Domestic Travel, China Style - SZX-HAK on CZ

[yohy?!]

Since I'd wanted to spend a little more time in China the Easter Weekend seemed like a good opportunity given the astronomical prices to travel to other Asian locales from HKG.

As a first stop I traveled to the Lo Hu border crossing by the MTR East Rail line - first class of course, which in the case of the MTR gives one a seat. The journey was fairly swift from Kowloon Tong at the outskirts of the city, the border crossing at Lo Hu is attached to the MTR station so one is able to depart the train and join the immigration lines to exit Hong Kong, I mistakenly joined the foreigners line which was much shorter than the HK residents, the officer chastised me but allowed me to pass through. From here there is a bridge to walk across under cover that brings you to the China border - the China Travel Services office is here before the border for anyone doing Visa On Arrival (I'd elected to get mine in advance as the time to wait can vary greatly). With but a brief grunt the China officer cleared me and I strolled through customs with a second glance from the officers on duty.

Lo Hu Commercial Centre is located directly outside the border crossing, comprising a huge shopping centre we stopped here for a few hours to enjoy a foot and back massage in what is apparently one of the best massage centers in the area. It certainly seemed popular as there was capacity for around 300 people to receive foot massages, eat and drink and watch the fuzzy LCD screens showing Hong Kong channels.

Leaving the commercial centre behind we crossed over to the Shangri-La which is around 200metres from the border, they do a nice tasty Chinese dinner unsurprisingly with very friendly service. From here our next stop would be the Four Points By Sheraton in the Futian Free Economic Zone which was around 15 minutes by taxi.

The Four Points is in a renovated hotel a km or so from the other MTR border station at Lok Ma Chau, it was excellent value at 455RMB for the night for a superior room...the front desk did try to upsell us for breakfast and wi-fi and a 'better' room for an extra 400RMB but when we declined they proceeded to give us the same room on the SPG floor anyway...

I would recommend the hotel as a good transit point, there is nothing else really in the area but it is very convenient to the border and only a 40min taxi to the airport outside peak hour.

 

[yohy?!]

Checking out and enjoying a decent Chinese lunch after a sleep in we grabbed a taxi to the airport, not much scenery to see and the traffic was surprisingly calm with the exception of a few errant trucks and speeding luxury SUVs.

Arriving in to SZX terminal A there was a hive of activity, CZ offers self checkin kiosks as well the usual check in desks. All checked luggage is x-rayed at the check in desk and passengers are called around to the scanner if there are any issues with bags. I had preselected row 39 on our a320 through to Haikou, this is the first row of economy after the first and PE sections, happily this gave us 35inches of seat pitch for our short flight.

No liquids at all were permitted in our carry on luggage and there was an official security check prior to the X-ray Along with security cameras taking your photo at the check point. From here we strolled into the cavernous departure gate areas and decided to give the shabby looking "First class" Priority Pass lounge a miss...

The terminal wasn't too busy this afternoon and we stopped to check out the runway view near gate 24 which is quite good, on the other side there is another giant terminal being rapidly built to cover future airport expansion.

 

[yohy?!]

Boarding commenced on time and there was a rush for the gate. The Skyteam Priority Boarding signage ended up skew-if after spinning around cartoon style several times, boarding was efficient and the plane steadily filled to capacity.

The a320 is in the format of 2 rows of first with QF millenium style seating, 5 rows of PE with 35 inch pitch and the remainder in Y at 32 inches pitch

Cabin Crew were welcoming and rapidly thrust an English China Daily my way which I'm assume was the western IFE

We pushed back on time and were soon barreling down the runway, all announcements and the safety demo were in clear Chinese and English. The flight time was only 1 hour so a rapid drink and peanuts service was run shortly after leveling off and then there were a few minutes to kill before descent which we did via Angry Birds on the IPad whilst a Chinese tv show with English subtitles ran on the main screens.

There was a 5 min speech imploring us to join the CZ FF program and then a very rapidly executed descent and smooth landing. On arrival our bags were on the belt in around 10 minutes and we were on our way to resort.

All in all the flight was conducted professionally and punctually, the sky team influence is obviously with emphasis on everything being English and Chinese. Would happily fly CZ again domestic as the saving over flying direct from HK was around 50%.