Train Report : Hong Kong West Kowloon - Xiamen

May 26, 2023

With a wave of revenge outbound tourism raging, leaving Hong Kong on a long weekend could get very expensive very quickly. That leaves few options left to fly affordably, which made me turn to a high-speed train excursion instead. Prices are fixed and don't fluctuate based on demand, so it doesn't matter whether you book long ahead or the day before, unlike early bird deals I've seen in other countries.

While it is possible to go to the manual ticket counter at West Kowloon station, the easier way is to go to 12306, the Chinese railways website. However, it's not necessarily an easy method if you are a foreigner and can't get your ID verified to open an account. The system logic is to bind the train ticket straight to your ID card, which you would swipe directly at the gate to ride. Hong Kongers have a different card to enter China, but the new ones do work similiar to the ID cards that Chinese citizens use.

Despite costing an arm and a leg after severe overruns, West Kowloon station primarily connects only to short-haul cities in Guangdong province. Otherwise, we would need to change trains in Shenzhen or Guangzhou, an added inconvenience that doesn't seem to match the price tag paid for the connectivity. While there are 4 direct trains to Xiamen daily, with the fastest coming in at about 3.5 hours, they were all full but there was a much bigger schedule to choose from with a transfer in Shenzhen North, with even a shorter overall travel time.

With the long weekend rush, I had to start really early. I picked G5610, a purely short-haul train taking only 18 minutes from West Kowloon to Shenzhen North, departing at 7:20am and arriving at 7:38am. I then had about 20 minutes to transfer to D664, departing at 8am and arriving Xiamen North 2.5 hours later. I initially was a bit worried with such a short connection, having never done a train-to-train transfer before, but thought if they can sell such a ticket, it should be OK? With the transfer, pricing is done separately leg by leg, with the short first hop costing 75 yuan and the second leg 228 yuan. The Hong Kong section is significantly more expensive despite the short journey time probably because the entire section is tunnel which costed a crazy amount to build.

Arriving an hour before departure, the gates were already bursting with people. The mass of humanity was so big it was impossible to see where to line up, and people squeezed into every available air pocket to try to make it to the turnstiles. However, many couldn't get their ID cards to work to swipe through. Travelling to China is a very stressful experience.

This is only the first step in an unpleasant journey to the train itself. I had no issues swiping through the gate myself, and quickly descended downstairs to exit Hong Kong. The drama would begin again once I entered the Chinese side. The mass of humanity would first need to narrow into a line to swipe our health QR codes to enter China, which we could apply online up to a day earlier. They had a scant few computers for us to scan, but with such huge crowds, things backed up very quickly and a good number had issues trying to swipe through.

Next is to go through actual immigration, which wasn't too bad as there were many more counters and automated kiosks.

Finally, the mass of humanity would then have to narrow into 2 lines again to dump our luggage into X-ray belts for customs. By now, the rowdy crowd was getting a bit too big and the customs officials just gave up enforcing the scans. The big glob just flowed through.

By now, it was almost 7am and I entered the spacious waiting hall trying to put that awful first part of the trip behind me. There were large signs at the gates so we know where to line up for our train, and there were a lot of departures at this early hour.

Boarding was on-time and since our seats have been pre-allocated, I knew exactly which car to go to find my seat. The 12306 system actually doesn't allow you to pre-select your seat. All you can request is aisle or window and hope you get lucky. I got a window for the first leg, but an aisle for the next much longer journey.

I settled into my seat for the short 18 minute journey to Shenzhen North.

This first leg was uneventful and we pulled into Shenzhen North on time. I followed the signs for transfers and headed upstairs. Many others seemed to be transferring so I trailed the crowd to find a door opening back to the departures hall on the side. I was back in the waiting hall within minutes of arriving, so this short 20 minute transfer is perfectly possible without running for it.

By now, I had a little more time to explore around the huge hall for breakfast. I thought of getting something simple for breakfast on the next leg. The bread shop charged even more for a bun than in Hong Kong, so I went to the convenience store to find a more reasonably-priced can of cold congee, a healthier and more filling option.

The next leg to Xiamen North would depart from the other side of the huge waiting hall, and we boarded timely. China's high-speed train network is divided into G and D types, although there are other letters used for intercity shuttles. I had thought G trains run faster, but this D train actually has a shorter journey time than the G train because it only has 1 intermediate stop for the 2.5 hour journey.

While China's high-speed network has grown impressively over the years, there are still some passenger behaviours that are still annoying. While there was less of it now than my previous journeys, smoking on the platform still exists and it only takes 1 to turn a wide area very smelly. People behave on board though. I've never smelled cigarette smoke on any train I've ridden.

This train was also full and after eating my breakfast, I tried to rest a bit with a whole day of sightseeing in Xiamen ahead of me.

Xiamen has 2 major train stations on the high-speed network, the main one in the city centre and Xiamen North in the outskirts. Both are connected to the new metro, with far more frequencies going to North. Exiting the high-speed train fare gates, I looped back and walked across the length of the dark ground floor corridor to the metro station, where it was easy enough to buy a ticket using my phone's Alipay. Apparently, I can't swipe my Alipay QR code directly onto the turnstiles as it requies a "micro-program" which I couldn't find and install, yet I could swipe that QR code onto the ticket dispensing machine to buy a physical ticket.

But given few foreign tourists around, I had the machines pretty much all to myself to slowly explore and figure things out while locals could swipe their phones at the turnstiles directly.

It would then take another 40 minutes to reach the city centre, costing 7 yuan.

While both trains were on-time, I would not make such a trip again on a long weekend. The experience at West Kowloon was a disaster, and weaving through such a huge crowd with multiple bottlenecks on the Chinese side of the border left quite a sour taste. I can't imagine what it would be like for a family to go through that with kids on tow. Best to travel during more off-peak times instead. I'm glad I chose to fly back home a few days later instead.