Hong Kong Hiatus

Where were you when President Obama was sworn in?

I was transiting through Hong Kong, en route to a business meeting in Japan.

There is not a lot that can be achieved on a three-hour stopover in Hong Kong, particularly at half past six in the morning. I had my heart set on a dim sum breakfast, and decided to venture into Kowloon - 'nine dragons', an evocative name - about a 20-minute train-ride away on the Airport Express. Hong Kong is not a city I am familiar with, but my abiding impression has always been of a place of dense, entangled alley-ways and bustling backstreets, and an air quickened with clamourous Cantonese chatter mingled with billowing aromas from stacks of bamboo steamers... a place of frenzied, frenetic activity.

Sat in the silence of an empty carriage - away from the Antipodean surfers and young American families - I was instead to find a city barely rousing from its slumber. The route of the Airport Express sweeps across various islands and expanses of water, before falling into line alongside the Rambler Channel and the vast container terminals - eerily still in the morning light. I can remember when container operations were a 24/7 business... another alarming sign of these recessionary times?

Alighting at Kowloon station, I find myself in the hollow heart of a shopping mall, before surfacing into a modern square surrounded by towers of glass and steel. I round a corner and encounter a group of little old ladies practising tai-chi. It's about a quarter past seven in the morning, and there's no sign of anywhere to eat...

Just as well they'll feed me on the connecting flight!