Sham Wan Tsuen

We have a 19 hour lay over in Hong Kong today. We had planned a day's sight seeing, but due to the risk of further protest demonstrations, we decided to forgo the trip into the city, and just spend the day in the airport😥.
We spent an hour in a queue that went forever to get to the transfer desk, but eventually discovered it was a queue for people with cancled flights. Fortunately our flight was the next day and was not cancelled so we just walked through an almost deserted security check to the departure area.
Our decision to stay at the airport proved wise as another protest that closed the airport again started in the afternoon. My thoughts and prayers go out to the protesters who are trying to hang on to the small freedoms they have under the two country system. We were watching what was going on outside the airport and in the downstairs check in area on the TV news and streaming live via YouTube, along with the rest of the world. It was quite scary when the Chinese police in full riot gear tried to storm the airport to try to dislodge the protesters that were blocking the departure lounge but thankfully they withdrew. There were press everywhere and hundreds of people filming. I think this helped to create restraint on both sides.

We spent a very long day in the airport never sure if our 1am flight was actually going to go ahead . We were so glad we decided not to leave the airport as I'm sure If we had we would not have been able to return and would have missed our flight to Madrid . We finally took off at 2.30am after 20.5 hours, relived to be on our way again. I fell asleep almost as soon as I sat in the chair, I think i also slept through the take off. 😊Read more