Singapore, Hong Kong, and China in One Trip: How We Routed It

We built our 17-day route around one thing that had nothing to do with logistics: which kid needed which Disney castle.

That sounds ridiculous for an international itinerary, but it produced the smoothest long trip we’ve ever taken with our three kids. Singapore first, then Hong Kong, then Shanghai, then Beijing. Fun at the front, history at the back, and a cruise to relax on while we got over the jet lag.

Keep reading to see why each piece came together where it did, what I’d change, and the part of this that you can’t copy.

What was the route?

• Rochester to Newark
• Newark to New York to Singapore
• Two nights in Singapore
• 3-night Disney Adventure cruise
• Singapore to Hong Kong for three nights
• Hong Kong to Shanghai for two nights
• Shanghai to Beijing by train for three nights
• Finally, Beijing to Singapore to Newark to Rochester

Seventeen days, two countries and two regions, no backtracking. Just the way I like my trips!

Why did we start in Singapore?

We went with this route for two reasons:

First, the flight. Singapore Airlines flies nonstop from New York to Singapore, and it’s the current longest commercial flight in the world. With five people and a lot of miles saved, that was the anchor booking. Everything else routed around it.

Second, the cruise as jet lag recovery. Singapore is 12 hours ahead of us. Landing there and going straight into heavy sightseeing with three kids would have been rough. Instead we had two nights on land, then boarded a 3-night Disney cruise.

A cruise is close to the perfect jet lag buffer. Nobody has to be anywhere at a specific time. If a kid needs to sleep until 10am, that’s fine. If everyone’s wide awake at 4am, there’s a ship to wander. By the time we got off and flew to Hong Kong, we were on local time and nobody had spent a day of real sightseeing being miserable.

Why Hong Kong before Shanghai?

Because of the Disney parks.

Our family has been working on visiting all six Disney castles in the world for 15 years. Going into this trip, Tim and I had five. The girls had four.

So Hong Kong Disneyland was the girls’ fifth castle, which they got to have as their own milestone. Then Shanghai Disneyland was the sixth for all five of us, together, on the same day.

If we’d flipped the order, the big moment would have been Hong Kong, and Shanghai would have been an afterthought for the girls and the finish line for us. Doing it in this order meant everyone crossed the line at the same time.

There’s a routing lesson buried in that, which is that the emotional sequence of a trip matters as much as the geographic one. Put the thing you’ll remember at the point where it can be most meaningful.

Why did Beijing come last?

Partly flights, partly by design.

Singapore Airlines had better award availability and better routing from Beijing back through Singapore to Newark than it did from Shanghai. That decided the exit city, and the exit city decided the order.

Ending in Beijing meant all the historically heavy stops came at the end. The Great Wall, Summer Palace, the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, the Temple of Heaven.

That’s the opposite of standard advice. Most people say front-load the hard sightseeing while everyone’s fresh, and save the easy stuff for when you’re worn out.

We did it backwards on purpose. The theme park days bought goodwill (aka bribery) early, and by the time we were walking the Great Wall in serious heat, the girls had been having a good trip for ten days.

It worked out well for us. Twelve days in, in brutal heat and humidity, this was the least my kids have complained on any trip we’ve taken.

Did the visa rule force any of this?

Kinda, sorta.

China’s 240-hour visa-free transit requires you to arrive from one country or region and leave to a different one. Our route satisfied that easily: Hong Kong on the way in, Singapore on the way out.

Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan each count as separate regions for this policy, which is what makes an Asia multi-country trip work so well when using it. If you’re building something similar, that rule is worth understanding before you book anything.

I wrote up the full mechanics of the transit policy separately, because it’s important that you get it right.

How many nights in each city?

Here’s what we did, and what I’d change.

City	Nights	Verdict
Singapore	2 + 3-night cruise	Right
Hong Kong	3	Right
Shanghai	2	Too short
Beijing	3	Right

Shanghai needed three nights. We did a full Shanghai Disneyland day plus the Bund, Yu Yuan Garden, Nanjing Road, and the Jade Buddha Temple in two nights. That’s a lot to fit in, and Shanghai deserved more than we gave it. If I ran this trip again and could find the day somewhere, it goes to Shanghai.

Everything else landed about right. Three nights in Hong Kong covered Kowloon, the Goldfish Market, Victoria Peak, and a Disney day. Three in Beijing covered the Great Wall day trip plus the major historical sites.

The part you can’t copy

I want to be honest about why this trip went as well as it did, because I don’t think the routing gets most of the credit.

My girls were 9, 9, and 11 at the time of the trip, and they’ve been traveling internationally since they were babies. That’s what makes the biggest difference. It’s like working a muscle. The more you do it, the easier it gets, and by now everyone knows what to expect from a long travel day.

Nobody asked how much longer at the Forbidden City because they’ve been to enough Forbidden-City-shaped places to know what those days feel like. That’s not something a clever itinerary produces, it’s simply 11+ years of practice.

So if this is your family’s first big international trip, take the routing ideas, but calibrate your expectations differently. Build in more rest days than we did. Maybe even shorten it and assume the first long-haul flight will be the hardest one your family has done, because it will be.

What I’d tell you to steal

• Use a cruise, a beach, or a resort as your jet lag buffer. Anywhere you can be tired without consequences. Landing into a packed sightseeing day on the other side of the world is a choice you don’t have to make.
• Put your emotional anchor where it lands hardest. Whatever the trip is really about, sequence toward it rather than getting it out of the way.
• Let the return flight pick your exit city. Award availability on the long leg home is the least flexible part of a trip like this. Find that first, then work backwards.
• Consider doing all the fun first. It’s not what most people advise, but goodwill early buys you patience later, and the last few days of a long trip are when you need patience most.

---

You can find our complete 17-day itinerary with every flight and hotel booking here, and what the whole thing cost here.

Planning something like this? Multi-country trips with kids are what I do. Tell me about your trip.