Booked & Boarded: Hong Kong – Reading Between Neon Lights and Ferry Crossings

There are some cities that stay suspended in memory long after the details disappear. I haven’t been back to Hong Kong since 2005, but certain fragments remain strangely intact: the feeling of humidity pressing against glass windows, fluorescent light reflecting on wet pavement, ferries crossing dark water at night, escalators carrying endless streams of people upward through the city.

Hong Kong felt perpetually in transit, a city of tunnels, staircases, crossings, station announcements, narrow streets opening suddenly into bright intersections. Even standing still somehow felt temporary, as though the city itself was gently pulling everything forward.

That feeling has lingered with me far longer than any itinerary.

And oddly, when I think about Hong Kong now, I think about books almost immediately afterwards.

Not specific titles, necessarily. More the feeling of carrying a book through the city. The comfort of having something familiar tucked into a bag while everything outside felt fast and vertical and constantly shifting.

Some cities encourage lingering: long café mornings, quiet afternoons, slow walks without destination. Hong Kong felt different. It demanded attention. My reading there happened in fragments. On ferries, inside train carriages, during pauses between movement. Pages folded around transit rather than stillness.

I remember the MTR stations feeling impossibly vast at the time, their tiled corridors stretching endlessly underground while crowds moved with practiced certainty around me. Emerging back onto the streets always felt slightly cinematic: neon signs flickering overhead, humid air rushing back instantly, snippets of conversation disappearing into traffic noise.

Even now, decades later, that atmosphere remains unusually vivid.

The city seemed to glow brightest after rain. At night, reflections blurred across tram tracks and pavement while apartment windows stacked endlessly above the streets. There was a density to everything — buildings, light, movement, noise — that felt overwhelming at first, then strangely magnetic after a few days.

I think that’s part of why bookstores stood out so sharply in my memory.

Stepping inside a bookstore in Hong Kong felt like briefly entering another rhythm entirely. The noise softened. Air conditioning replaced the heavy summer air outside. Shelves created temporary stillness in a city that rarely seemed to pause.

I still remember wandering through spaces that felt smaller and narrower than the sprawling chain bookstores I was used to at home, yet somehow more intimate because of it. Books stacked closely together. Quiet corners hidden upstairs. Readers browsing silently while the city rushed on outside.

Bookstores have always become emotional landmarks for me while travelling. Long after I forget restaurants or shopping streets or even major attractions, I can usually remember the feeling of the bookstores: the lighting, the music, the weather outside, the particular exhaustion or solitude of that afternoon.

Hong Kong was perhaps the first place where I realised that.

Maybe because it was one of the first cities I visited that felt truly overwhelming in scale. Not intimidating exactly, but dense in a way that demanded constant observation. Every street seemed layered on top of another. Staircases disappeared upward into buildings. Tiny cafés hid above crowded intersections. Entire worlds seemed tucked behind ordinary doorways.

As a traveller, I think I responded by looking for smaller pockets of quiet within the movement.

Bookstores became one of those spaces. So did ferries.

Even now, when I picture Hong Kong, I often picture the water first: crossing the harbour in fading evening light while skyscrapers flickered on around the shoreline. Ferries felt slower than the rest of the city. A brief pause between districts. A place to sit quietly for ten minutes and observe everything from a slight distance.

Travel memories rarely stay intact in perfectly factual ways. Over time they become atmospheric instead, just collections of light, sound, weather, fragments of conversation, colours reflected in windows. That’s what Hong Kong has become for me.

Not a checklist of landmarks from 2005, but a mood I still return to mentally: rain against tram windows, foggy views from The Peak, station platforms humming underground, books carried through crowded streets, ferries cutting across dark water beneath neon reflections.

Some cities remain fixed in the past. Others continue evolving in your imagination long after you’ve left. Somehow, Hong Kong does both.