Travellers' Checks | Memories of Hong Kong hotels long forgotten in old flight timetables for Hong Kong Airways, equally long forgotten

Plus, new Japan-based website connects people who like to travel light with those willing to lend them everything from ski and diving gear to clothing

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Ads from a Hong Kong Airways timetable from 1959. Picture: timetableimages.com

Adam Nebbs

Published: 8:17pm, 22 Aug 2018Updated: 8:17pm, 22 Aug 2018

Lurking among the thousands of colourful old airline timetables on display at timetableimages.com is a selection issued by Hong Kong Airways – a small flag carrier that operated regional flights from 1947 until it was taken over by Cathay Pacific in 1959.

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The timetables from 1958 and 1959 are particularly notable for containing articles and advertising, making them curious time capsules of Hong Kong’s early tourism trade. Hotels advertised include the Miramar, Peninsula and Astor, in Tsim Sha Tsui, as well as such long-forgotten places as the Carlton Hotel, out on Tai Po Road, in northern Kowloon, and the New Ritz Hotel and adjoining New Ritz Swimming Pool, in North Point. Among the more familiar advertisers are Lane Crawford, Jimmy’s Kitchen and Dairy Farm, which in those days provided in-flight catering to Hong Kong Airways and, it says, “all other major airlines”.

The Carlton Hotel on remote Tai Po Road had 37 air-conditioned rooms, a spacious lounge and dance floor and open-air restaurant. Photo: Golden Studio Photo

Brief illustrated articles feature the opening of the Hong Kong Tourist Association’s first office in the arcade of the Peninsula hotel, and visits by noteworthy passengers, including three Japanese fashion models and a female “mathematical wizard” from India.

Company staff are also profiled. Mezzo-soprano and student of the Royal Irish Academy of Music Bessie Pei Hsien Yang, readers learn, gave up a career in music to be a “flight stewardess”. A column is also contributed, apparently for one issue only, by pilot Captain David Lampard, who, like most of his colleagues at the airline, saw active service with the Royal Air Force during the second world war.

A Hong Kong Airways timetable from 1955. Picture: timetableimages.com

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Adam Nebbs

Adam has lived in Hong Kong since 1988. He briefly managed the demise of the Wanderlust travel bookshop on Hollywood road in the mid 1990s, then worked as Associate Editor on Cathay Pacific’s inflight magazine Discovery for several years. He began writing Travellers’ Checks for Post Magazine in 1998, working for several years under the pseudonym Peter Walbrook. A former contributing editor for the exclusive luxury travel guide NB Review, he has also edited several books, including the first-ever travel guide to Uzbekistan in 1996, and 'The Amazing Adventures of Betsy And Niki' (2008) by Captain Charles “Chic” Eather. His non-fiction book 'The Great Fire of Hong Kong', was published in 2010.

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Before you go

Travellers' Checks | Memories of Hong Kong hotels long forgotten in old flight timetables for Hong Kong Airways, equally long forgotten

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