August 11, 2023
Welcome to Bike Unfriendly Hong Kong
The flight itself was quite nice despite how it was packed. It was worth the extra money to fly with Thai Airways since they have a generous allowance of 30kg which is more than enough for the bike. They also have extremely good in-flight service. I was starving already and the Thai meals they served along with the wine was out of this world.
Once in Hong Kong I had already prepared for the sticker shock. What I didn't expect was just how much they hated bikes here. For starters, it took over an hour for them to offload the oversize luggage despite how all the other bags were long gone. I was afraid they had lost the bike but eventually it showed up. Then I found the airport express train to Kowloon station. It was very fast and convenient I'll give them that.
Leaving the station was where the real fun would begin. The massive bike bag plus all my luggage and the extremely humid weather outside meant that lugging all this was torture. The hotel shuttles no longer operated and taxis were nowhere to be found so I had no choice but to lug. But unlike the beginning of the trip, now I was just tired of all this. I got as far as about 500 meters then said fuck it, time to offload the bike and start rolling it. There was about a 2km walk to the hotel otherwise and no air in the tires.
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As soon as I did that, a security guard walked outside from the train station and said, "You can't ride a bicycle in this area." I said, "What am I supposed to do, carry it? It's too heavy." She said, "You can walk the bike not ride it." I said, "I was going to do that anyway." She then said sorry but she was not. These good for nothing security guards don't like the look of bicycles in the areas they patrol, otherwise such people have no real purpose.
It was to get worse. Due to all the fences making it impossible to walk the bike across the street, I had to carry it downstairs and through an underpass then up the other side. By now I was absolutely drenched in sweat. Then finally reaching the hotel, I folded the bike back up, stored inside the bag again, and hauled all the luggage inside.
Normally you'd expect a hotel to have some sort of place to leave luggage downstairs while checking in, like a concierge. They did, but this was all located halfway up the building. That meant the only way to check in first was to take an elevator up multiple floors. The first lift was super crowded so I let everyone go first. Then next one took a long time to arrive and was also crowded, same thing. By the time the third one came and went I had had enough and tried to find the stairs. The door was locked.
That mean I didn't care anymore with the fourth crowded elevator. I pissed everyone off trying to get my bike and multiple pieces of luggage out into the lobby, but who cares at that point. Then there was finally a concierge to leave my stuff. While checking in, the staff said the room my wife and I booked was no longer available and there was only a room with twin beds. Well that can't do. The whole thing cost well over $200 US a night and this was the service I was getting. Having gotten so used to Thai prices and incredible service, this was not a fun reality check.
I asked them politely, "Can you please find something else? I'm not staying in a room with twin beds because we didn't book that" He spent a long time searching the computer and did find something in the end so I thanked him for that.
Then it was a huge ordeal getting the massive bike bag and all the luggage into this teeny tiny room. I did find a place to store it. With all that time taken, it worked out because my wife was soon arriving on the high speed train from China and it was only a short walk to get there and meet her at the arrivals.
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