West Kowloon Station — Local services in Hong Kong

If you need to board a train to get into mainland China allow 2 hours not the 45 minutes that is recommended. We arrived with 1 hour and still missed the train as there’s so many check points and queues at each one. You have to go through baggage security checks twice, fill a declaration form, show your passport 3 times and go through checkpoints 3-4 times so overall you have 6-7 stops and 8 if you include the passport check before getting into the train.

It’s more checks than a domestic or international flight with similar lines and slower checks, even 2 hours might not be enough with peak traffic as it would have taken us 1.5 hours in the morning if we didn’t run and cut the queues as we allowed 1 hour and it wasn’t enough.

If you miss the train you have to buy another ticket and if there’s no other available tickets for the morning you might have to book in the afternoon or next day.

We arrived 3 minutes before departure at the gates but we weren’t let on as they close the gates 5 minutes early. So if your train is at 10:30 the gates will close 10:25. Allow 2-3 hours to be safe as there’s many people buying new tickets because they missed their train. I should have taken a photo of the queue.

TLDR - allow 2-3 hours not 45minutes as it took us 1.5 hours to get through everything and we ended up having to buy...

Kowloon West Station is a convenient hub for high-speed rail travel between Hong Kong and mainland China. I took the HSR from Kowloon West to Futian, Shenzhen, and had a similar experience when returning from Xiamen.

One important tip: plan for plenty of time to clear immigration and baggage checks! There are two separate immigration queues (one for exiting Hong Kong and one for entering China), followed by a baggage check queue. This process can take 45-60 minutes or more, so don't risk missing your train!

When traveling from Hong Kong to mainland China, make sure to factor in time for: Exiting Hong Kong immigration Baggage check Entering China immigration

When returning to Hong Kong from mainland China, the process is reversed: Exiting China immigration Baggage check Entering Hong Kong immigration

Overall, Kowloon West Station is a modern and efficient transportation hub, but be prepared for potentially long queues during peak...

We had a good experience overall in Hong Kong. However, the only incident that made us uncomfortable was the customs at Hong Kong west Kowloon station when we exit Hong Hong to travel to mainland, specifically the lady at the customs departure gate 26 that handles the exit of Hong Kong, who apparently treated mandarin speakers rudely. She was not willing to give a clear instruction on the other docs she needed when I handed our passports to her. I had to break down the list of things she wanted and she was not willing to say a word, while I was holding a 2 year toddler, apparently being very difficult. Honestly she cannot represent other great HKer but it’s a shame she’s been put in a position to handle work with people from...