Monthly Archives: March 2008

More press about ruby on rails is a good thing.

It is quite rare to see some Australia IT press mentioning ruby on rails. “Ruby on Rails steamrolls into Australian Medical Council”. Australia, although is a small market, is still far behind the US in terms of adoption of Rails. Rails, because of its productivity advantage, is very important to keep us competitive against other fast growing countries.

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Travelling to China from HK through Shenzhen airport (part 2)

The best websites I’ve ever used to buy plane ticket is http://www.ctrip.com. They are actually a public company listed on Nasdaq. One caveat is that they don’t accept overseas credit card. You’ll have to have a friend in China to buy it for you, or you can one a China credit card with Bank of China (中国银行）. Otherwise you can also buy domestic tickets with China Travel Service (中国旅行社), although they are a little more expensive. With an e-ticket, you can check-in by showing your ID without printing anything.

On ctrip you’ll usually find that most tickets are discounted at over 50-70%. It can cost as low as $380 CNY to travel from Shenzhen to Shanghai one way + tax ($150) ,ie total $530CNY. 中国旅行社 might cost you around $700. If you buy ticket from HK to Shanghai, it can cost well over $1000 HKD one way. So if you travel to China often, you can save alot of money by going through Shenzhen.

To book for hotels, there’s koubei.com or kooxoo.com. If you want to have a look at the surroundings, you can use edushi.com, which has 3D virtual worlds of most major cities. It will be alot easier if you use a China credit card to book for hotels. For $200/night, you can find decent rooms for business use.

Travelling to China from HK through Shenzhen airport (part 1)

Hong Kong and China are definitely changing fast and getting closer and closer. Travelling to China from Shenzhen is definitely cheaper because they are domestic flights. It used to be abit troublesome to go through Law Wu (罗湖）and take the K568 mini-bus. That trip always have road congestions and its abit hard to plan the timing. The mini-bus also feels abit unofficial…

Now there’s a new bus service that start from Kowloon MTR (C1 exit) station and goes directly to Shenzhen’s BaoAn Airport （深圳宝安机场). You can directly check-in from the Kowloon bus station if you are using e-ticket. The trip is about 75-90 mins and costs $90HKD one way or $160HKD return (within 1 month). It goes through the new Hong Kong-Shenzhen Western Corridor where you can cross border all in one roof. You get off with your luggage on the HK side, go through customs then the bus will pick you up on the China side. The company is – Chinalink (中港通) The bus schedule is every 30mins.

I’ll talk about where to buy these China domestic tickets and hotel bookings in part 2.