The Wild Blue Yonder

Tuesday, June 18

Honestly, I’d love to spend some time in Hong Kong, but it wasn’t really on our radar for this trip. We’re leery of China for obvious reasons and even though Hong Kong is trying to keep itself somewhat separate (as evidenced by the recent protests), it’s still pretty out of the way for us. BUT tickets to Japan are expensive, and at the time we were looking, there was this crazy deal that would get us to Tokyo via Hong Kong for $450 a person. The hours were funky and there was no way for us to get the deal by booking directly through Hong Kong Air, so we took a chance and booked through Kayak via this third party service called Vayama. I managed to finagle a longer layover (8 hours) instead of the funky 5 hours or so we were initially offered.

Every travel advice column ever advises against using these third-party services. Vayama gets abysmal reviews. So does Hong Kong Airlines, incidentally: they both seem to have a high rate of randomly cancelling or delaying trips. I learned immediately that Vayama sends you a copy of your ticket information but locks you out of the airline’s system (e.g., I couldn’t attach the trip to my new Fortune Wings Club Hong Kong Air account), and as I discovered more recently after our seats reverted to random middle seats instead of the aisle seats that I spent half an hour on the Hong Kong Air help line securing, Vayama reserves the right to randomly change aspects of your reservation without notice.

Did I mention the first leg was 14.5 hours long? High potential for disaster.

Any yet, it all went perfectly. Online check-in (through Hong Kong Air’s absolutely horrendous site) allowed us to re-select seats independent from Vayama, my carry-on was allowed onto the plane with a smile despite being weighed at 8.1 kg instead of the required 7, and the actual aircraft was massive, new, and well-equipped. We even enjoyed the two airplane meals (although we hadn’t packed enough water to last us the entire flight and felt like grass in a desert by the end of it). Honestly, I can’t recommend Hong Kong Air enough.

Our plan for Hong Kong started as this: a quick jaunt up to Victoria Peak, where we would watch the Symphony of Lights, the nightly lightshow over Hong Kong’s skyline. Then, we’d pop down into the city for some good food, walk along the harbor a little, and take the train back. Our backup plan was to see the lightshow from the Star Ferry in Victoria Harbour.

We hadn’t really done any research for this because it felt very low-priority compared to the longer legs. If we had, we would have known that:

1. You can’t really see the Symphony of Lights from Victoria Peak, although the view is still lovely.
2. The Symphony of Lights happens at 8pm, and we probably wouldn’t be able to disembark, navigate immigration and customs, and take transit anywhere to see it in time.

Luckily, we were nervous enough about missing our connecting flight at 2:20 AM that we almost didn’t leave the airport at all. Instead, we compromised with a plan to take the Airport Express to the north half of Hong Kong, where we would check out the view of the city from the 100th-floor observation deck in Sky100, and then grab some food in Tsim Sha Tsui before heading back.

Even the most half-assed plans oft go awry. We exchanged currency at the airport and bought round-trip same-day Airport Express tickets (105 HKD = 13.44 USD) for Kowloon Station. Turns out that Sky100 closes early on weekdays. In the empty lobby, we ran into a Taiwanese woman and her son (both from San Jose) who had gotten off the same flight with the same plan as us and shared a taxi with them down to Tsim Sha Tsui. Their connection was the next morning at 10 AM. We split up once we arrived in Tsim Sha Tsui, which seems to be known for having lots of food (again, I didn’t really do research on Hong Kong). I had no idea that late-night Dim Sum was a thing, and now I never want to go back! We found a decent-looking place and I was able to use my limited Mandarin to specify the size of our group (fun but not really necessary since counting fingers is a universal language and potentially kind of out of place because Hong Kong uses Cantonese?). The lo bak go (turnip cake) was pretty standard, but the siu mai were amaaaaazing—so fresh and delicate! And the cha siu bao (steamed BBQ pork buns) were out of this world. We would have ordered additional servings had we not already been so full.

We made it back to the airport with tons of time to spare, and we realized (in the two remaining hours we had to sit) that if we’d stayed in the airport over the course of the layover, we would have been bored out of our minds and also asleep. We were worried that public transit would be busy because of the massive protests a few days before, but there hadn’t been any more mass events since Carrie Lam’s apology on Sunday; and they probably wouldn’t have affected us at that hour anyway. The only reference to the millions of people marching to keep China’s long legal arm out of Hong Kong was a friendly airport agent’s joke: “You bringing anything back? Tear gas? Rubber bullets? Nah? Okay, come on through.”

We slept all the way through the next leg (4.5 hours to Japan). Once again, no complaints about Hong Kong Air. When we woke up, we were in Japan!