So I messaged first, and quickly got my response.

And now I wait.

As fun as this 16 x 8 foot cell has been, and despite its proximity to a world-class theme park next door and effectiveness as a bulwark against the pandemic, Penny’s Bay is a place that is only worth leaving.

The final meal arrives – I’ve seen it somewhere before – and, apologies for the wastage, but after 21 straight aeroplane meals, I can’t bring myself to touch it. It goes straight into the black garbage bag. I resist the temptation to sweep and mop the floor again.

I make another cup of instant coffee, and read the rest of the WhatsApp note.

Departure, of course, is a ball of confusion. First, at 9.30am – half an hour early – two blue hazmat-clad staff walk by the window and inform me it’s time to go, or get ready to go, or sit here and wait until they come back. It is unclear.

Suddenly terror-stricken that I will miss my shuttle bus and my ticket out of this wonderful solitary confinement, I frantically message the WhatsApp line, which is less responsive this time. After hours – OK, seconds – they respond.

“Hello, Please wait in the room. Staff will escort with you to take shuttle bus”.

Phew. I begin to read the other instructions. Don’t take the hairdryer or kettle. Check. Don’t forget all personal items. Check. Put garbage in the bag outside the door. Check.

“Please leave all bedding and quilts in your room”. Noooooo!

The love-hotel bedsheets with huge pink hearts are the only thing one could ever miss about Penny’s Bay. Sadly, I must bid them farewell. (Staff inform me they will be disinfected for reuse, which is in itself a bit alarming.)

The last instruction is infuriating for someone who worked off their mobile phone hotspot for a week: “Please bring the Wi-fi device (if applicable) and return to our staff when checking out.” Note to future arrivals: Be sure to ask about Wi-fi when you arrive – and do it more than once.

OK. It’s 10.31am and I’m still waiting for an escort to the shuttle. I hear someone downstairs has been liberated, tortured by the rumbling of their trolley as they wheel their bags to freedom.

Today, the staff are more like the Blue Meanies I feared they might be when I first arrived. Information is sparse, non-existent. They ignore my questions from the window as they walk by, off to do something more important.

Pathetically, I message the WhatApp line once more: “Still waiting. Don’t forget me. 197-17.”

Again, I get a response: “sure. remember you. (smiley face emoji)”.

My blue hazmat-clad escort, at last, arrives at my window at 10.36am. She signals it’s time to walk to the bus with a hooked thumb over her shoulder and stick fingers. Downstairs, at about 10.45am, we wheel our luggage to the checkpoint where we checked in.

Though we have not met, my fellow passengers and I in the line share a kindred experience, perhaps um … “hardened” by our time in the pen. A woman behind me says hello.

“Are you Mr Rhoads? I read your columns. We arrived at the same time. Where are you going to hotel? (The Nina Hotel in Aberdeen.) Oh, I hear it’s quite nice.”

The Blue Man Group checks our IDs, confirms our hotel destinations, collects our room number door papers (197-17) and sends us to board our respective shuttles. It’s all quite quick and efficient.

The bus revs up and drives through the Penny’s Bay front security gate. At long last we have left the confines of Stalag PB (hat tip for that nickname to my colleague Josh Ball) and are headed into Hong Kong’s familiar and sometimes formidable traffic.

And, of course, instead of taking the easy, lightly trafficked and more expensive Western tunnel, our driver heads – in the classic style of all Hong Kong bus and cab drivers – straight into the bumper-to-bumper traffic of Kowloon in the direction of the cheaper Cross-Harbour Tunnel to Hong Kong Island.

Penny’s Bay diary: a stint in Hong Kong quarantine

This, of course, adds frustration-packed minutes that feel like hours. Freedom will have to wait a bit longer.

As I ride the shuttle, I’m also reminded that I’m not actually escaping to home. Instead, I’m headed to my hotel halfway house for two more weeks of compulsory quarantine. There, I’ve found out, I’ll be tested every other day, meaning 15 PCR tests when all is said and done.

As that thought sinks in, leaving Penny’s Bay affair suddenly feels rather anticlimactic, and I am reminded of The Hollow Men.

“This is how the world ends,” wrote T.S. Eliot., “not with a bang but with a whimper”.

Well, at least I’ll be in a hotel for Christmas.

Until next time, signing off from Penny’s Bay. Inmate 197-17. bjr

Staff, students at 2 Hong Kong universities told to get jabbed, tested – or else

Post script

One final word of warning. The shuttle buses are sparsely populated, but they stop frequently and in many places and spend time ensuring each quarantine passenger is checked in or at least handed over properly to the hotel.

The upshot is: It has been 2.5 hours and we are still circling Causeway Bay in the Plague Bus. All the while, the air conditioning is on full blast.

My final pro tip: Dress for winter, or at least layer up. A hoodie and track pants did not take the Arctic chill off the entire ride to Aberdeen. After leaving Penny’s Bay at 11am, the coach finally rolled up to the hotel nearly three hours later.

Over and out.