Five years after the pandemic lockdowns, travel has pretty much recovered. Cancelled flights have resumed, airlines have ordered and are ordering new aircraft, increasing frequencies and adding destinations.
There was a surge of revenge travel after the pandemic that reopened the country and the world to discovery and exploration. Unfortunately, this year has seen a dampening of travel, especially by air, as Trump and Netanyahu’s ill-conceived attack on Iran has caused fuel prices to surge, nearly doubling local pump prices. The fuel price surcharge on airfares has reached a staggering Level 17, meaning anywhere from P599 to P1,635 for domestic and P1,846 to P13,726 for international flights, depending on distance and class, added to ticket price.
Talks to end the war or at least to keep oil flowing out of the Middle East to the rest of the world offer some hope of prices easing, giving the opening up a little more wiggle room for flights of fancy and adventure to discover and/or rediscover the wonders of the world.
But before beautiful beaches and exciting experiences, there is the issue of connectivity – getting guests (local and foreign) to destinations safely, efficiently, comfortably. Getting there should be the start of the wonderful experience, not an arduous exhausting journey full of hassles.
I tip my hat to Cathay Pacific and Panda Travel for plotting seamless connectivity for their newest travel packages – to the Greater Bay Area around the Pearl River, China’s third longest river system, and the mind-boggling Chimelong theme parks in Guangzhou and Zhuhai.
From the itinerary we were given, it looked like a very long and tiring journey – an early flight out of Manila to Hong Kong, then a long bus ride to Zhuhai. More bus rides between Zhuhai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen cities, then a ferry to the HKG airport for the flight back home.
But it turned out to be a pleasant surprise – checking in at NAIA Terminal 3 got us squared away until we got to our hotel in Zhuhai by early afternoon. We didn’t have to exit the HKG airport; the intra-terminal train got us to the bus/ferry terminal within the airport system, where our luggage was waiting for us to identify before loading onto the bus.
It was about an hour over the HKG-Macau-Zhuhai Bridge, a 55-kilometer wonder of engineering that is said to be the longest sea crossing and the longest open-sea fixed link in the world, with 6.7 kilometers of it in a tunnel under the sea.
Our return journey from Guangzhou to HKG airport took us through Shenzhen, a place much talked about, touted to be China’s Silicon Valley. Our short visit was an eye-opener for me. I last visited about 50 years ago, when my cousin had a factory that mass produced bulky headsets with built-in radios. Back then, Shenzhen was a like a gateway for overseas Chinese to bring in ba da jian, or eight big items, to relatives in the mainland, including coveted items like bicycles and sewing machines, later refrigerators, motorcycles, washing machines and color TVs.
Shenzhen was a fishing village when, in 1980, Deng Xiaoping established it as China’s first special economic zone. Under Deng’s reform policies, the sleepy village grew rapidly into a modern city, a global hub for technology and trade. The factories that mass produced cheap consumer goods were edged out of the booming metropolis (my cousin closed his factory), replaced by major companies and R&D centers. The 2026 Fortune Global 500 included nine Shenzhen-headquartered companies, including Ping An Insurance, Huawei, BYD and Tencent.
Shenzhen – which means deep (shen) water or drainage channel (zhen) – is not shy about its modernity and technology. Glass, steel and concrete high-rises outdo each other to dominate the city’s skyline. Green spaces and walkways and a seaside esplanade provide breathing room to this planned community. The city’s transformation is nothing short of amazing: robots make coffee to your specification at a sidewalk kiosk; drones deliver your food orders, lining up in an airborne queue at drop-off stations.
We took shelter from the searing afternoon sun in a mall, as impressive as any you’d see in any major city in the world. I noticed that the crowds were mostly young, an indication of the general population of this high-tech community. I was glad I was with two bagets – CX’s John and Sherlie – who took me to have a taste of what GenZers are into these days: Molly Tea (founded in Shenzhen in 2020, it won the suit that Louis Vuitton filed against them for trademark infringement over use of the four-petaled logo) for their signature premium jasmine milk tea. I was, not surprisingly, the oldest customer lining up.
We were to take the ferry from Shekou pier, where checking in at the dedicated CX counters again got us squared away all the way to Manila. Tucked into this modern terminal is the CX lounge, its first not within an airport. And what a welcome pre-journey respite it was, offering expansive views of Shenzhen, Macau and the Pearl River.
As if we did not have enough dim sum in Guangzhou, the lounge’s food counter beckoned with a basket of freshly steamed har kaw. The food choices were extensive, but what caught our eye was…ice cream! Haagen Dazs and Venchi, no less. We almost didn’t want to leave to catch the ferry to HKG airport, a 40-minute trip with the mid-autumn moon dominating the early evening sky.
The HKG airport is massive and efficient, but I must give a shout out to CX’s The Pier lounge by Gate 65 – its tea bar has a splendid selection of premium teas. The silver needle (baihao yinzhen, the highest grade of white tea) I had was exquisite, worth the kilometric walk to our Gate 11, a most wonderful conclusion to a very well-planned journey. Xie xie, Cathay Pacific and Panda Travel.