But To Venture

After arriving in Hong Kong, I quickly realised that I must be one of the tallest people in the world: not one of the locals could beat me, not even with headgear. There seemed to be a low ethnic mix. I counted very few white people, virtually no none oriental Asians and the only Africans were the looky-looky men in Kowloon. When I did see a western face I felt compelled to give a little nod and smile, a sad attempt to latch onto anything that might give me a feeling of familiarity. However, I was happy to note that many of the women of Hong Kong could make a claim to count themselves among the best looking in the world.
Amid the swarms of people, I happened upon an upsetting scene where a street beggar lay morbidly in the middle of the street. His selling point was to put on display his left leg that seemed to be covered in a combination of gangrene and leprosy topped off with a gaping wound. He was the only beggar that I encountered – I considered that maybe I was wrong and he was actually some sort of street performer, though I doubted he would have stood up to do a little dance had I given him some money.
I was taking my first ventures around the city, delirious from the jetlag and the excitement of being in a strange place. I’d dumped my bags at the guesthouse where I was staying in Mong-Kok and headed straight out into the crowds, walking toward the waterfront to the south.
The busy streets with huge signs in Cantonese running along them endlessly were familiar from pictures and television images of Hong Kong but it was still disorientating being there. Scaffolding made from bamboo climbed the sides of buildings and the smells of cooking were unavoidable and not always pleasant.
It amazed me to see the local people’s reluctance to cross any road without the green man flashing even when the road was so obviously clear. Patience must be built into the psyche when living in one of the most densely populated places on Earth. I quickly ran into a bit of a language barrier, a problem I hadn’t fully anticipated with Hong Kong being a former British colony. I caught the eye of a cute young looking girl who smiled at me. Being male and heterosexual, I smiled back. This seemed to be enough to invite her to walk in a direction that crossed my path. We were in Kowloon near to the infamous Chungking Mansions and I was well aware of the place’s reputation. The large building resembles any other downtrodden high rise from the outside and the surrounding area is safe enough with just the irritation of those looky-looky men trying to sell tourists fake watches. But to venture inside Chungking Mansions would be to run the gauntlet of drug dealers and prostitutes that lurk in the shadows, eager to accost those unfortunates staying in one of the buildings budget guesthouses.
"Pasha!" the girl said as she drew up closer to me. I guessed she was saying either ‘passion’ – though she looked too cute to be a prostitute - or ‘hash’ - though she looked too cute to be a drug dealer. She must have seen my western face coming over the tops of the heads of the crowd and thought it was worth a try venturing out onto the street to intercept me. "Er what?" I replied, slowing my stride. "Pasha!" she repeated, a little more loudly. "Sorry, I don't understand you," I said. She tried once more, even more loudly. “PASHA!!” I couldn’t offer her an oral response, instead giving her a lost, baffled look. She quickly came to the conclusion that she was wasting her time and walked off with a huff.
I continued my march, crossing the main road that separated Kowloon from the main tourist centre. It hosts a science and space museum, the Avenue of Stars - the Hong Kong equivalent to the Los Angeles Walk of Fame - and the view over to Hong Kong Island with what must be one of the world’s most recognisable and pleasing skylines. The late evening air was clear, leaving me to gawk at the lights of the huge distant buildings in awe. After several minutes I began to head back, I hadn’t really slept on the flight and it was a long walk back to the guesthouse. Maybe I’d find out the meaning of ‘Pasha’ on the way.
I was staying in the Budget Hostel on the 15th floor in one of the many nondescript towering buildings that have entrances that were very hard to find. I’d made the selection simply for the fact it was run by one Jackie Chan. It had been disappointing to be greeted by a very young, slight man who I reckoned even I could have beaten up in a fight. But the main thing was that I had managed to find somewhere cheap that wasn’t in Chungking Mansions. I even had my own room, Jackie upgrading me to a double, from the single I’d booked over the internet as he juggled with the fluctuating demand. Though, how more then one person could manage to live in the cramped room without tearing each other’s eyes out was beyond me. The proverbial cat would have had to stay outside; there wouldn’t even be the consideration of an attempt at a swinging inside the room. An adjoining bathroom consisted of a toilet cubicle with a showerhead attachment that ran into the plumbing along lines that were worryingly close to those of the toilet. When a shower was to be had, the little room would simply be flooded. There really would be nowhere for that cat to hide. There were no windows in the whole of the place and so lights were needed during all hours of the day.
I went to bed, exhaustion over-riding my excitement, sleeping for what felt like for far too long as I was eager not to waste the new day. I jumped out of bed and switched on the light in a state of wakefulness, my stomach more then ready for breakfast. I checked my travel clock. 03:23, it read. Could I have really slept that late into the afternoon? I knew I had set the clock to local time and so I began getting myself together for what was left of the day, cursing my laziness. But something in my subconscious nagged at me, I looked at the travel clock once more. It was set to display in 24hour mode, it was actually the early hours and I’d been asleep for just four hours. I settled back into a broken, fitful sleep.
After breakfasting on some delights from a bakery I found around the corner from the guesthouse in the morning, I decided to visit the tourist information centre to help with my orientation. I was met by a stern looking fellow as I arrived at the first floor of the building where it was situated.
"Ping-pong ga ga ladida la," he said (or something similar). "Erm...sorry, do you speak English?" I asked. He repeated himself, a little louder. "Oh right," I said, pretending to understand. I figured out that you collect a ticket and wait to be called like when buying something from Argos. "Do-do, nick nack paddy wak" (or something like that) said the woman when it was my turn. "Sorry, do you speak English?" I asked. She repeated herself a little louder. I looked at her blankly. Was she taking the piss? She passed me on to one of her colleagues who spoke some English, though didn't seem to be particularly interested in the finer details of the sentences I was saying to him.
I’d scheduled three weeks in Hong Kong with a vague plan of going into China during this time. “I want to go to the mainland. I know I need a visa, but do you know of any organised excursions or tours that will take me there?” I asked.
“You want visa? Fill in this form.”
“No wait, I want to know if you can help organise a trip into China.”
“You need to fill in form for visa.”
“Yes, I know I need a visa. But listen, before I apply, I want to know about trips into China.”
He hesitated a moment. “You want visa or not?” I didn't seem to be getting anywhere and so took my leave.
Later, I took the MTR, the city’s underground train system, for the first time. I was pleasantly surprised with the ease of use, the trains, running frequently and fast had announcements of stops in both Chinese and English. I headed over to Hong Kong Island with the idea of taking the tram up to Victoria Peak, the highest point on the island.
It didn't take long but I encountered the first rude place name on what was only my first full day in Hong Kong. ‘Wanko’ stood proudly near to where I exited the subway amongst the other retail outlets. Maybe the name is an indication of the type of people who buy their clothes from there.
There was a mile or so to walk to get to the tram station, away from the shopping area across some greener spaces. As I made my way further from the financial centre the terrain gradually became steeper as I ventured closer to the peak. Set into the walls along some of the pathways were signs telling me the registration numbers of the slopes. I wasn’t sure what was the most odd; the need to register a slope or the apparent pride of the signs. Though I didn’t manage to work out how much of an incline was needed for the need for registration or whether the requirement was just limited to pathways.
As I walked I came across signs for the Hong Kong botanical gardens and zoo and decided to take a quick look. The day was still young and more importantly, it was free to walk around the grounds. It was a charming area, the gardens providing a welcome respite from the crowds and traffic. I hadn’t been to a zoo in years, the attraction for me missing since childhood. But it was a fun couple of hours, one of the highlights being a small rodent like animal covered in spikes. On the information plaque, a forgettable Latin name identified the creature, but it looked like a hedgehog to me. ‘This small creature comes out at night and eats worms and ants giving it it's nickname of 'little ant-eater', ‘ read the description. Or a hedgehog. There was a reptile house, though reptile bedsit would have been a far more appropriate name. It contained one python and a small feature containing a group of half a dozen or so terrapins. And, well… that was it. I made sure I got around to see the leopard, where a solitary animal lay sleepily on the ground in it’s cage, a Japanese man waving his arms and calling out in an attempt to get some movement from it.
As I left the gardens and zoo, I remembered the promises I'd made to take pictures of Bendyman, a small, blue office stress reliever doll with bendable limbs and a stupid grin on its face. As I was manoeuvring him into position on the gate at the perimeter of the gardens, out popped a security guard from the nearby guardhouse. "I'm just taking a picture of my Bendyman," I tried to explain. He looked at me disapprovingly. I guess something was lost in the translation. I finally made it to the tram station, the journey up to Victoria Peak on what was reported to be the steepest railway line in the world. The views at the top were terrific, overlooking the skyline and harbour from the opposite direction from what I had seen on the previous evening. The area was heavily crowded with tourists and the tacky attractions took away from the area for me. The smog meant that the visibility was limited. I decided to get away from the chaos and head all the way to the actual summit, up roads that passed exclusive looking housing to a pathway to the top, slope registration number 11SW-A/C694 for the record.
When I got there, all I was rewarded with after a hard walk, was a small empty field and a reservoir. I went back to the tourist hell to look out over the city as the sun set.
The next day I went to the Sik Sik Yuen Wong Tai Sin Temple, a Taoist temple dedicated to a god of healing. It felt a little strange being there as if I was intruding - the locals seemed to be taking it all very seriously. They would grab a handful of bamboo sticks and, sometimes after lighting them, sometimes not, shake them toward one of the alters. Each stick had a number and when one drops it was to be taken to a fortune-teller for interpretation. Others were using the fire sticks to heat up clam shaped blocks of wood that they would then drop to the ground. A yes or no question is asked by the dropper with the answer revealed depending on how the blocks land.
It was fascinating to see the delight or distress in the faces of those doing it. It seemed a shame to me that there were Japanese tourists in the background taking pictures of each other. One particular Japanese girl loved it when one Taoist girl dropped all her sticks by mistake. She dashed over with her camera for a few shots. Then she saw me and pointed her camera in my direction and snapped away. I guess she was near the end of her film and wanted to use it up. Within the temple grounds were small booths of fortune-tellers. I thought I'd give one a go. It was not like I thought it would be. No dark lair and ‘cross my palm with silver’ as I sat at something that resembled a stall in a trade craft fair. Sat across from me, the fortune-teller was fairly young, no more than early forties, and dressed appropriately enough so that she could easily walk out of the temple and merge into the crowd, no gypsy glad-rags there. Her English wasn't the best and I found upon checking later that my year of birth got lost in translation - she said my birth year made me a monkey but after a google search I found I should have been a horse. She must misheard ’78 for ’68. Surely I didn’t look that old? It's just as well that she got most of her stuff from reading the face and palms.
She started off positively. She said in the next year or two my life would have a big change for the better. I would meet ‘a good girlfriend,’ with the chances of me having met anyone in the last two years virtually zero. Maybe she could tell that by the way I walked. She went on to say we would get married and have a couple of children, though we should do this before I get to the age of 42, otherwise they will be born in the wrong year for us to have a good relationship. The second child would be exceptionally bright, maybe even a genius.
I would also have great career success in the next couple of years, and would make a lot of money and should be encouraged to start my own business in something like carpentry. She obviously hadn’t seen the hideous mess that was my GCSE art and design project.
But then things went a little sour, she warned that when I am 49 or 50, ‘bad people’ will come and threaten my wealth. After this period when I am 51-57 my business life will grow day by day, but I need to be careful at 58 with my health and should start to exercise more. At 73 I will start to have liver problems but should still have a long life, at least up to 78, maybe even up to 88 if I looked after my liver. I guess I should have pointed out that I was jet-lagged and not hungover at that point.
I asked her about travelling. She drew a x and y axis with the UK in the centre and labelled the axis north, south, east and west. She went around the graph ticking each quadrant until she came to the one that represented the south. Here she placed a cross.
“The south is no good for you, especially Australia and New Zealand.” Shit.
“What about if I only visit, is that OK?” I asked hopefully.
"You can travel there. But you mustn't stay. It’s a bad place to do business for you. Hong Kong: good, Europe: good, America: good, Australia: no!" She also commented that I had a great dragon finger as she fondled my middle digit and also complemented me on my strong jaw line which all meant good things. Maybe she had accepted that I wasn’t bad looking for such an old man and she had decided that she fancied me.
Drawing the reading to a close, she tried to sell me a dragon pendant for luck. Now I'm as cynical as the next man, but throughout my visit, I truly got the impression that the people at the temple believed in what they were doing. There was no commercialisation at all and no hard sell. I'm not saying I believed all the stuff the fortune-teller told me and all the goings on at the temple, but it would be nice to be financially successful, have a genius child, find true love and live a long life. I bought the pendant.

The Hong Kong authorities can be rather strict. All around were signs such as ‘No Eating or drinking - $2000 fine’, or ‘No Spitting - $1000 fine.’ I did wonder what would happen should you eat something you didn't like and spat it out. Would that mean a fine of $3000? My favourite though was on a bridge crossing Argyle street in Mong-Kok near the market - and I'm not making this up – ‘No Farting’. It is joined by the picture of an arse with wind blowing out of it in one of those red circles and cross similar to a no smoking sign. But why was farting not allowed? Was the bridge that unstable? Was it how SARS is spread?
On the way back to the Budget Hostel, I saw the gangrene/leper man. He actually was a street performer, lying on the pavement applying his very realistic looking make-up to his leg. I still didn't understand his act.
Getting back to my room, I attacked the treats that I’d picked up. I snacked on a box of something called colon, bought entirely for the amusing name. There was a chocolate variety but I went for the cream. What I assumed was the nutritional information revealed that there was 57% of something in them and I wasn’t sure if I should have attempted to cook them first. I did have a packet of something called ‘Potato Chips’ to fall back on though.I wasn’t feeling tired, still living off of the hyperactive high that the jet-lag had given me that I was sure I’d be paying for later on. I continued to wake up in the middle of the night with the hunger that had deserted me during the day, but I had no motivation to be able to get up and do anything about it. Those first couple of nights consisted of lying in a fit-full state of slumber dreaming of fresh bakery goods.