One of my favorite words is serendipity. Those times when God sends a tailwind your way and everything seems to come together at the right time for something to come to pass. Admittedly I did look at plane tickets to see what it would take to secure this watch before jetting off to Switzerland the following week, but who was I kidding? My day job was beginning to gather steam on a major project and I couldn’t just leave!

Enter serendipity. On a Tuesday we suddenly received word that this project at work was to be suspended effective immediately and indefinitely. Then arose an opportunity to spend my idle Cathay Pacific miles when favorable itineraries suddenly availed themselves. So naturally less than 24 hours later, I found myself at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in line to board a flight to San Francisco.

Outbound: AUS -> SFO -> HKG

I surprisingly hadn’t done one of these trip reviews with the Sub despite it being one of my longest-owned pieces. Well, with Hong Kong being such a nautical and maritime city and all, it seemed like the perfect choice. My only hesitation came with the horror stories of Rolexes being theft targets abroad, especially with my need to take such conspicuous photos of it like a clueless tourist. Decided on it anyway, because content.

It’s too bad the Submariner isn’t a GMT, or even an Aqua Terra with its jumping hour hand to quickly set the time once in a different time zone, but being a three-hander without a date, it was pretty straightforward to reset. +1 for the No Date Sub!

My layover in SFO was a leg-stretching 7 hours, and I think I wouldn’t be lying if I said it was the worst part of the journey. Aside from a surprisingly tasty (but costly) dinner at Bun Mee, killing off that time definitely felt the grindiest thing I’ve had to do all trip. Perhaps it was a good thing to have a nice watch to keep glancing at to see how much more time was left before boarding.

This was my first time flying Cathay Pacific, and even though I’ve by no means flown most airlines, I have to say they catered the best economy class food I’ve ever had, especially on the way back. Top notch stuff, Cathay!

After sleeping, or trying to, for the next 5-ish hours after the meal, it came time to purchase the onboard wifi and actually sign on to my job. The wifi, except for some dead patches over the Pacific Ocean, was surprisingly reliable and it allowed me to get what little work I still needed to get done in the aftermath of the old project’s rug pull.

Arrival: HKG

After a short 14.5 hours, we landed in Hong Kong! With my circadian rhythm still operating on US time, we landed at around 5:30am Hong Kong time, or 4:30pm CST. The morning was my opportunity to do some touristy things before K&L Watch opened at 12:30pm and also before I would inevitably start crashing in the afternoon.

Hong Kong airport has a few hotels that offer day-use stays, and after immigration I beelined it straight for the Regala Skycity Hotel shuttle (all I had with me was my backpack, enabling me to whisk through the airport) and quickly took a shower and changed after checking into the hotel. Next stop was the Skycity Airport Express station, where the Airport Express would ship me straight to Hong Kong island. There was no time to waste!

Side note: Being a pedestrian in Hong Kong was confusing at first. Lots of over or underpasses for pedestrians where you might expect sidewalks at street level. Took me a minute at first!

Hong Kong Island

First stop: Victoria Peak! I’ll let the photos do the talking, but that was one steep tram. It felt like at times it ascended at a 45º angle. I guess in a place that needs not worry about snow it can get away with that. It was a pretty cloudy day, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to grab a coffee at the top and take a little stroll on Lugard Rd. To my luck, the clouds peaced out for a second, long enough for me to snap a few photos of the breathtaking skyline. I’m pretty sure that didn’t happen again for the rest of the day.

I descended sometime after 11am and so still had some minutes to kill before the store opened, and what better way to do that than to walk around eating a sandwich and taking in the environs? Shame on me for choosing to grub on a 7Eleven sandwich instead of authentic HK food, but there was much to do and not much time to do it! I’m also not a huge fan about dining solo, so there.

So how did I feel about bringing my Submariner along for this trip? Hong Kong didn’t feel particularly shady nor did it really have a reputation for it so in short, I felt completely fine wearing short sleeves around town. If anything, I felt like it did a pretty spectacular job at blending in, as opposed to a full gold AP Royal Oak or something like that (well, duh).

Eventually it came time to board the infamously cheap ferry (surprisingly, nothing else about Hong Kong was cheap and is to date the most expensive Asian city I’ve ever been to) and scuttle over to Kowloon, or the “mainland” part of Hong Kong. Time for the Submariner to shine. Did it feel ever so appropriate to be on the water with the Sub even if not under it? Heck yes. Last time I checked, it still has “mariner” in the name.

Kowloon

I feel like the main touristy thing in Kowloon is Nathan Road, which honestly felt like Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, but more like two miles. Or three. It was long, and I decided to walk to the watch store. After what felt like an hour of walking (could’ve been less, everything’s a time warp when you’re suddenly on the other side of the world), I finally reached the store, only for nobody to be there. Too tired to panic, I casually just sent the guy an email asking when he’d be back, only for me to turn around find him unlocking the door. Whew.

So which timepiece did I purchase? Well, this post is about the Submariner, so you’ll just have to wait until its grand reveal. It was one I had tried on last year and finally decided to get, and let’s just say it lives up. It was past 1pm (12am Austin time) at the time of purchase, and I knew drowsiness was imminent. Time was up. I needed to head back to the hotel for a fat nap before heading back to the airport.

Inbound: HKG -> SFO

And a fat nap I took. After silencing my alarm at 9:30pm, I packed all my stuff, plus the new watch, in my little backpack and shuttled on over to the airport. That’s right, the grand total amount of time spent in Hong Kong was to be 19 hours and some change: not even one full day. Maybe it was because I really wanted the watch in my hands before I left for Switzerland, but I think we all know it was more for the content. For the people. For you.

My flight back to San Francisco was, thankfully, unremarkable. The eastbound flight was amusingly more than 3 hours shorter than the westbound leg, and I saw the fastest clocked ground speed I had ever seen on my IFE screen: 716mph. Must be one bruiser of a jet stream over the Pacific. Also amusingly, despite taking off from Hong Kong around 1am on Saturday, I landed in San Francisco at around 9:30pm on Friday. Imagine trying to set that with a Sub Date, ha.

Home: SFO -> AUS

I touched back down at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport at 5:03am Saturday morning, nary sixty-two and a half hours after wheels went up that Wednesday afternoon. I had been pinching myself all trip long trying to make sure it was actually happening, and now I was pinching myself to make sure that I and my Submariner had actually made it back home in one piece.

This hobby of watches I’m beginning to realize more and more, is a very international one. Not just in that its partakers hail from many corners of the globe, but sometimes you just fly across the world for a few hours to even participate in it. And sometimes, when the duller days of the mundane start to kick in, serendipity might just come knocking on your door to remind you that you have a particular hobby to engage with and that the world of horology is calling.

And boy does it seem surreal at times to answer that call.

Rolex Submariner No-Date 124060

Case Diameter: 41mm (Still wears like a 40mm)
Case Material: 904L Stainless Steel
Case Thickness: 12mm
Lug-to-lug length: 47.6mm
Weight: 153g (a few links removed)
Lug Width: 21mm
Width at clasp: 16mm
Beat Rate: 28,800 vph/4Hz
Movement: Rolex 3230