HONG KONG -- When Mandy Cheng heard that Hong Kong was cutting its unpopular hotel quarantine to just three days, she scrambled to buy tickets for her first trip outside the financial hub in over two years.
The new college graduate is among scores of travel-hungry residents desperate to jump on a flight after being marooned in Hong Kong since 2020 owing to some of the world's strictest COVID curbs -- including a now-scrapped three-week quarantine for anyone returning to the city from abroad.
