My arrival in Hong Kong was something of a disappointment. Which is not to say that my flight with Cathay Pacific was anything other than lovely. Quite the opposite; it was, in spite of its length and long-haul nature, one of the nicest flights in my memory. The staff were lovely, the seats comfy and the food better than decent. It's just that, when we came in to land, all we did was descend through the cloudless, blue sky over the South China Sea and drop in for a gentle landing on the purpose-built airport island of Chek Lap Kok.
I didn't want to do that. I wanted to land at the old Kai Tak airport, the one barely outside downtown. The one were pilots had to be specially rated in order to flick and twist their Boeings between buildings in the manner of fighter pilots dodging missiles down concrete canyons. The old landing at Kai Tak involved flying in between tall buildings, looking for a massive red and white chequerboard panel affixed to the side of a small mountain. When you saw the chequerboard (and hopefully you did) you reefed the aircraft into a tight, descending right-hand turn and hoped you could get the wings level in time for touch down, usually after flying underneath a washing line or two. Get it wrong and you were either going to fly into the side of a building or plop off the end of the runway into Hong Kong harbour. It was a leftover bit of flying from the old, adventurous days and perhaps not best suited to the modern era. But it does mean your arrival in Hong Kong is now something of a generic airport anti-climax.
Still, Hong Kong itself is something a bit special, in some ways because it's not. Let me explain. All around you, you see the azure blue waters and matching skies of the south west Pacific. You see towering skyscrapers, including the one Batman flung himself off in The Dark Knight, and old-fashioned ferries heaving to and fro across the waterfront. You see street signs in Cantonese and all the taxis are red-and-silver Toyota Crowns.
And then you start to notice how normal the place is too. Everyone drives on the same side of the road as us. All those Cantonese street signs also have English translations underneath. There are addresses such as Salisbury Road, Times Square and Causeway Bay. You can even, if you search around a little, find a branch of Marks & Spencer. It is, of course, because Hong Kong, just like Dublin, just like Cork, just like Belfast, is an ex-colonial city. Once a shining pearl of the British Empire, now a semi-autonomous, kind of self-governing area under the control of China since 1997, Hong Kong is one of those odd collisions of culture and history, which just shouldn't work but somehow seems to. It's a city of impossibly tall buildings (well, impossibly tall for someone raised in low-lying West Cork) perched above tiny shops selling cheap tissues and boxes of chocolates. It's a staggering wealthy city, a centre of global commerce, yet one where the passion for knock-off watches and electronics seems barely to have abated.
It also has the Peninsula Hotel. Now, if you're going to have a holdover from a colonial past, this is the way to do it. While a massively tall new section of rooms rises high behind it, the frontage of the Peninsula is still its old self - calming and stentorian above the massed ranks of pedestrians and vehicle traffic spilling along the streets. Slip in through one of the front doors and the cloying heat of Kowloon is replaced by a gentle chill of air conditioning. There is no fashionable, modern mezzanine, but instead a low, intimate ceiling with intricate plasterwork and tables and chairs scattered discretely about.
But I wasn't there to sample either the architecture or the air conditioning. I was here to be driven. You see, while the Peninsula is famous for many things (being Hong Kong's best hotel, once being home to the cast and crew of an entire James Bond film) it is mostly famous for its fleet of emerald green Rolls-Royces. It's a tradition that goes back to 1970, when the hotel was casting about for some appropriately luxurious cars to form its private fleet. Everyone assumed that a Rolls would just be too expensive, until the hotel's owner, the redoubtable Sir Michael Kadoorie, asked "has anyone enquired?" Rolls-Royce came up with a suitable quotation and the rest is green liveried history.
In 2006, the Peninsula set a record when it put in what was then the biggest single order for Rolls-Royce cars ever. It bought, at a stroke, 14 long-wheelbase Phantoms, all decked in the hotel's characteristic dark green paint, all with tan leather interiors and deep pile carpets. The cars are subtly modified from standard. The air conditioning controls for the rear compartment have been moved from the back of the front seats to the arm rest, so that you don't have to stretch for them. Meanwhile, in the boot, the spare wheel has been binned to make room for more luggage, while all the screws holding trim panels and carpet in place have been specially counter-sunk so that they don't snag on anyone's expensive luggage.
“I think these Phantoms that we have here now are probably the best Rolls-Royces that I have ever worked with” says Martin Oxley, a former Rolls-Royce apprentice mechanic and now the fleet manager for the Peninsula. “They're huge, and you certainly can't miss them. I think they're absolutely fantastic.
“They are registered hire cars with our hotel, so anyone staying at the hotel can hire them. They can go anywhere within Hong Kong that they fit, and I say that because some of the parts of Hong Kong are very narrow. We had one instance where we drove into a small fishing village and had to reverse all the way back out again because we couldn't do a U-turn... But otherwise, anywhere a guest wants to go we will take them.”
Now this is a proper experience. Getting into the back of any Phantom is a bit special, but to then be effortlessly swished around the crowded, chaotic streets of downtown Hong Kong is quite surreal. You can sense the heat and hassle all around you on the outside, but within all is incredibly calm and cool. The air conditioning conditions, the seats sag and sigh in all the right places and those massive 21-inch wheels seem to effortlessly soak up some pretty typical city centre bumps and obstructions.
All too soon it's over and we're back at the Peninsula and I have to check my Roger Moore fantasies at the front desk. Still, for a few moments there, I got my Hong Kong adventure. You may not be able to do the death-defying landing at Kai Tak anymore, but a turn around the block in a Peninsula Phantom is still an experience that only Hong Kong can provide.
Many thanks to The Peninsula Hotel and Cathay Pacific Airways without whose help this feature would not have been possible. Cathay Pacific flies from London Heathrow to Hong Kong five times daily, from Manchester to Hong Kong four times per week, and to over 200 destinations globally. For further information, visit www.cathaypacific.co.uk.