If you hold a British passport you can stay in HK for 6 months without a visa.
If you hold a Philppines passport, you can stay for, I think, a fortnight with no visa.
If you do decide to take a break in HK, take the Airport Express into town and buy their tourist ticket (HK$300) which gives you a trip into Central and back to the airport and unlimited use of public transport for three days.
As an ex-resident I will naturally urge you to take a day or two there, but the airport is very efficient and if you allow a reasonable transfer time (say 2-3 hours) you will be fine. There is free wifi in the terminal if you run out of duty free shops.
One airline combination to be careful of is Virgin / PAL - they will check your bags straight through, which is good, but they use opposite ends of the very very long terminal building!( Don't ask me how I know that!)
