The Next Station Is Hopping Mad

The Transport Department has just made my life a little bit worse. As if ten or more minutes of every ferry trip, twice a day, being taken up by screaming public announcements in three languages wasn’t enough, they have now started on the buses too.

Look, I’m all for the digital signs, okay? There are so many tourists on Lantau now, you can’t expect the bus driver to answer questions about where things are and stuff. (Of course when tourists see 貝澳羅屋村 (Bui O Lo Uk Tsuen, Net House Village in Bui O) they still won’t know where the damned beach is and will still ask the driver, but hey.)

But the spoken announcements! In three “languages”! Scratchy, whiny, screechy and impossible to block out, coming as they do from an inferior speaker right above your head, the announcements are driving me mad. Mad, I say! And they are relentless. As soon as one has stopped, another one comes up, often long after you’ve passed the bus stop. Why aren’t the digital signs enough? People can read or they’re with someone who can read. And if they can’t read, chances are they’re 80 years old and born on Lantau. They know where the things are.

A couple of years ago I had a two-year email war with the Transport Department. I asked why, when each ferry is covered in about 300 signs (“signage”) telling you what to do in great detail and with happy cartoons, it is necessary to have a loud, overpowering voice screeching at you to keep your voice down? I reasoned that people know how to take a ferry. We get on and sit down. Then we get off. But the government thinks we need to be told how to do this, twice a day. It’s impossible to work, talk or read while it’s going on.

The Department proudly came back with this: It’s for the blind people!

So I presume the bus announcements are for the same reason: All those blind people who go to Pui O Beach by themselves every day. What a kind department.

Just one thing, I thought 巴士站 (basi tsaam, bus stop) was called ‘stop’ in English? Not “station”? Oh well. The Hong Kong government knows best.