9th April - all day.

Flicking through my guide book last night, the review of Stanley village sounds interesting so I decide to head down there. Buses run from Shau Kei Wan or Central but I like the atmosphere in the former so jump on the tram down there. Looking around I can’t see where the bus runs from and nobody is available or willing to help me, but I know the bus to Shek O heads down the right road and then turns off, so if I get off the Shek O bus when it turns, I can catch the next service to Stanley, right? (The more experienced here might spot a flaw in my plan).

As the bus turns at the roundabout in the middle of a very mountainous nowhere, I ring the bell and we stop 200yds later in a layby. That’s full of people. No, I mean really full. Heaving. There’s buses, taxis and huge crowds everywhere, and police directing traffic and shouting at people with megaphones. Forcing my way past the crowds I head down a tiny sideroad into… a massive cemetery. There’s people everywhere, even though the ‘Sweeping of the graves’ national holiday was last Wednesday. Hmm.

Enough dead people and crowds, I’m heading to Stanley. I walk back to the road and turn at the roundabout towards Stanley, since my alighting bus stop was on the Shek O road, it can only be 100yds to the next stop down here, right?

Right?

The road is another narrow rocky cleft in the hillside complete with hairpin bends, steep drops and wannabe Italian drivers. There’s no pavement because the road designer didn’t expect people to be walking here. It doesn’t occur to me at this point that, if there’s no pavement and no people, there’s probably no bus stop. Bus stops are quite regular when you’re riding on the bus and, despite it being a Sunday, there’s a bus passing me every ten minutes or so although none will stop because I’m not at a bus stop. I’ve forgotten that average bus speed here is just under Mach 1. Of course, in between the buses on this twisty, challenging mountain road nothing is holding the traffic that slow. Hong Kong is a rich place and so, in between Toyotas and taxis there’s the occasional full-bore whaaaaGGwhaaaaaaaGGWHAAAAAAA HOOOOOMMMMMMM<cracklecrackle> of (variously) an Aston Martin, Ferrari, Maserati and Porsche plus others exploring the limits of grip, traction and the sound barrier. Oh, and me, stood in the road, half jealous and half scared witless. My apologies, no photos of this bit as I was scrabbling to climb the sheer rock face whenever I heard an engine.

Between near-death experiences I carried on walking and I was rewarded with a bus stop where a national trail crosses the road near to a reservoir dam. After 45 minutes of walking (and an extra 10 mins of standing still, straining to hear which direction the next European-built Chinese-kamikaze(!) rocket was coming from). Of course, when I got there, the next bus drove past me, full.

<I have recorded Stanley Village in my notebook as “a horrible mess of English theme pubs with a glass’n’steel tourist tat emporium” but this might be post-traumatic serenity disorder. It wasn’t that bad really>

At one end of Stanley Main Street stands Murray House, Hong Kong’s first dabble with heritage. It used to stand in the city and was due for demolition in the 1980s to make way for the Bank of China building (the one with zig-zaggy lights). Each stone was numbered and the building was dismantled in discrete parts so the stone could be stored. When a site was chosen for reassembly in the 1980s, half the stone had disappeared and when reconstruction finally began in 1998 the numbering ink had washed off some of the stones. At the end of construction there were six extra columns “left over” and these have been placed alone in front of the building. I’ve done this with screws when I’m rebuilding small clocks etc but I’d feel guilty about ignoring six supporting members in a building housing several restaurants and a museum.

I called in at Repulse Bay on the way back to the city - a nice beach, some verrrry expensive apartments and a Maybach dealership. Today’s theme is just the exhaust note of an Aston Martin DB9, pulling from 2000rpm to the redline in third gear with the throttles tipped wide open and twelve of Gaydon’s largest fuel injectors pouring petrol into the cylinders. Glorious.

<some photos to follow>

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