With a short night in Hong Kong, I closed the chapter on a travel mistake I made nearly 20 years ago.
I arrived at 7:20 pm from San Francisco on United and my connection to Bangkok did not leave until 9:20 am the next morning. While I did consider simply going to the Plaza Premium Lounge and not leaving the airport, I thought it might be fun to redo an experience I had way back in 2008 and see if I could avoid messing it up this time.
Back in September 2008, I was a young student and on my first round-the-word trip, which included flying Aeroflot from Moscow to Hong Kong. I did not have a lot of disposable income at the time and to save money, stayed at very cheap “inn” in Hong Kong in Kowloon. It was in a building called the “Chunking Mansions” which housed dozens of these sorts of cheap hostel-like places for budget-conscious travelers to stay in.
I took this picture of the outside and a couple pictures inside:
Yes, it was like a jail cell.
But it was only 25 USD.
Fast-forward to the present day. I certainly could have stayed at the Hyatt Regency Tsim Sha Tsui (about $300) or even gone all the way to the Hyatt Regency Sha Tin for about half that. More pragmatically, I could have reserved a $100 hotel room near the airport and not had to stray far from HKG.
But I thought it might be interesting to redo the 2008 experience, and I had a good reason.
In 2008, I also had a 9 am flight…on Air New Zealand to London (LHR), back in the days when it ran a RTW service from AKL-LAX-LHR-HKG-AKL on its Boeing 747-400. I remember how happy I was to fly Air New Zealand for the first time and how I set my alarm the night before to get up early so that I could visit the Thai Airways Lounge before my flight (back then, it was the best Star Alliance Lounge in HKG).
But I proceeded to oversleep…and missed the flight. To this day, it’s the only flight I’ve ever missed due to oversleeping.
And I was traveling on a restricted economy ticket, meaning I forfeited the value of the ticket (Air New Zealand ultimately took mercy on me and rebooked me the next day, but I still had to pay $200 or so for the pleasure, which was a lot of money for me in 2008).
After missing my Air New Zealand flight, I distinctly remember parking myself on a bench at HKG and not moving until the following morning except to eat, spending nearly 20 hours there, as I was too afraid to even venture out (I had considered going to Hong Kong Disneyland).
So I thought that I’d try this again and see if I could actually get up and make my flight this time. I reserved a room in the same building (via Orbitz)…it was still only about $25!
I took a bus to the hotel and found a long line waiting to get up the elevators to these rooms…but soon it was my turn and I checked into a place called the Cebu Inn…it took me right back to 2008:
And this time, I held some work meetings (it was only morning in the USA) and then took a three-hour nap. This time, I woke up on the first alarm, packed my back (I had emptied everything out looking for my Oura ring) and headed back to HKG, where I arrived plenty early for my United flight to BKK.
CONCLUSION
Sometimes it’s fun to redo travel experiences, especially when they did not go right the first time. I love Hong Kong and it is a city full of great hotels, but I figured that with a late arrival and early departure, it didn’t make sense to splurge on this particular trip. So I stayed in the same building I did nearly 20 years ago, only this time I woke up when alarm rang and did not miss my flight!
Have you ever redone any botched travel experiences?
