A Disappointing Cruise Terminal (令人失望的遊輪碼頭)

Whilst on one of my recent trips to Tung Lung Island, I discovered on my return boat trip from that relatively untouched island a structure which from a distance, looked a bit like like a loaf of bread, located in the former Kai Tak International Airport, one of my favourite spots for revision just before my final exam when I was still studying in a school in that area years ago. I used to do my pre-exam cramming there because it was quiet and spacious but most of all, because it had free air conditioning during the hot and humid summer season. "Could that be the new Cruise Terminal I had heard about?", I mused to myself. It didn't take long for the doubt to be dispelled. On the 13th June, 2013, it received its first passenger liner from Spain. The Government said that it hopes that the terminal will become a regional cruise hub with capacity for berthing 2 large 360-meter long ocean liners with capacity for handling some 5,500 passengers and about 1200 crew, fitted with with facilities for passenger waiting, immigration, quarantine, baggage claim, storage, offices, convention halls, hotels, restaurants, shops  and more than half a million square feet total gross floor area plus 240,000 square feet of landscaped deck garden atop etc.built on a 19-acre site and that hopefully by 2020, it will bring in an annual  revenue of up to HKD2.2 billion create some 11,000 new jobs..

The figures sounded impressive. So I decided to take a look on that important day and see our first arrivals.  Before going, I checked how I could go there. From the official information released by the Government, there should be a free shuttle between the MTR Kowloon Bay shopping mall and the new Cruise Terminal. Good! But when I asked around there, nobody seemed to have heard anything about it, including MTR staff and staffs at that shopping mall, nor the shuttle bus operators at the transport terminal on the ground floor of that shopping mall. After much fruitless asking around and walking around, I had to take a taxi. It never rained but  it poured.!  The taxi driver took a wrong route and we had to go all the way back from one of the entrances to the former airport right back to where we started at the shopping mall and take another route. What a way to start my "exciting adventure" !

it seems that when it officially opened in mid-June this year, a lot of work still remained undone on that terminal based a smaller scale design of a similar terminal in Amsterdam,

The transport area at the Cruise Terminal. Hardly any cars, buses, coaches or taxis. Scarcely a soul to be seen except me and my camera and a dozen newspaper, TV and radio reporters and photographers .

This looks as if it's going to be my closest shot of the Spanish cruiser. The trip was a giant size let down: there's absolutely nothing there but a bare shell of steel and glass, displaying a total lack of imagination in its external design: no banners, no flowers, no decorations, no shops, no restaurants, no convention hall, no hotels, no buses, no coaches except those taking passengers to various shopping locations and just a few taxis, no nothing. A gargantuan flop!

The roads seem wide enough, much to the delight of many cyclists taking advantage of the almost non-existent traffic.

A pedestrian pavilion which hopefully will be covered with creepers in time, in the non-existent "garden" with hardly any plants or trees or shrubs to speak of at one side of the road to the new Cruise Terminal

A view of the Cruise Terminal from the causeway leading from the feeder road serving it

The feeder road itself

The corner of the feeder road

The entrance to a building I passed by on my return journey

A design by a student of a vocational school shortly before I reached the MTR station

Another such design.

An airport train design for a pedestrian walkway?

Yes, even the interior looks like a train

About the only colorful thing I saw that day, on the roadside after I crossed that train tunnel!