Bavi Missed HK, 135 Flights Cancelled Anyway
Storm that missed us
Here's the one thing worth knowing before you plan your weekend: check your flight before you head to the airport. Typhoon Bavi wrecked the schedule without ever coming near us. Bavi was a Severe Typhoon, winds of 155km/h, but it tracked into Fujian and Zhejiang on the mainland, hundreds of kilometres north of Hong Kong. The Observatory never even raised a typhoon signal here. Instead, at 6:45am Saturday, it put out a Very Hot Weather Warning, forecasting highs near 35C through Sunday. No storm, just heat. And yet Cathay Pacific, HK Express, Hong Kong Airlines, Greater Bay Airlines and EVA Air scrubbed 135 flights anyway: 64 inbound, 71 outbound, on routes to Taipei, Kaohsiung, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Osaka, Tokyo and Nagoya. MTR cancelled 20 high-speed rail runs to Shanghai Hongqiao, Fuzhou and Guangzhou South over the same two days. By Saturday morning the airlines had waived change fees, the way they do when a direct hit is coming. It wasn't coming. Sunday's heat warning stayed up, with no rain behind it at all.
Same demand, two addresses
The World Cup is running as two completely different businesses in Hong Kong this month, and both are booming for the same reason: people want to watch football and bet on it. In Central, Lan Kwai Fong's six-week street carnival is showing all 104 matches on giant outdoor screens, with more than twenty bars and restaurants signed up. For the final, July 18 to 20, it goes full pedestrian fan zone: streets closed to traffic, one long viewing party. That's the government's version of the World Cup: licensed, photographed, good for the tourism numbers. Out in Tai Po and Sheung Shui, away from the cameras, it's a different story. Police spent Thursday and Friday raiding five gambling dens, four brothels and an illegal petrol station, arresting 65 people and seizing about HK$30,000 in betting slips and over 18,000 litres of black-market fuel. Superintendent Lui Sze-ho said some of those arrested were running illegal football books riding the same World Cup wave: unlicensed operators taking the exact same bets as the Lan Kwai Fong crowd, just without a permit or a giant screen. Same appetite, same six weeks, two very different outcomes. The final runs July 18 to 20, in Central under the screens and, if the pattern holds, somewhere in the New Territories without one.
Two addresses, one match schedule. Central gets a permit, a giant screen and a fan zone closed to traffic for the final weekend. Tai Po got 65 arrests and HK$30,000 in betting slips on Thursday and Friday. The final runs July 18 to 20. Whichever screen the city watches it on, only one of the two shows up in next week's arrest sheet.