTENTIVE. ( I guess we weren't paying enough attention such that we nearly overlooked that almost all of our co-passengers were already on board. Honestly, we never heard an announcement. Good thing, we also had two other passengers who weren't also paying attention like us. Good Lord! Almost 15 minutes pass boarding time, we could never had set foot on foreign soil. Muntik pang maudlot! Tsk tsk tsk. This is just a prequel of more of our impending aiport boo-boos, trust me you wouldn't really want to know. Haha.)

WARNING: Pay close attention to the monitors and/or airline announcements unless you want to end up in a sort of airline boo-boo like we did. Hahaha.

And so this is it. Paalam muna mahal kong Pilipinas!

Departed from Clark at around 7:30 AM via Air Asia Flight