China; Friday, 03 April, 2026

The flight was eventually called just before 1am so we all headed down to the gate. As this was the very last flight of the night, and the previous departures had all since left, it was pretty easy for the airport to corral the entire flight together and they managed to get a full A350 boarded in less than 30 minutes, which meant we were all ready to go the moment our Air Traffic slot opened.

I’m assuming it was something to do with night flight noise restrictions, but for some reason, despite there being no other air traffic around, we still taxied to the furthest possible take-off point for a runway before we were free to head up into the air and start the wiggly Caucuses route down to Hong Kong.

The flight was pretty smooth, and I even managed to get a few hours’ sleep, hoping that the effects of a shortened sleep and a very short day would mean by the time I got to go to bed not very many hours later my body would just accept it was the right time for some more sleep.

By the time we landed we were only about 50 minutes late, but it also appeared that we were about the only other international flight landing around that time as it was a very smooth journey through the airport and immigration, getting to the baggage reclaim belt less than 40 minutes after the wheels had touched the runway.

Through customs and out into the airport where, after several minutes searching, I managed to track down a location to purchase an Octopus card – the digital ticketing card that is pretty much the granddaddy of them all, Octopus being the inspiration for Transport for London’s Oyster card – and then catch the airport bus the 45 minutes into town, directly to my hotel.

By the time I’d checked in, got up to my room and dropped everything off it was already gone 8pm so I quickly popped out to a neighbouring dim sum restaurant for a quick bite to eat before heading back to the hotel to crash out for the night with a hope that a long nights sleep would reset by body clock to Hong Kong and Macau time.