Instagram-shattering 10-flight trip takes Hongkongers from world’s most northerly to most southerly airports

Norwegian low-cost carrier has added Ushuaia, in southern Patagonia, Argentina to its network, allowing a 25-hour, three-stop journey there from Svalbard
Hongkongers can take advantage for a round-the-world trip, flying via Helsinki to Svalbard, then from Ushuaia to Buenos Aires, Auckland, and home

Adam Nebbs

Published: 11:00am, 11 Oct 2019

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Low-cost carrier Norwegian has added the city of Ushuaia, in southern Patagonia, to its network, and so now serves the most southerly and northerly international airports in the world. A connecting trip can be made with four flights from Svalbard Airport, Longyear, in Arctic Norway, down to the capital Oslo, across to London’s Gatwick, over the Atlantic to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and then down to Ushuaia. Total flying time is about 25 hours, which should be long enough to get through Lucas Bridges’ Uttermost Part of the Earth (1948). This epic story of his family’s founding of Ushuaia and his growing up among the native tribes is said to have been the inspiration for author Bruce Chatwin’s better-known In Patagonia (1977).

From Hong Kong, you can fly Finnair to Oslo via Helsinki, then to Svalbard with Norwegian to get started. From Buenos Aires, Air New Zealand will get you back to Hong Kong via Auckland for the full north-to-south, round-the-world, 10-flight, Instagram-shattering odyssey.

When forty-something ‘young American girl’ Bessie Owen flew her own plane to Hong Kong

Bessie Owen (left) with Clara Hotung, in Hong Kong, in January 1937.

Enjoying what she called “the ideal holiday”, Bessie Owen arrived in Hong Kong on January 16, 1937. She was described in local press reports as a “young American girl”, but was in fact in her early 40s, and had flown herself, and her male mechanic, over from Europe in her own bright-red, four-seater Waco biplane. Their lunchtime arrival at Kai Tak made front-page news but coverage was limited, due to a horrific fire on the Kowloon Canton Railway that killed more than 80 people that same afternoon.

Owen stayed at the Gloucester Hotel, on the corner of Des Voeux Road and Pedder Street, where she was interviewed. The “young aviatrix” had, it was reported, “secured some wonderful photographs from the air of the mysterious Angkor Wat”. (Local interest in Angkor was perhaps unusually high that week, as film-goers were discovering “The World’s Weirdest Mystery Region” in a film called Angkor, showing four times daily at the Central cinema, in Sheung Wan.)

The self-described “American flying woman tramp” eventually wrote up her adventures and published her photographs in a book called Aerial Vagabond (1941), which was praised by one reviewer for being “a delightful recital of the exasperations of such an ambitious tour”.

Owen chose not to fly home across the Pacific Ocean, instead taking her dismantled plane by ship to Manila on January 23, 1937. Once there, she sold it and flew from the Philippines to Hawaii on Pan American Airways’ new China Clipper service, then travelled home to California by ship.

In her tiny aircraft, much the worse for wear after many months of hard travel, it would have been a perilous ocean crossing. (Her good friend Amelia Earhart would disappear in the attempt just a few months later.) And she was, after all, only a tourist – as she modestly told reporters at the Gloucester Hotel: “I did not set out to break records, fly further, higher or faster than anyone else, but just enjoy myself and to see some of the world.”

Raffles Grand Hotel D’Angkor, where Charlie Chaplin was once a guest, reopens

The Grand Hotel D’Angkor, in Cambodia, had been in business for about five years – and Charlie Chaplin had already checked in – by the time Bessie Owen was circling overhead with her camera. Catering largely to explorers, archaeologists and French colonial civil servants, it was the only decent place to stay for foreigners visiting the Angkor ruins.

The hotel closed for renovations in April and has just reopened with a spruced-up facade, redesigned interiors and improved bathrooms. A new restaurant, called 1932, will open next month. Visit raffles.com/siem-reap for more information, including room rates and how to book a private helicopter tour if you want to try some aerial photography for yourself.

Deal of the week - a free fourth night in Bali

A free fourth night at either Alila Manggis or Alila Ubud is offered with Jebsen Holidays’ three-night Bali package. Prices at these properties start from HK$5,490 and HK$5,950 per person (twin share), respectively, and include flights with Cathay Pacific or Cathay Dragon and daily breakfast.

For more hotel choices and further details, click the Travel Package tab on the Jebsen Holidays website.

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