We're trying to finalize details for our late March/early April trip to China for our family of five (kids are 14, 11 and 9).

We start in Beijing and then head to Shanghai to meet relatives. We originally planned to leave Shanghai for Hong Kong on April 3 and and then back to the States on April 7.

But, instead of spending four days in Hong Kong, we've decided to head to Guilin to take a Li River cruise (my wife and I have done this a few years ago, the kids have not).

• The challenge became trying to get to Hong Kong after the cruise on the evening of April 4.

Most of the travel websites that I checked (elong, ctrip, expedia) only list one direct flight China Southern at 5:05pm.

I called the Shangri-La and asked if it was possible to take the cruise and make this flight. They were extremely pessimistic and said that it was cutting it too close.

They Concierge looked up some something and suggested taking KA701 (Dragon Air) at 8:25pm or MU 725 (China Eastern) at 8:25pm.

Problem is that I can't find those flights on elong or ctrip and the Dragon Air website doesn't indicated that it even serves Guilin... The only airport code for Guillin is KWL, right?

Am I missing something?

We'd really like to be in Hong Kong late Sunday or earlier on Monday... We are considering taking an evening flight to Guangzhou and taking a train from Guangzhou Monday AM... Our daughter was adopted from China so staying at the White Swan in Guangzhou would be a fun thing to do.


Any suggestions on what time we should book a flight out of Guilin or a better way to get to Hong Kong?