First stop: Hong Kong
One can never be surprised by the places one sees. Is that not why we travel? Now, the original Santa Claus, known in the group as “Father Christmas”, had to do all of the deliveries himself, yet as I’ve already explained, the Clauses are an institution. We each have our areas of expertise and distribution. However if you think that seeing the world from 10,000 feet while flying through the air on a sled pulled by magical reindeers means you can claim you’ve been somewhere, well you couldn’t be more mistaken. You don’t really know what it’s like until you’ve put feet to ground. In fact you can’t really say anything until you’ve lived there but that’s going a bit far…..i only just left the Clauses.
First stop in my grand escaped was Hong Kong. I’ll be the first to admit that a sleigh is not the most comfortable of available modes of transport. It got leather seats, it’s damn cold and there’s no windscreen. Travelling via cattle class is not necessarily that much better ….unless of course you have the entire centre aisle to yourself! Not quite a skybed but good none the less.
Having left the Claus, I had lost my red suit, white beard and thermal insulation. (it’s really cold up at 10,000 ft sitting on a sled…….p.s. in view of that don’t you think Santa would appreciate a thermos of hot coffee rather than a cold glass of milk and some cookies?!?) I needn’t have worried about the insulation because I reckon I would have sweat it off in the first 10 minutes of arrival ! I took the shuttle bus to my hotel which was located in Morrison Hill area of Hong Kong Island.
For those of you who have never been to HK, it’s basically made up of a series of islands connected to the mainland by a series of bridges and tunnels. The main international commerce occurs on HK island. While, on the mainland, there is a lot of general commerce and very cheap shopping.
The hotel executive suite (i.e. bedroom and separate living room) on the 25th floor was swish, with all of the trimmings – minibar, slippers, bathrobes, two televisions. Being an executive suite meant that you checked in on the 26th floor in the separate executive area, which also doubled as a cocktail lounge in the evening (all executive guests were afforded a free evening cocktail each night!!). For the brief periods of time when the cloud cover was high enough, the view was awesome. (will get to the weather a little later).
The first afternoon was about getting feet to pavement and working out exactly where the hell I was and what else was around. Given that it used to be an English colony, it was surprisingly easy to get around. not because there was a carefully laid out grid pattern of roads (quite the opposite in fact) but because everything had English and Cantonese street signs. Everywhere in HK were tall apartment buildings and office buildings. The architecture of some of the modern buildings was awesome, and part of what made them stand out was the fact that you had new, mirrored skyscrapers nestled between two decrepit buildings that looked they were going to fall apart. There of fact, related to the endless sea of tall apartment buildings, was the fact that there were so many bloody people there!
The next day was heralded with the arrival of my newspapers (included), which I took with me to read whilst eating my continental breakfast (also included). Next stop was to look for camera gear. As part of my new found freedom is the desire to continue photographing as much as possible. There is no end to the amount of equipment one can buy and it was very hard to resist the urge to buy a professional L-series Canon lens for HK$13,500 which equals about AU$2,288. An easy decision some might say, except that to buy the same lens in Australia retails for AU$3,999!! Thankfully reinforced with some good advise from Dr. Love (some sage advise from the Lovemeister that held equally true for later that evening) I resisted the urge to go back and buy the lens, instead opting for a couple of stubbies of Duvel beer whilst enjoying the people watching.
In order to have a chance of taking photos, one needs the minimum of:
1. a camera ~ so that part is fairly self explanatory
2. a clean lens/filter
3. scenery or some other motif which is interesting to photograph
4. a dry place to shoot your photos from which allows the best view of option three.
Reasons why I did not take many photos in HK:
1. not because I didn’t have a camera
2. impossible to take photos through a lens and filter that, due to the 99.99756% humidity, instant fog up to the point that a clearer shot would be better taken through a sheet of white A4 paper
3. beautiful panoramic scenery from atop the surroundings is not possible when said mountains are invisible from the ground due to the low lying cloud which, also meant that the view from the 25th floor executive suite sketchy at best.
4. impossible to find a place that allowed “enjoyment” of option three because of the torrential tropical rain storm that continued to get worse and worse, heavier and heavier and progressively more horizontal (itself a feat since one would expect the multitude of high storey buildings would prohibit this!!)
That evening I took it upon myself to savour a bit of the nightlife, after a restful afternoon nanna nap. The closest area to the hotel was Wan Chai district which is your seedy business man’s area, full of “happy endings” massage parlours, sex shows proudly flaunting their not so legal girls out the front and some, thankfully, normal bars. I found myself in a bar called “Banana Joes” which looked to be a respectable establishment, in hindsight the first sign that things were awry. As I looked around the bar, scattered through the groups of Western couples, I saw some “ella-biachi”s (comes from the root LBH loser back home) with very attractive Eastern girls. Whilst being groped by said “ella-biachis” these girls were busy co-ordinating their “friends/colleagues” towards any available men in the area. Meanwhile all of this activity (both male and female) is being regularly checked by a couple of Triad looking blokes making little gestures of “you okay?” to the varied girls who replied with curt nods that went unnoticed by their Western counterparts.
After a couple of pints and many “well thankyou, yes just enjoying my solitude”’s, left to go home thinking how the wise words of Dr. Love were true for the evening as well….”All that glitters is not gold and there is always things to spend your money on later!!”
Definitely not in the North Pole any more Rudolf!!
First stop in my grand escaped was Hong Kong. I’ll be the first to admit that a sleigh is not the most comfortable of available modes of transport. It got leather seats, it’s damn cold and there’s no windscreen. Travelling via cattle class is not necessarily that much better ….unless of course you have the entire centre aisle to yourself! Not quite a skybed but good none the less.
Having left the Claus, I had lost my red suit, white beard and thermal insulation. (it’s really cold up at 10,000 ft sitting on a sled…….p.s. in view of that don’t you think Santa would appreciate a thermos of hot coffee rather than a cold glass of milk and some cookies?!?) I needn’t have worried about the insulation because I reckon I would have sweat it off in the first 10 minutes of arrival ! I took the shuttle bus to my hotel which was located in Morrison Hill area of Hong Kong Island.
For those of you who have never been to HK, it’s basically made up of a series of islands connected to the mainland by a series of bridges and tunnels. The main international commerce occurs on HK island. While, on the mainland, there is a lot of general commerce and very cheap shopping.
The hotel executive suite (i.e. bedroom and separate living room) on the 25th floor was swish, with all of the trimmings – minibar, slippers, bathrobes, two televisions. Being an executive suite meant that you checked in on the 26th floor in the separate executive area, which also doubled as a cocktail lounge in the evening (all executive guests were afforded a free evening cocktail each night!!). For the brief periods of time when the cloud cover was high enough, the view was awesome. (will get to the weather a little later).
The first afternoon was about getting feet to pavement and working out exactly where the hell I was and what else was around. Given that it used to be an English colony, it was surprisingly easy to get around. not because there was a carefully laid out grid pattern of roads (quite the opposite in fact) but because everything had English and Cantonese street signs. Everywhere in HK were tall apartment buildings and office buildings. The architecture of some of the modern buildings was awesome, and part of what made them stand out was the fact that you had new, mirrored skyscrapers nestled between two decrepit buildings that looked they were going to fall apart. There of fact, related to the endless sea of tall apartment buildings, was the fact that there were so many bloody people there!
The next day was heralded with the arrival of my newspapers (included), which I took with me to read whilst eating my continental breakfast (also included). Next stop was to look for camera gear. As part of my new found freedom is the desire to continue photographing as much as possible. There is no end to the amount of equipment one can buy and it was very hard to resist the urge to buy a professional L-series Canon lens for HK$13,500 which equals about AU$2,288. An easy decision some might say, except that to buy the same lens in Australia retails for AU$3,999!! Thankfully reinforced with some good advise from Dr. Love (some sage advise from the Lovemeister that held equally true for later that evening) I resisted the urge to go back and buy the lens, instead opting for a couple of stubbies of Duvel beer whilst enjoying the people watching.
In order to have a chance of taking photos, one needs the minimum of:
1. a camera ~ so that part is fairly self explanatory
2. a clean lens/filter
3. scenery or some other motif which is interesting to photograph
4. a dry place to shoot your photos from which allows the best view of option three.
Reasons why I did not take many photos in HK:
1. not because I didn’t have a camera
2. impossible to take photos through a lens and filter that, due to the 99.99756% humidity, instant fog up to the point that a clearer shot would be better taken through a sheet of white A4 paper
3. beautiful panoramic scenery from atop the surroundings is not possible when said mountains are invisible from the ground due to the low lying cloud which, also meant that the view from the 25th floor executive suite sketchy at best.
4. impossible to find a place that allowed “enjoyment” of option three because of the torrential tropical rain storm that continued to get worse and worse, heavier and heavier and progressively more horizontal (itself a feat since one would expect the multitude of high storey buildings would prohibit this!!)
That evening I took it upon myself to savour a bit of the nightlife, after a restful afternoon nanna nap. The closest area to the hotel was Wan Chai district which is your seedy business man’s area, full of “happy endings” massage parlours, sex shows proudly flaunting their not so legal girls out the front and some, thankfully, normal bars. I found myself in a bar called “Banana Joes” which looked to be a respectable establishment, in hindsight the first sign that things were awry. As I looked around the bar, scattered through the groups of Western couples, I saw some “ella-biachi”s (comes from the root LBH loser back home) with very attractive Eastern girls. Whilst being groped by said “ella-biachis” these girls were busy co-ordinating their “friends/colleagues” towards any available men in the area. Meanwhile all of this activity (both male and female) is being regularly checked by a couple of Triad looking blokes making little gestures of “you okay?” to the varied girls who replied with curt nods that went unnoticed by their Western counterparts.
After a couple of pints and many “well thankyou, yes just enjoying my solitude”’s, left to go home thinking how the wise words of Dr. Love were true for the evening as well….”All that glitters is not gold and there is always things to spend your money on later!!”
Definitely not in the North Pole any more Rudolf!!
posted by santas walkabout at 10:34 pm
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