Trip Report: Too Low For A Tulou
As I briefly explained during my time in Myanmar last year, our school brings us on trips all around Asia and Oceania once a year, as part of our Creativity Action Service program (the name’s changing, as it’s completely pointless, but overall I think it’s a really useful program). This year I decided to choose Fujian as my first choice – I didn’t really think I’d change my life like I did last year, but I was willing to immerse in some culture pretty close to Hong Kong.
Hekeng Village, Fujian
While last year I documented my three days of teaching in Myanmar, I have nothing to add to my experience in Fujian compared to what I can find online, so I won’t talk about that. For the most part, I enjoyed my few days of super cheap market food, nice jogs around tulou clusters, learning about how the Hakka people around the area moved there and lived and spending time with friends, which I certainly didn’t mind. The entire package was school booked, and including our amazing tour guides Dylan and Shirley from Keystone Adventures set us back HK$8,800, so I’ll try my best to cover how we spent the costs below.
Booking the Flights
The school booked us in economy class roundtrip from Hong Kong to Xiamen on Cathay Dragon economy, which cost us HK$810 per person (not very expensive at all). I was excited to try out Cathay Dragon’s new A320 economy class product, which we were booked on for both legs.
Cathay Dragon Airbus A320 Economy Class
Our simple flight itinerary was as follows:
13/11 Cathay Dragon 602 Hong Kong to Xiamen A320 [Economy]
18/11 Cathay Dragon 603 Xiamen to Hong Kong A320 [Economy]
Booking the Hotels
While our flights were simple, we had three destinations in Fujian to visit – Xiamen, a beautiful village/tulou cluster called Yunshuiyao and a third hot springs hotel. That gave us three hotels, which were booked as follows:
In Xiamen, we were booked into the Barkla Concept Hotel for a night, which cost around CNY 149 (~HK$170). That was pretty cheap for what we got, but you get what you pay for…
Barkla Concept Hotel Xiamen Modern Twin Room
In Yunshuiyao we were booked into an actual tulou for three nights, which was exciting (at least until I started to get bites from whatever was on the bed). This apparently set us back another CNY 150 per night, which was pretty cheap.
Fuxinglou Tulou Yunshuiyao
For the last night we spent our time in the Hakka Capital Hot Springs Resort, which cost about CNY 200 (~HK$230).
Hakka Capital Hot Springs Resort Deluxe Twin
While a lounge pass gave me access to the SkyTeam Lounge Hong Kong which I’d have loved to re-review, since it was so crowded, I won’t be reviewing it this time round. So I’ll only be sticking to the parts of the trip that I think will give this blog the value it needs.
Bottom Line
This was certainly a very interesting trip on the cultural front, but I managed to get interesting review information from the trip as well. I’m especially excited to review the Dragonair A320, which is the only Cathay Pacific Group product that I’ve yet to review.
Stay tuned!