I think I have been through Hong Kong’s Kai Tak airport a hundred or more times - I never will forget looking in people’s apartments and seeing a family watching television on the approach to the runway. A few of those little bottles of vodka always helped me get through the experience.
Exactly... and all the people doing their Tai Kwon Do routines on the roofs.
“Kai Tak in Hong Kong was amazing - just as this guy describes. Another is Medellin, Colombia between the mountains”
“I think I have been through Hong Kong’s Kai Tak airport a hundred or more times - I never will forget looking in people’s apartments and seeing a family watching television on the approach to the runway. A few of those little bottles of vodka always helped me get through the experience.”
I was 22 years old on my first trip to Hong Kong for work. Our flight was delayed ~6hrs so we hit the bar at Tom Bradley Terminal in LAX to wait. We were young and famously drunk when we boarded in LAX. We continued to drink the first 4-5 hrs on the flight. This was when you could still smoke in flight.
I passed out and slept the rest of the flight.
I DID however wake up in the middle of the 90 deg turn.
I VERY clearly remember waking up, face against the window, opening my eyes, and looking out and DOWN a little old lady hanging laundry on the rooftop. She was looking at me too. This being my first trip to HK I had no idea of the approach and how low it was. I assumed that since the plane was on its side and we were so close to the buildings that we were crashing. I screamed like a little girl.
I never lived that down.
I've only flown into Kai Tak twice, the first time was surreal, just as you have described it. The second time I knew what to expect and thought it was kinda cool to look up, out of the planes window, and realize that we were flying lower than the surrounding buildings, and that the buildings below us got progressively shorter as we got closer to the runway.
I've been into Teguch twice as well. There is a bar at the approach end of the airport with tables on the roof. From there you can count the rivets on the planes as they come in to land.