Lyndon Rees is the Welsh-born bus manager who led the transformation of Hong Kong bus services in the 1970s and 1980s. SIMON AYRES met up with him on a recent visit there where he is now retired.
I am apprehensive about meeting Lyndon Rees, although this is the highlight of my visit to Hong Kong. Anyone with knowledge of Hong Kong bus operations will associate him with Citybus, whose striking yellow air conditioned double-deckers are active in every corner of the former British colony. I hope to learn much more about this living legend, who left South Wales for Hong Kong in the 1960s and went on to found one of the most iconic bus companies in the territory.
Now in his 70s, he has been retired for 10 years, yet can still pull strings to arrange an official visit to his old company premises where I speak to his former colleagues and realise how little has changed since his departure. A lasting legacy is a sure sign of getting it right and it makes me even more curious to get to know this extraordinary man.
I meet him for the first time in the lobby of a smart hotel in Kowloon. Accompanied by his chauffeur, he appears like a character in a Graham Greene novel, in Panama hat and dark glasses (essential a…
