China; Monday, 13 April, 2026

My flight wasn’t until the afternoon, and checkout from the hotel wasn’t until 4pm, but I knew I didn’t want to go too far today as I still hadn’t packed and I wanted a little bit of time to prepare for the journey home, so after breakfast I picked up the tram a couple of stops into the centre of town and headed up to Tai Kwun.

Today Tai Kwun is a cultural and arts venue in the heart of the old city of Hong Kong, but up until the early part of the 21st century parts of the site were still being used as a detention centre for immigrants, as this complex was the historic Central Police Station, Magistrates Court and Prison for the city. Almost unique in the world from arrival into the Police Station the entire judicial journey through hearing, conviction and imprisonment could be carried out without you ever leaving the building complex.

Parts of the building complex are now shops, but a number of heritage exhibitions are on display through the key buildings such as the Central Police Station, the Police Barracks, the Magistracy and in a couple of the cell-blocks.

From Tai Kwun it was a short walk to head over towards the Zoo, though I diverted on the way to quicky pop into the Catholic Cathedral. Much like it’s Anglican counterpart the Catholic Cathedral wouldn’t look out of place in Western Europe and certainly does look out of place in a courtyard surrounded by sky scrapers in East Asia.

It’s a couple of steps from the cathedral over to the Zoo which is where I headed next to have a wander past some of the exhibits I hadn’t looked at the previous time I’d been through, but by now my time in the city was starting to come to an end so after a quick walk through I headed down to the bus stop and caught the bus back towards the hotel.

Back in the hotel I was able to spend a little time on admin – making sure I’d downloaded the last of my photos and videos from the camera to my laptop and uploaded them into the cloud just in case before doing most of the packing of my bag and then, taking advantage of having a hotel room until late, having a nice long shower and changing into clean clothes to start the long journey home.

Bags finally fully packed I checked out of the hotel and walked the short distance to the bus stop for the express bus back out to the Airport, where I it turned out I’d arrived almost an hour before check-in even opened.

Check-in ended up opening about 15 minutes early and with a smooth journey through security and immigration – who once again were utterly uninterested in the small slip of paper I’d been carefully protecting for the last 10 days – I headed over to the lounge for a couple of hours before the flight was called.

Unlike the outbound flight there were no delays on our departure with doors being closed a good 20 minutes before our scheduled departure slot. Once up in the air the meal service started quickly and so by about 22:30 I was all cleared away and ready to go to bed.