Hongkonger Shirley Sung finally returned home on Sunday after being stranded in Dubai for a week and making eight failed attempts to secure a flight, ultimately paying HK$11,000 (US$1,406) to escape the Middle East conflict via Kuala Lumpur.

The 30-year-old solo traveller, who had flown to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for a wedding, found herself in a tense situation as she witnessed missile interceptions and sought shelter in a hotel car park during Tehran’s retaliatory attacks amid US-Israel strikes on Iran.

After purchasing nine tickets – eight of which were cancelled for free – Sung eventually secured a one-way flight to Kuala Lumpur from Dubai last Friday for HK$6,000.

She then spent two nights in the Malaysian capital city, paying around HK$2,000 in hotel fees, before catching an AirAsia flight to Hong Kong for HK$3,000, arriving home on Sunday evening.

“I started looking at Emirates [airline] and booked two tickets to available Asian destinations each day for four days, but it was a repetitive cycle of hope and disappointment. I would book one and then it would be cancelled. The process was very frustrating,” Sung, a sales representative, told the South China Morning Post upon landing in Hong Kong.

Sung was among the 370 residents who safely left the Middle East as of 5pm on Sunday out of the 810 inquiries received by the Immigration Department.