This is a continuation of my diary from my RTW trip from November 2003.
On arrival in Hong Kong I really felt for the very first time that I’d arrived in the 21st century! Maybe after 5 weeks in South Asia, I would have felt like that landing anywhere.
Arrival at Chep Lap Kok is something special though. You step off the plane and are whisked along on 200m long travel-ators, up 150m long escalators and glide with speed aboard smooth, efficient monorails. It is like the vision of the future I was sold as a kid… all I was waiting for was a hover car or two to go past.
Everywhere are state of the art diamond plasma screens, brushed steel and thermal monitors letting you know whether you or your fellow travellers have SARS or not. God help you if the thermal imager shows you any colour other than green! The masked nurses who were lurking around doing a visual check as to how sweaty we all were looked pretty brutal! The scale of the place is just huge too. It all makes the arrival feel calm and smooth. After a night of little poor quality sleep on the flight from Sri Lanka it was just what was called for.
Smartly uniformed and smiling staff greeted us courteously as I came out of the baggage hall with leaflets, answers to questions about the city, information to help establish exactly where my hotel was and help on getting one of the smart travelcards. I experienced a feeling of welcome and comfort on arrival to the new city. I can’t think of any other airport on earth where people work so hard to make this happen.
The transfer into the city was fast and effortless on the airport express. Each seat has its own interactive information services screen on the city and a digital map showed the progress en route as the multi-storey high rise flats of the new territories were swept past the window.
The only galling thing about it compared to UK airports is that the UK taxpayer paid for it. Chep Lap Kok was the British Government's 'leaving present' to the people of Hong Kong as it was handed over to the Chinese... I only wich John Major had left the UK such a good leaving present as he headed out of office.
Super impressive!
On arrival in Hong Kong I really felt for the very first time that I’d arrived in the 21st century! Maybe after 5 weeks in South Asia, I would have felt like that landing anywhere.
Arrival at Chep Lap Kok is something special though. You step off the plane and are whisked along on 200m long travel-ators, up 150m long escalators and glide with speed aboard smooth, efficient monorails. It is like the vision of the future I was sold as a kid… all I was waiting for was a hover car or two to go past.
Everywhere are state of the art diamond plasma screens, brushed steel and thermal monitors letting you know whether you or your fellow travellers have SARS or not. God help you if the thermal imager shows you any colour other than green! The masked nurses who were lurking around doing a visual check as to how sweaty we all were looked pretty brutal! The scale of the place is just huge too. It all makes the arrival feel calm and smooth. After a night of little poor quality sleep on the flight from Sri Lanka it was just what was called for.
Smartly uniformed and smiling staff greeted us courteously as I came out of the baggage hall with leaflets, answers to questions about the city, information to help establish exactly where my hotel was and help on getting one of the smart travelcards. I experienced a feeling of welcome and comfort on arrival to the new city. I can’t think of any other airport on earth where people work so hard to make this happen.
The transfer into the city was fast and effortless on the airport express. Each seat has its own interactive information services screen on the city and a digital map showed the progress en route as the multi-storey high rise flats of the new territories were swept past the window.
The only galling thing about it compared to UK airports is that the UK taxpayer paid for it. Chep Lap Kok was the British Government's 'leaving present' to the people of Hong Kong as it was handed over to the Chinese... I only wich John Major had left the UK such a good leaving present as he headed out of office.
Super impressive!
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