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Published: October 5th 2009
I find myself sitting on a roof terrace 6 stories up from the street. Looking around, I am by no means looking down on Hong Kong. I can count 4 buildings that are the same height or lower than my vantage point, and one of those is an old prison that has been derelict for what must be decades. Hong Kong is a city of sky scrapers. Many of the buildings will only have 4 apartments on each floor, making them very narrow compared to their height. Add to this the monsoon season, I can only imagine that this city, small in width, but mammoth in height, must be an engineer’s nightmare. I’m still staggered that half the buildings are standing and look like they have been for a gravity defying age.
I arrived from London Heathrow on Friday afternoon at around 4pm local time, and was safely installed in Rich’s flat around 2 hours after that. When Rich first told me his address, I thought I was going to the West End in London. 5 Chancery Lane, just off Old Bailey Street, right next to Soho... One forgets that Hong Kong was a British colony until relatively recently, but once on Hong Kong Island, the influence is blatantly apparent. As a result, there is a large Ex-Pat community and my first outing was guided by one of Rich’s mates, Pete, a lawyer originally from Scotland. I met Pete for lunch on Saturday, after which I was taken up to the “Peak.” Located on one of the higher mountains of the island, the views over the Giant’s pin cushion that is Hong Kong City are breathtaking. All of the extremely narrow sky-scrapers randomly arranged (if that’s possible) jut out of the tropical landscape as if they were thrust into the Earth’s fragile crust by a celestially-sized seamstress. We managed to pick out Pete’s apartment from our vantage point, and it wasn’t long after that that we were sitting on Pete’s roof terrace sipping beers and looking back up at the “Peak” from whence we’d come. The buildings around us turned from brick and glass into glorious light, which fuelled by the tinned ale we were consuming, inspired the fantastic idea that we should head off to Macau.
Macau is a larger Las Vegas, stretched out over 3 islands which are joined by sweeping bridges that, when lit up, seem to hover over smooth black water. While Vegas’s pseudonym of “Sin City” is well earned and depicts the nature of the place, Macau, although perhaps grander in scale and the propensity for all things kitsch, ironically has more a feeling of a silent stock exchange than a gambling and entertainment hub. The only shouts of encouragement and celebration (and later moans of angst) on the night of Saturday September 3rd came from a South African and a Scotsman sitting at the toe end of the cheaper roulette option. It seems that gambling in South East Asia is a serious business. I’m not saying that a bad time was had - on the contrary - in Macau, like Vegas, the patrons are free to get up to as much harmless mischief as they can come up with. For Pete and I, this involved a coin, a thumb to flick it with, and a flat surface to determine whether the call was successful or not. As we had spent our budget for the evening, our gambling turned into 50/50 bets on who would be the one to do 10 pushups on the bar, kiss the lady at the table “over there” on the cheek, give the barman a noogie, do 10 combat rolls through the high-roller section.. and the like. Fortunately I hit a bit of a lucky streak at this point, and it was poor Pete who was the one escorted back to his bar stool by two to three security personnel after being halted mid-may through various daring deeds. Grinning like naughty school kids, we finally escorted ourselves out of the building and back onto the ferry that would carry us back to Hong Kong. I must admit the writing on my departure card was far more legible than my arrival card - a sure sign that a good night was had.
Another sure sign that a good night was had was my only being woken up when Rich arrived back from Malaysia at around lunch time only to find my spread-eagled corpse motionless on his bed. A quick cold shower turned out to be the remedy and we were soon heading off to the Southern end of Hong Kong Island. The first part of the journey was by Taxi. This took us as far as Stanley, which is on the South side of the island, where we were picked up by a gorgeous young lady in a drop-top 3 serious BMW. Rich got behind the wheel as I was introduced to Hillary, the lovely lady responsible for out new chariot and also Rich’s girlfriend. Cruising along the coastal road, the top down, all sunglasses and wind-swept hair, we might as well have been filming for the re-release of Tropical Heat. The only thing missing was a man-pony tail but I’m working on that... The journey over, we sat down to a well deserved drink at one of the beach bars in Shek O. Sand-strewn with blow-up couches and the bar doubling as a fish tank or the other way around, the little beach-front pub was as far from Hong Kong City sky-scrapers as Plettenburg Bay is from New York City. This big difference is that one need only drive around the island to experience the diversity. Our beach-front drinks sunk, we headed to lunch at a road-side café. The very simple looking place was immediately contrasted by the complexity of the encyclopaedia that was purportedly a “menu.” Even though each item was beautifully illustrated for my “tourist” kind, I closed my copy of War and Peaces of Calamari and put myself and my taste buds in Rich’s hands. I was not disappointed when an array of local cuisine was laid out in front of us. Fortunately the three of us had a table large enough for six. If we hadn’t, there would not have been enough room on the table for the food. When we got back into the car it was resting a little closer to the road than when we had had climbed into it a few hours earlier.
“Hills” was sweet enough to drive us back to Rich’s flat, affording me the opportunity to kick back in the back and take in the re-entry to the city in awe, but in style.
Heading off for Vietnamese soon - a little taster of what’s to come in a few months.
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markHEBDON
non-member comment
Great START
GREAT START