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Hong Kong,
China
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
So that's why they call it Rainy season.
Good day chaps and chapesses. I hope are all well. I am finding life in the Euros pretty hard already with the first match not kicking off until midnight. I felt a little crazy when I stayed up until half 4 to see the conclusion of the Germans first victory at the Euros since 1996. Which was a shame. Due to the lack of English representation I will be hating the Germans for this tournament and as ever I'll be supporting the Netherlands as we all know, "If you ain't Dutch, you ain't much!" My tip for this years winners is Spain. They're too good to keep on failing. The commentary is fucking awful though, it's on the Hong Kong channel pearl and it just seems they don't have even the slightest idea about football. I'm going to send them an email pretty soon and offer my superior services.
Anyway football matters aside. Things are pretty fun. I just want to quickly throw in a few Happy Birthdays. It's Nicola Slater's birthday tomorrow on the 17th both my of my uncles will celebrate a birthday, each. Then on the 22nd one of the first Americans to show me that they weren't all bad, Tracy, will also be celebrating.
I've just got back from Hong Kong. I had to go there to extend my visa. Just before I left however my school had a group of people come in to sell their book, it's called "Crazy English" and apparently has helped 100 million Chinese people already. How exactly I'm not sure, I didn't really understand what they were talking about but it seemed funny to the kids. Funny until I realised why I had been asked to come along and watch. I was called to the front of the stage and asked to speak Chinese to everyone. Now I know I've been here 3 months but my Chinese is still poor. It's really fucking difficult and as I work on the 2 days that I have Chinese lessons then I am teaching myself and practising alone. So I really only have the basics. Yes/No, Hello/Goodbye, Please/Thank You. I'm your Father and I'm a gangster. So when I was asked to say something in Chinese to 600 students I obviously chose to go with the final option there. Queue students fall about themselves laughing at not only the sentence I have chosen but also my dreadful pronunciation. From now on every single class I go to I get demands from my students to speak Chinese with them. Thanks very much "Crazy English" you filthy bunch of shit wads.
So Hong Kong. I was hoping that leaving the main land I might be able to escape the 6-10 thunderstorms everyday. I couldn't which was a shame but that's life I guess, rainy season just can't be avoided. I can however be turned into a fun an interesting game in a very busy place like HK. Due to being alone for a large portion of my travel I have had to come up with a number of games to amuse myself and I have to say Hong Kong seems to be a hot pot for my creativity in games to amuse ones self. The first of the games was drawn more out of necessity than anything else. As I have said it was raining a lot. I normally have my waterproofs so I have not purchased myself an
umbrella. I needed to keep dry so I decided to walk just behind someone who has a fairly large umbrella and used it for as long as I could without being noticed. I soon found this element needed to be developed. I'm a big white guy, yes these are less rare in Hong Kong than the mainland but I am a fairly obvious character. So my game which I call umbrella surfing had a little tweak in the rules. I then decided it was best to just see how long you could share someone's umbrella by whatever means necessary. I found the Chinese were much kinder and generally shared their shelter without too many questions. There were times when someone would become a little disgruntled and upped their pace to escape me, depending on my mood, I'd up mine or I'd just seek out another victim (wave) close to hand. I think my favourite wave was an older Western gent in a suit on his way to work one morning. I decided to share his umbrella, he got a bit annoyed and upped his pace, he tutted, grunted and even stopped for a second. I joined him as it was really raining quite hard. When he realised he could escape me he actually took down his umbrella and continued to walk. I decided that this had to be the ultimate goal of Umbrella Surfing, to achieve a whip out.
The other games I invented were just tools to make myself look a little more unique than any of the other thousands of westerners in HK. I have become used to being the centre of attentions so when I'm not I go all out. Like dancing on the metro, or singing as I walk down the street. Just 2 things I have found I enjoy doing an awful since my brief sojourn to the peninsula.
When I arrived I obviously needed to find a place to stay so I went to Mirador Mansions. It's a big building with apartments, shops, hostels, rooms and a few sweat shops in it. I found Garden Hostel, which had been recommended by my Jew Zealander colleague. My room was small grotty and smelly. There was one other person there, just getting up. There was also clearly at least one more staying in the room.
I got to talking to the recently awoken "traveller", it was almost 18:00.
he was an older gentleman. Without much probing I found his name was Roger. He was, how can I put this, umm Old Skool. Really Old Skool. His views were forthright. Once he found out I was from England he went off on one explaining why I had made the right decision to get out. Not only are there too many foreigners, an opinion I had grown very much accustomed to, but I was also clever to get away from the women there, who are of course all fat and only want to marry you so they can divorce you for your money. I had made the right choice to come her the Asian women were much easier to control apparently. He then went on to tell me how he had entertained a 24 year old Indonesian girl the night before. I enquired as to how long he'd been at the hostel. Upon hearing his response I almost burst out laughing. He'd been in that room for 4 years. A 60 year old man living in a hostel room. It's really sad. He also stays out until 08:00 everyday then comes back and turns the Air Con up to 29 degrees. Something that irritated me somewhat in my 2 nights there. As I was leaving he enquired as to my name and then said. "Don't forget, Roger, Roger the Dodger" Yeah I thought, Roger the Coffin Dodger, wanker. His opinions are shared by many older gentlemen in Hong Kong. Something I got into a small debate with someone whilst watching Wales get turned over by the mighty Dutch.
Now something that really makes a city for me is it's metro system. This is something that for me Hong Kong wins hands down. From the little things like the octopus card which enables you to travel on any public transport you like, to the English signage it's just amazing. It's clean, it's fast, it's very efficient. It covers the whole of the peninsula. Various parts of other cities metro systems all seem to have been brought into one super metro system. The stops light up as you travel along, the doors light up telling you which side to get out. I think however my favourite little difference HK has over any other metro system isn't the free internet in every station but the escalators. They remain flat for about 5 steps before the incline and decline giving you plenty of time to adjust yourself and get in position. People have also adopted the London idea of standing to the right. No other city seems to realise how important this really is. In amongst all this efficiency there are signs everywhere telling you to relax and not to rush. It's perfect. A highlight to a great city.
I had a day to kill after putting my visa in for updating so I took a walk around taking pictures of the awesome buildings, Metro systems and Tall Buildings now need to be added to my growing list of obsessions, like sports stadia.
I also decided that as I was in Hong Kong I should buy myself some shoes while I could, shoes in China are far too small, so I went to the delightfully named district of Mong Kok, which ironically is also apparently one of many Red Light Districts. I tried on many pairs of shoes before settling on a pair of Brown Pumas. I liked them. When the shop assistant asked if they fitted ok I told him to wait a second, turned on my music and busted a little dance to some Jurassic 5. I got a few strange looks but they clearly fitted perfectly and only cost about £20 which is pretty good for Honkers.
I decided to take the long walk back to Tsim Tsa Tshui (where I was staying) as I wanted to go to the temple street (tat) market. It was quite good. Lots of shit and junk to look at, then I saw something that made me laugh inside. A Ché style T-shirt with Chairman Mao Zedong. Much like the one in Peep Show series 4 Episode 1. This ironic veneration of such a tyrant just forced me to go and ask the man selling the T-shirts if he had the same T-shirt in Hitler or maybe Starlin, he didn't get it. So I left before asking to see his Pol Pot underpants.
I went home to bed, stayed up chatting to a delightful Canadian giant I had met called Ed and drifted off at about 3, only to be awoken at 7 by a very drunk very loud Dodger bemoaning the temperature of the room, soon enough her went to bed, I got up and left to get my visa. Just before I left though I decided Senor Coffin could have a little treat, I turned the AC down to 17 degrees, moved the remote across the room, just out of his reach and removed the batteries. I am such an arsehole, I love me.
I went home, it took hours the rain was very heavy the bus driver was very insane.
The next weekend was the Dragon Boat festival which basically meant going for a staff meal with The Jew Zealand whisper and the Mormons. I then went out in the city and got fucking smashed for the first time in a long time. It was fun, until the next morning when at 07:00. Here is my recipe for public embarrassment.
Take one hungover boy, add to that 1 large beverage and a KFC egg roll. Place the container carefully inside a bus right over the wheel. Rest for 10 minutes. After the roll seems to have settled start the bus and ensure you have the most insane driver possible. Put said driver and said bus onto a number of extremely badly constructed Chinese roads and truly shake, mix and unsettle the container until such a point that it has to empty all of the mornings contents and the evening previous into his drinks vessel. Allow container to drift off to sleep. Ensure the container has completely forgotten about the incidents that had taken place half an hour earlier and as he exits the bus make sure he drops the entire contents of his cup, previously his stomach, onto himself fellow passengers and the floor. Don't apologise just leave.
Big Love
Hxx
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