Hong Kong, Macau and Guilin in 14 days: the city as a doorway

What Hong Kong is very good at is being the frame. It is the easiest arrival in the region, it is a genuinely different city from anything on the mainland, and the high-speed rail out of West Kowloon reaches Guangzhou in about 48 minutes and Guilin in around three and a half hours. So the shape of this trip is four days of Hong Kong, then out across the border into the parts of southern China that most reward two weeks, then back to Hong Kong for the last night and the flight home.

Four hotel changes in fourteen days, five rail legs, no internal flights, and three days with nothing scheduled.

Who it suits: travellers with two weeks, first-time visitors to China who want a soft landing, and anyone who would rather see one region properly than four cities badly.

Your specialist: Asaf Zamshtein, who runs our China desk, with our Hong Kong and Chinese partner teams on the ground.

A note on who is on the ground. Our own offices are in Japan, Vietnam, India and the Philippines. Neither Hong Kong nor mainland China is one of them. We run this route through partner teams in Hong Kong and in Guangdong and Guangxi that we have worked with for years, and we would rather name them than imply offices we do not have.

Day by day

Days 1 to 4: Hong Kong. Arrive, two nights on the Kowloon side and two on the island. The Star Ferry at dusk, a guided morning through Sheung Wan and Central, the Peak in the last hour of daylight, a full day on Lantau for the Buddha and Tai O, and a day on the water in Sai Kung or on Cheung Chau. This is the classic five day route compressed by one day, and it is complete.

Days 5 and 6: Macau. One hour by high-speed ferry, or about forty minutes by bus across the sea bridge. Macau is a separate jurisdiction with its own immigration, so this is a border crossing, and for most Western passports it is visa-free. We confirm the rule for your passport before you book.

Two nights. The old town on foot: Senado Square, the ruins of St Paul’s, the fortress, and the lanes behind them where Portuguese cobbles run into Chinese temples on the same street. Taipa Village on the second morning, for the two-storey pastel houses and the best egg tarts on either side of the water. Macanese food both evenings, which is genuinely its own cuisine rather than a fusion.

Day 7: To Guangzhou. Back across to Hong Kong, then high-speed rail from West Kowloon to Guangzhou, about 48 minutes plus the border formalities, which are done at West Kowloon before you board.

This is where the trip enters mainland China, and it is a full entry that in most cases requires a Chinese visa arranged in advance. It is also where your phone changes behaviour, which we have already dealt with before you left home. See the note below.

Afternoon in Guangzhou: the Shamian Island colonial quarter and the riverfront.

Day 8: Guangzhou. The reason to stop here is the food. Guangzhou is where Cantonese cooking comes from, and the morning yum cha in a proper Guangzhou tea house is a different scale of thing from its Hong Kong equivalent: bigger rooms, older, cheaper, and less concerned with visitors.

Afternoon at the Chen Clan Ancestral Hall, which is the finest piece of Cantonese folk architecture in the country, and the Qingping market district. Evening on the Pearl River.

Day 9: Rail to Guilin, on to Yangshuo. High-speed rail west, about two and a half hours, then a transfer of an hour and a quarter to Yangshuo county. The karst hills start about twenty minutes out of the station and the change from three days of city is abrupt and welcome.

Four nights, outside the town centre rather than on West Street. Nothing scheduled on arrival.

Day 10: The river, early. A private bamboo raft on the Yulong tributary at first light, when the mist is still on the water and there is nobody else on it. This is the landscape a thousand years of Chinese painting has been about, and the difference between doing it at seven and doing it at eleven is the entire experience.

Afternoon cycling the flat lanes between the hills, through villages and pomelo orchards.

Day 11: Longji, or a day off. Two versions and we ask which you are. The Longji rice terraces at Ping’an and Dazhai are about two and a half hours north, genuinely spectacular, and a long day with a great many steps. Or a slow day in Yangshuo: a cooking class, the caves, a hot air balloon at dawn if the weather allows.

We will not pretend the terraces are an easy half day.

Day 12: Yangshuo, free. Nothing scheduled. Our document suggests the Li River cruise section between Xingping and Yangdi, the impression light show if that is your thing and an honest note that it may not be, and a long lunch.

Day 13: Rail back to Hong Kong. Direct high-speed rail from Guilin to West Kowloon, around three and a half hours, arriving in the middle of the day. One last night in the city, on the island side. A final dinner that we book.

Day 14: Departure. Half a day if your flight allows, then the airport.

What is included

Accommodation with breakfast in five properties, all rail in first class with reserved seats, ferry crossings to and from Macau in premier class, private transfers throughout including all station transfers, licensed English-speaking guides on six days, the private Yulong raft at dawn, bicycle hire in Yangshuo, the Longji day with car and guide, entries throughout, a VPN and the Chinese payment apps set up and tested before you fly, a day-by-day document with train numbers and seat classes, and a WhatsApp group with your consultant and both partner teams, with a WeChat group alongside as a local fallback.

The border, the visa and your phone

Three things to plan rather than discover.

The visa. Hong Kong and Macau are visa-free for most Western passports. Mainland China, in most cases, is not, and the visa-free and transit schemes have changed repeatedly over the last two years with conditions attached to your route and your onward ticket. We confirm the current position for your specific passport and your exact dates in writing before you book, and we check it again before you fly.

The payments. Mainland China went from cash to phone and skipped the card. Foreign credit cards work in international hotels and at the airport and frequently nowhere else. We set up Alipay or WeChat Pay with an international card linked, at home, with screenshots, before you fly. This takes twenty minutes at your kitchen table and is close to impossible in a Guangzhou taxi queue.

The apps. Several of the services you use daily are blocked on a mainland connection, including WhatsApp. Hong Kong and Macau are not affected. We set up a working VPN on your phone before you leave home and test it with you, so your usual apps behave normally on the mainland legs. Your travel group runs on WhatsApp exactly as it does everywhere else, and we open a WeChat group alongside it as a local fallback.

What we would change, and when

• The first week of May or October? These are the mainland national holiday weeks and the volumes are extraordinary. We would move your dates. If we cannot, we reverse the route and swap the headline sites for their quieter equivalents.
• Summer dates? Hong Kong is hot, humid and in typhoon season, and Guangxi gets heavy rain. We keep the rail legs, move the outdoor days to the mornings and build the contingency in.
• Do not want a mainland visa? Then the honest answer is a seven day Hong Kong and Macau trip, not a fourteen day one, and we will build you that instead.
• Want more of the mainland? See Southern China from Hong Kong in 21 days.

Honest notes

The pricing on this page is set by the Hong Kong nights, which are the most expensive part of the trip by a distance. The mainland days cost considerably less per day, and your actual quote reflects that rather than applying the Hong Kong rate across fourteen days.

Guangzhou is a two night stop, not a destination. It earns its place because of the food and because it breaks the journey, and we will not oversell it.

Yangshuo town itself has been thoroughly commercialised. We stay outside it, and the countryside twenty minutes away is entirely intact.

The Li River four hour cruise from Guilin is done by very large numbers of people at the same time of day. We use the quieter tributary at dawn instead, and if you specifically want the famous stretch we do it by private boat from Xingping.

Built by Asaf Zamshtein, who runs our China desk, and checked with our partner teams in Hong Kong and China before it goes out.

Related

• Hong Kong: the complete guide
• Southern China from Hong Kong in 21 days
• China: the complete guide