Retired couple travel 12,000 miles from UK to Hong Kong using ONLY public transport

When Phil and Emma Whiting decided to visit their son in Hong Kong, they chose to go about it in a slightly unusual manner.

Instead of jumping on a plane across the planet, the retired couple spent four weeks on their journey from Oxford to Hong Kong using only public transport.

Their 12,000 miles of travels took them on buses, taxis, ferry boats, horses, a cable car and even included a fair amount of trekking on foot.

The adventurous couple also boarded 16 trains, taking them from A to B – with plenty of stop-offs in the middle.

‘My wife Emma, 61, took early retirement four years ago from her job as a social worker, and we have often planned a big journey like this.’ Mr Whiting said.

‘Our son, Oliver, is teaching in Hong Kong, and he invited us to celebrate his 30th birthday on November 6 with him.

‘We decided it was important to us that actually travelled to get there, and that we stopped off in various places.’

Along the way, the couple strolled through Chinese rice terraces watching the harvest, attended a Russian Orthodox mass, and even dined with Mongolians whilst staying in a traditional yurt.

‘We have both long been interested in issues to do with recent history and international politics,’ he continued.

Their eight-week trip took them to Berlin, Moscow, Suzdal, Irkutsk, Lake Baikal, Ulan Bator, Beijing, Xi’an, Shanghai, Guilin, Huangshan, Yangshuo and Xiamen.

Choosing to take the scenic route to Hong Kong required more planning than an average journey, and the couple estimated it took over a year to fully plot their trip.

They set off from Oxford station on Monday, 18 September and caught the Eurostar in order to travel across Europe, stopping off in Berlin and Belarus on the way.

The couple then arrived in Moscow and boarded the Trans-Siberian railway for three nights and four days to travel across Russia into Mongolia.

And Phil said, despite it sounding like a long time to be aboard public transport, he and Emma were never bored.

‘It seems like you could get bored easily, but you just don’t.

‘You’re travelling through endless landscapes of Russian history.

‘There were also lots of other travellers on the train doing similar journeys to us, of all different nationalities, so after a couple of days you gel as a community.’

Phil, a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, spent some of the journey sketching some of their most treasured memories, from a Russian Orthodox Mass to the Hong Kong races.

He plans to recreate his favourite images at his studio back home in Oxford.

After travelling through Russia, Phil and Emma spent a couple of days trekking through the Golden Triangle in south-east Asia, staying in yurts and even horse-riding in Mongolia.

But the highlight of the trip, said Phil, was China.

‘China was a place that really, really impressed me,’ he said.

‘Everything is bigger and better there than everywhere else. There’s 3,000 to 4,000 years of history, of engineering projects. It’s mind-blowing.

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‘It calls itself a Communist country, but it’s actually one of the most Capitalist places you could go to.’

And Phil added that he and Emma were particularly taken by the efficiency of all the public transport they took.

‘We were never late once, in eight weeks of travel. It was just superb,’ he said.

The couple are already planning their next adventure – but are planning on keeping it closer to home this time, in either Snowdonia or the Western Highlands of Scotland.