“When I was there, we were told the beaches were so polluted, that it was not recommended to swim in the sea there…”

Correct, certain areas were infamous for their ‘debris’. The smell of the Nullah which you could almost taste through passenger aircraft ventilation at Kai Tak was one never to be forgotten, certainly in my time. ‘Fragrant Harbour’ it was not!

This is not neccesarily a reflection of local hygene efforts. In fact, for a city of many millions of people in such a small area, Hong Kong does pretty well. The sheer scale of the engineering projects out there were to marvel at, especially when viewed from the air. I remember when someone wondered in to the crewroom one day to tell us ‘Stonecutters Island…isn’t an island anymore’.