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What It's Like Flying to Hong Kong During Times of Coronavirus

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Four negative Covid-19 tests and 21 days of hotel quarantine - who on earth would sign up for something like this? Well, apparently me. After eight months of work and online classes back home, I recently made the decision to return to my university in Hong Kong for the spring semester. I knew getting there wasn't going to be easy, and so, I started planning weeks in advance. The best resource for up-to-date information when it comes to arriving in Hong Kong is the Hong Kong government's Covid-19 thematic website . If you are planning to travel to Hong Kong, I highly recommend reading through all the available information relevant to you multiple times before you fly. I emphasize "up-to-date information" because circumstances are constantly changing. If there is one thing I learned flying during the pandemic, it is that in addition to highly unreliable airline schedules, everchanging government/immigration rules are bound to make your travels difficult and unp

Emirates Just Upped Its Game (in the middle of a pandemic) - Emirates Premium Economy

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Emirates just announced a new Premium Economy class cabin. What does this mean for leisure travelers? While we do get to be excited, it will be a long time before any of us will actually get the chance to try it for ourselves.

Escaping Hong Kong... Again | The Corona Diary Part 3

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Headed to Malaysia Great. After a semester of violent protests and online learning, it looked like this virus was going to try and mess with my uni life once again. At this point, it was clear that classes would be held online once more and many of my classmates decided not to return from overseas. Naturally, the prospect of living on a deserted campus for a whole semester wasn't the most appealing notion, causing us to re-evaluate our options (my  protest-induced empty campus experience  a few months prior left a rather sour aftertaste). Some of my friends didn't faff around much and quickly decided this would be the perfect opportunity to travel around Asia, starting with Singapore. After much back and forth, my boyfriend and I decided we would join the team for two weeks in Kuala Lumpur. It would be an affordable mini-vacation and allow us to take our minds off the pandemic for a bit. As bizarre as it was, we found ourselves fleeing to a warm South East Asian country two sem

Growing Virus Concerns in Hong Kong | The Corona Diary Part 2

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As the spring term was about to begin at my university, I boarded a plane to take me from Beijing to Hong Kong. The past week in China has been surreal: school closures, temperature checks, masks and hazmat suits... Dozens of new coronavirus cases were being recorded every day. I barely made it into the country before all airlines ceased China-bound operations. Since arriving, China has continually been the centre of Western media attention, reporting about how dangerous and infectious of a place China has transformed into  (that didn't age well, did it?) . It was definitely time to get out of there! Lufthansa Jumbo stranded at PEK Staring out of the plane window, I watched as Beijing's soil safely receded; I had a good feeling about this. Hong Kong was in much better shape, and beginning the new semester with friends, albeit online, would make time pass well until I would return to Beijing in the summer. Upon arrival, I strolled through immigration, made my way back to campus