Before Hong Kong

One of my favourite places in London is the Barbican centre and I can’t help but feel that part of the reason may just be because it is so unpopular with most people - the desire to be contrary. It was designed to be modern, forward facing and almost self contained with a mixed use design encompassing residential in amongst commercial and cultural space. It is a remarkable space for being simultaneously foreboding yet welcoming to all that enter. And, although it cannot have been the first time I went there, I remember feeling a great sense of nostalgia with my first memories of regularly visiting in the late 2000‘s - but it was a nostalgia for Hong Kong.

The Barbican and Hong Kong feel interconnected with each other due to a great, overarching sense of planning from the same ethos and a similar timeframe. I don’t know if it actually was the case, but the densification and social idealism in creating both seems the case.

I first visited Hong Kong in 2005 as a stopover when I went to Bangladesh^[1] and I stayed for a short while but did a lot of walking and travel - this may, possibly, have been where I started my template of travel^[2]. Needless to say, I got lost regularly with enjoyment and gay abandon. My memories of that particular trip are of staying in Kowloon and enjoying the night atmosphere and the neon lights and signs. In fact, I decided to get the bus from Kowloon to the airport just to enjoy the top deck journey through the bright lights.

The second visit was only a few years later to meet someone. It was a different trip with company and my two strongest memories are of how boring I found gambling in the casinos in nearby Macau and how massively frustrating I found the city layout when I wanted to walk somewhere and there would always be a shopping centre in the way.

On the basis of the two previous trips, I felt that any further visits to Hong Kong would have to be for stopovers only - and this is what I told my friend that I was originally supposed to visit.

In the spirit of the densification so prevalent in Hong Kong, I have decided to densify my trip from inception and am flying on a work evening and leaving direct from my office (which is in the Kings Cross area). The rush hour journey across London on the Piccadilly is always a great start to a holiday...

As I started the journey, I received some news about a later part of my journey - or my planned journey. As I mentioned in my pre-trip post, I was hoping to travel from Busan in South Korea to Fukuoka in Japan on a boat and had even gone to the trouble of booking it - which is a rarity for me. what I thought was booked was not booked and I was informed that my booking had not been made and that there were no longer any more spaces on the boat or any other boats that day or the day after. This was not great news and so I had think of what else to do whilst travelling to Heathrow. Thinking is not really my kind of thing so this was less than ideal - at least I had time to think about it on the way to Hong Kong.

In order to plan my trips, I use a “grid” that has four columns representing morning, afternoon, evening, night and then rows for each day so that I can work out where I will be each day and plot it on the grid. I think more granularity than those four portions to the day complicates the process. I find it quite useful but it does end up quite a puzzle sometimes trying to piece together a trip out of finite ingredients. I would have to consult the grid to see how to fit the detour in. You’ve got to have a system (below is a simplified version).

One of the benefits of the airlines forming so many alliances is that the ticketing possibilities are massively increased so my Air France ticket is actually Air France to Hong Kong and KLM on my return from Japan. The flight on Air France entailed a change at CDG but this was fairly short followed by the flight to Hong Kong on an Airbus A380^[3]. I was pleased with this aircraft (having only been on a few before on Emirates when travelling via Dubai) and did actually check before booking.

A late departure and the time difference meant that I’d be settled in Hong Kong itself in the evening so it would feel a little like a full day travelling. Or a full night seeing as it was in the dark and the shutters stayed down for most of the flight. I was pretty fortunate with the flight as I chose seats at the back and few others did so I ended up with a section of three on my own. the flight itself was wonderfully unremarkable except starting with a particularly lovely safety video which is apparently tres chic which I enjoyed tremendously.

<sup>1. This trip sticks in the memory as I travelled from Japan to Bangladesh via Hong Kong and so it is one of the rare opportunities for me to pass through airport customs and security using the three languages that I can (could) actively use.↩
2. I also remember taking my luggage and leaving it at the airport in Hong Kong to avoid carrying it around. I don’t think I would have considered that as an idea until I lived in Japan and saw the convenience of coin lockers, but it is something that I search for these days and makes a lot of travel much, much easier.↩
3. Who could have thought that European cooperation could be so productive? What a long time ago the idealism of the Concorde and Airbus projects seem now.↩</sup>