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The HK-SG Digital Travel Bubble is a part of Sandbox, The Substation’s platform dedicated to create a testing ground environment for artistic play and experimentation. It embodies the spirit of exploration, failing, learning and trying again. Artistic play and experimentation are essential to growing a healthy arts ecosystem.

Singapore — Hong Kong. A short flight. A perfect weekend. A whirlwind of dining and shopping and sights, familiar enough for comfort yet unfamiliar enough to thrill. So when the HK-SG travel bubble was first announced to open up in late November 2020, many were excited — and in the first moments of that excitement, two writers engaged in a bit of fantastical brainstorming on Facebook.

What if we could steal a march on the physical travel bubble, and launch a digital travel bubble instead? To allow Singaporeans and Hongkongers who might not dare or just might not be able to travel to still experience the distant idea of “transport”, to invite each other into the spaces we cherish. To be tour guide and tourist, local and foreigner, these terms that have almost vanished from our lexicon. And to do it all through the medium of photographs, and poetry.

Sadly, the physical travel bubble was called off weeks after it was announced, much to the disappointment of many from both cities. The initiative says a lot about the resilience and ingenuity of policymakers and people from the travel industry, and we still hope things will change for the better in time to come. But in the meantime, what reality denies, imagination will supply — and this Digital Travel Bubble is brought to you by the mutual love affair between Singaporeans and Hongkongers.

Eight Singaporeans and eight Hongkongers were paired up, and asked to share photos of their favorite places in their home city. And after that, each one of them wrote a poem about their favourite place, and another poem about their counterpart’s favourite place — a chance to play both guest and host. In order to showcase the diversity of both cities, we have chosen a mixture of writers from different backgrounds — the published veteran alongside the creative writing undergraduate, the local professional alongside the migrant worker, and poets that work across a variety of languages. 

And the poets in turn chose places close to their hearts, rather than the Tripadvisor Top Ten — and whether by design or coincidence, often pairing city against nature, green against grey. The colours of Bugis and the peace of Fei Ngo Shan. A bustling Mongkok market and an enigmatic temple by the Kallang. The angular silhouettes of HDBs and the organic verdancy of CUHK. A ginger cat in a void deck against a Pui O Beach sunset. The pavilions of Nan Lian by night alongside a playground by day. A view of a tanker-dotted harbor, and a view from the Peak. The rail corridor and the Kowloon cricket club. A city-scape and a treelined path.

A soap bubble is delicate, ephemeral, barely held together by surface tension — a puff of air and it bursts. But look up close, in the play of the light, and see the rainbow worlds such a delicate sphere can hold. Words and images: the fragile stuff hope is made of, that imagination is made of. Welcome to our digital travel bubble. 

Photo credit: The Art of Mezame (for Marc Nair’s bio photo); Tai Ngai Lung (for Jennifer Wong’s bio photo)