Hong Kong

And so our freight train of discovery blunders on, expanding our consciousness and irritating others. I am currently reading an account of the rise and fall of the British Empire as we seem to be on a tour of former colonies - from India to Hong Kong and later Australia. What better way to season our adventures than to wind up the locals with some well placed historical banter (segue to the scene of a speeding ambulance a fraction of a second later).

In anycase, our arrival in Hong Kong preceeded any attempt to plan what we would do whilst there, though we had booked ourselves a place at the brilliantly named Wang Fat hostel. Oh what a goldmine of mirth it proved to be, a spate of Musical Rooms providing an evening's accomodation in the caretaker's backroom - we found that the TV in fact was tuned to the CCTV loop; can confirm a universal truth that when a person enters a lift, they will spend the whole time checking themselves out in the mirror (particularly if that person is male). The other form of amusement came in eliciting gleeful screeches from the old hags in the corridor while stepping out of the shower.

Rambling drivel aside, Hong Kong was always going to be a polar change to Mumbai in terms of culture, though I think there are a few similarities. The balance between tradition and high technology is much shifted, whereas Mumbai still seems to be developing with a sometimes precarious infrastructure but rapid in growth, Hong Kong is obviously extremely westernised (though there are still reminders of traditional methods - building scaffolding consists of thick bamboo shoots held with cable ties). Getting about is disarmingly easy with an Octopus card - our glowering eight legged fiends of the deep allowing us unlimited use of the mass transit system (shared with Kowloon hipsters with combs in their pockets and children with wheels on their shoes). I have confirmation that it is physically impossible to get lost there - I tried stepping onto the wrong train and a boxing glove on a spring repeatedly punched me in the groin until I got on the right one. Dan spotted a woman scraping chewing gum from the floor with a scalpel (a rubbish job to be doing on a Friday night for anyone, but it explains the sterility of the general environment) - I wonder if there are plans for this in London or Slough ?

We met a guy called Craig in our hostel, who asked if we wanted to go out with some girls that he met. Dan initially seemed indifferent, but after my asking if he was dropped on his head as a baby we made good with our promise to help rid the city of booze. Now my usual experience of drinking is sitting in a pub flushing pints of tea with my mates, gobbing off about subjects I know nothing about and doing robot dances until the landlord shooes us ouｔ with a broom an hour after everyone else. The scenesters of Hong Kong do it differently - drinking games are integral to bar culture, and the staff supply whatever paraphenalia you might need. Some examples of this are are a bizarro version of Bruce Forsythe's Play Your Cards Right, a version of Rock Paper Scissors on LSD which involves pointing and twisting your head around a lot and some other dice games which have such byzantine rules that they require the concentration of a stoned man playing chess. We ended up drinking like rascals, obviously. There was a minor emergency later in the evening involving a miffed taxi driver accusing us of smashing a window and threatening us with some kung fu moves - luckily the police were reasonable about it. We unfortunately had to pay for the damage even though it was not in any way our fault (it smashed when the door opened), it could have happened at any time to anyone.



My sentiments exactly ...