Hong Kong: Termites with iPads

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Hong Kong is everything Dubai was not. For one matter, around every corner are actual people. A lot of people. I mentioned that we spent hours in Dubai looking for any sort of hive of activity, well Hong Kong is one big hive of activity. It takes the sticky exoticism of Bangkok, combines it with the modern efficiency of Singapore, and adds plenty of touches of home to make it the perfect Asian city for a British visitor.

The journey from the Middle East was very comfortable, as I'd expected from one of Emirates' brand new A380's. The seats were wide, legroom plentiful, and food excellent. However the true highlight was the in-flight entertainment system which was akin to having an iPad with a huge library of films in front of you.

Once again, my choice of movie let me down somewhat. I had looked forward to watching Prometheus for sometime, and had deliberately not watched it on the last flight so as to save it for my personal widescreen on this leg of the journey. Alas, in a manner befitting a typical Wolves season, it started promisingly before rapidly deteriorating into one-paced dross. A late fight-back couldn't halt the slide, and by the end it was characterised by empty seats - well mine at least. The temptation to take a stroll and try and sneak into the first class bar upsairs became too much. Alas, I was unsuccessful.

Our hostel in HK was easy to find and very well located in the Wan Chai area of Hong Kong island, just a couple of stops on the excellent metro system (MTR) from HK Central station. What it gained in location it perhaps sacrificed in size, but HK lifestyle is characterised by living in vertical close-quarters, even for the wealthy.

An average night's sleep, in part down to jet leg and in part due to the strange, hard blocks of foam that the hostel called pillows did not slow us down on our first full day in HK. Reasoning that there was no better way to get our bearings than to head upwards, we caught the famous bus route 15 and wound our way up Victoria Peak. Looking down over Hong Kong island and Kowloon across the harbour, the Peak has long provided the most iconic views of HK.

Many of my favourite cities have been characterised by stunning physical locations. Rio and Sydney stand out in this regard. The journey up, and stroll around Victoria Peak showed why HK deserves to be considered in the same bracket. What arguably makes HK more special is the way the topography has been well and truly harnessed. Rio has its favelas clinging to mountainsides; but where Rio has precariously balanced shanty towns, HK has skyscrapers. In places it truly does seem like Manhattan on a mountain, the exception being HK boasts the 4th and 10th tallest buildings in the world - something New York cannot compete with.

I'll spare the hyperbole... No, wait - I won't: to see humans building and inhabiting such tall structures on such steep slopes, you get a contrasting impression of both our unique power of innovation, and at the same time, humanity's multiplication and colonisation of habitats that seems almost micro-organismic in style.

Ultimately, we're just termites with iPads.

Even the stunning view from Victoria Peak was to have its socks truly knocked off that evening. The iconic Star Ferry carried us across the water to Kowloon, upon which, looking back across the harbour to HK island, we were greeted with a lit-up skyline that surely can find no competition on earth. (I reserve the right to change my mind after Shanghai.)

If the neon, strobing adverts and shimmering water weren't enough, every night in HK at 8pm they fire up the bloody lasers. The resulting musical light show involving a whole city skyline is a pure phenomenon. The people responsible for London's abominable Shard laser show earlier this year need to come to HK, see what could have been possible, and then have a serious word with themselves.

Juggling attempts to take the ultimate long exposure photograph, film segments on my iPhone, and sip a rapidly warming can of Tsing Tao beer had taken their toll on me (and suitably embarrassed Sophie), so it was time to eat. Naturally, we headed to the nearest Michelin starred joint.

Amongst its many other charms, HK boasts the world's cheapest Michelin starred restaurant. Until this point, the only restaurants with stars on the door I'd been to were those who had been lucky enough to be awarded a coveted Wolverhampton City Council star for hygiene (I dare say there is less of those than Michelin stars in Wolvo). To be fair, Tim Ho Wan in Kowloon's colourful Mong Kok district did resemble many of Wolverhampton's less reputable culinary establishments. Since being awarded a Michelin star for their dim sum, the management have decided not to up their prices. It would seem that they have also decided not to decorate, or even have a bit of a clean. Still, the food is meant to speak for itself, or in the case of the 'fresh' looking chicken's feet, hadn't long been clucking for itself.

At barely £6 each, Sophie and I had a huge collection of small dishes to share, such is the nature of dim sum. The surroundings may have been basic and the service can only be described as 'robust', yet it genuinely was all very tasty, and I include the aforementioned chicken's feet in that.

I'd feared HK's Ladies Market, again in Mong Kok, would live up to its name and result in the next day's afternoon being not dissimilar to following Sophie down a sweatier version of Oxford Street. I've been down some of Earth's most infamous streets, and still, WC1's finest remains the only place on the planet to trigger physical symptoms of anxiety in me. By the time I reach Primark, I sometimes think leaping from the men's department, to my inevitable death, is preferable to trying to find Sophie amongst this season's essentials.

I digress. The Ladies Market proved anything but the sort, and could equally have been termed the Geek's Market, so I felt perfectly at home. The afternoon was easily spent haggling for iPhone accessories and fake Beats headphones that I suddenly decided I needed. The bargaining was as lively as I've found at any other world market. But in testament to my financial discipline (yep, I'm tight), I ended up buying very little. Just a very retro iPhone case designed like a GameBoy for a justifiable £1.50.

If you continue along the road that houses the Ladies Market, you come to the Goldfish Market, which veritably lives up to its name. The throngs of tourists who populate the former seem to disperse, and Sophie and I found ourselves on a stretch of road most definitely dedicated to the locals.

Never before had I seen petshops with actual 'doggies in the window'. All manner of adorable puppies and kittens in perspex display cabinets with eyes that just begged to be taken home. The mammalian petshops were punctuated by shops selling all manner of tropical, and less exotic fish. The prices were amazingly cheap. Eighty pence here, fifty there, ninety for ten, £1.20 for what seemed to me to be a little shark. All bagged up and on display outside in the way you might imagine a goldfish at a fairground (although I'm not sure they can even do that at home anymore?).

That evening Sophie and I headed to the races. An absolute religion in HK, horse racing is taken very seriously. This is personified by Happy Valley racecourse, bang in the middle of Hong Kong. Like an island in a sea of skyscrapers, Happy Valley has resisted HK's rampant development, despite the immense value of its land. This is evidence of the power of the Hong Kong Jockey Club, and the HK people's utter love of flat racing. The resulting course is surely one of the most uniquely situated racecourses in the world.

Having donned our relative glad-rags (relative being the operative word), and stocked up on beer at 7-11, we made our way into Happy Valley. Our £1 general admission allowed us access to the finish line and the parade ring, as well as the right to take as much booze in as we could carry. If only racing were like this everywhere.

In the end a fantastic evening was had by both of us, despite our ability to pick a winner being akin to Mick McCarthy's ability to pick a mercurial foreign talent. We ended the night with cocktails in the lively Lan Kwai Fong area of central HK before being turfed out onto the island's sloped backstreets as the shutters were coming down.

It was thus of no surprise that the clocks read PM before we left the hostel the next day, on a mission to find HK's wild side.

It's easy to think of HK as an urban jungle, a city-state of high-rises and bright lights. And make no mistake; if you want it to be, it can be the definition of that. But HK also possesses a number of much less developed islands, the biggest of which, Lantau, is an easy 40 minute MTR journey away from central.

What you find when you get there is a lush, forested island, with peaks that dwarf that of Victoria Peak. Oh and Disneyland. And HK International Airport - both built on land reclaimed from the sea off Lantau.

There is also a newly built cable-car, which whisks tourists up into the mountains to come face-to-face with the world's largest sitting, bronze Buddha statue. Sophie and I were barely able to contain our anticipation on the 25 minute, dizzyingly high ride up. Things became especially exciting when I also realised we were being afforded a birds eye view of planes taking off from HK's reclaimed airport.

Alas I jest - about the Buddha. Probably less so about the airport.

Upon reaching the mountain area containing the world's largest sitting, bronze Buddha, we were greeted by perhaps the definition of a Chinese tourist trap. Instead of letting the world's largest sitting, bronze Buddha stand (or sit rather) for itself, we were greeted by what only can described as a mini-Disneyland on acid. Apparently the world's largest sitting, bronze Buddha statue and its own dedicated temple was not enough. What we needed was a troupe of characters which looked more suited to Disney insect classic A Bug's Life doing joyful, hallucinogenic dance routines to canned music.

I have absolutely nothing against Buddhism, it's a refreshingly peaceful, zen-like religion that preaches more a holistic way of life than any sensationalist dogma. But I will say this; in my experience they sure now how to monetize a Buddha. Let's just say the world's largest sitting, bronze Buddha was certainly no exception.

As for the Buddha statue itself, well it was fairly large, sitting and bronze. Did I mention it was the world's biggest...?

Following a sound piece of advice by one of the workers at our hostel, Sophie and I made our escape not back down the cable-car with the masses, but by catching a local bus to fishing village Tai O. The village proved the perfect antidote to the touristic Buddha.

While certainly not immune to the influences of tourism, the village, made of stilted buildings over a coastal inlet, maintained a sleepy feel. Its inhabitants went about their day, nearly entirely focused on the catching or selling of fish, at a pace that betrayed their closeness to the bustle of one of the World's most prominent financial centres.

We found a stilted cafe, and watched the fishing boats race the sunset on their way back home. In that moment, enjoying good coffee and noodles, I'm sure I found an inner peace that not even the world's largest sitting, bronze Buddha could match.

Do you want to know the best thing about HK though? Less than two hours later we were sitting in the world's highest bar, on the very top floor of the 4th tallest building on the planet. Ozone - belonging to the Ritz Carlton Hotel, is at a height much higher than the Burj Khalifa's viewing platform. As you may expect, it was absolute decadence, and had a price tag to match the view. So, after our respective feminine cocktails, we found a deserted Japanese place for some reasonably priced Asahi's, and then onto our home part of town - Wan Chai, home to a slightly seedy, but ever-so-fun strip of bars.

That final full day probably best epitomises what I loved about HK. It really can cater to all tastes. It is man-made achievement backdropped by physical beauty. It is subsistence living rubbing shoulders with the riches of a worldwide financial centre. It has a fluid relationship between indoors and outdoors: pavements lead to alleyways, which lead to travelators, which lead to subways, which lead to bridges, which lead through malls. All in the name of criss-crossing an urban jungle that can be escaped in minutes if you should so wish. It is undoubtedly Chinese, but, as I write this from mainland China, it is also so undoubtedly not Chinese. It has bloomin' Dennis buses! And lastly, and probably most significantly, if you live on Hong Kong Island, your commute to work is likely to be by a big long outside escalator. I am literally sold.

I'm fortunate enough to likely have the opportunity to do a secondment abroad in the not too distant future. You couldn't pay me enough, even tax free, to work in Dubai. HK though? Where do I sign up?

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Photos

My View
Parts of this HK blog were written aboard this rather comfortable China Southern A330-300 on the way to Beijing. Nice 2-4-2 seat configuration you know!

Room View
The dorm room was cosy, but the guy who had this bed had a great view.

Comments

[jenny]

nice blog
enjoy to ready your blog entry about hong kong, nice one