We reside in Hong Kong for a week, living with my cousin Dave and his girlfriend Jenny in their tiny flat, up a steep hill on Lamma Island. The island itself is lovely. Hidden away from the hustle of Hong Kong, it retains a certain colonial charm: vaguely Greek, perhaps, when the sun is setting behind Lantau Island and the small fishing boats rock gently on the placid water of the cove.
Lamma is known for its large population of expats, almost all of whom commute across to Hong Kong Island every day to work. This means that European faces outnumber Chinese ones by a large proportion, a fact that seems to suit everyone. The island does, however, support a population of dickheads who seem to think that they have found some sort of bohemian utopia where they can indulge their alternative lifestyles and fantasies but still collect their monthly remittances from home.
It is rather sad and pathetic in some ways, because that 60s hippie lifestyle was ridiculous at the time, and seems even more so now, especially when you consider that Lamma is part of one of the largest capitalist enclaves in the world. But the expats, at least some of them, have built themselves a little world of their own, and seem happy to continue with their “Save the Bay” campaigns and their talk of life outside the mainstream, and to sell their carved driftwood. The island’s Chinese are oblivious to all of this, of course, and carry on their lives regardless, making money out of the expats and the ferry boats of day-trippers which come out from Kowloon for lunch or dinner.
Our week passes quickly but relaxedly.
SATURDAY: We pack our bags and leave them at the Bangkok Hotel while we go for dim sum with Simon, who is catching a flight out at 11.30am. Afterwards, we take a bus from outside the hotel, which takes us down Nathan Road to the Star Ferry terminal. As we pull away from the bus stop and speed off down the street, we shout and wave to Simon, walking with his backpack through the crowds.
Across on Hong Kong Island, we collect our mail from the post restaurant counter at the GPO, then ring Dave from a phone box at the ferry terminal. He gives us directions to the Outlying Islands Terminal and says he will meet us off the 12 o’clock ferry. That gives us an hour and a half to get back to the Bangkok Hotel, collect our bags, and get back over to the terminal. Re-crossing the harbour to Kowloon, we read our mail. Joe’s letter is mainly about a PGG piss-up at the Christchurch Town Hall. Helen’s letter to Linda, on the other hand, is full of bad news. Her brother Shane is in jail..again. A bunch of people were killed in car accidents around South Canterbury. Their cat is sick. I think to myself, “thanks a fucking lot Helen for such a cheerful letter to read on our last week away on our travels.”
We make the Lamma Ferry with 10 minutes to spare and settle into a couple of plastic chairs for the 40-minute journey. The harbour is crowded with craft ranging from tiny junks wallowing in the choppy water to huge container ships anchored into the deepwater port and tended by tugboats and floating cranes. The air is clear and cool with a fresh breeze blowing from the east. Llama Island is dominated by the smokestacks of a huge coal-fired power station, but these form a quite unobtrusive backdrop once the small harbour is reached. True to his word, Dave meets us at the jetty. He is tall and gaunt with a ready wit and a cynical outlook on life which always appeals to me. He leads us up a steep concrete path to the tiny flat he shares with his girlfriend Jenny Pierpont.
Dave is playing rugby during the afternoon, so he leaves us to make ourselves at home and goes to catch the next ferry. We unpack for a while and relax, then walk down to the island’s commercial centre to buy some groceries. It is quite hot, though not unpleasantly so, and after walking through the town, a 50 metre walk, we adjourn to a bar for a cold beer. I choose a pint of John Smith’s, and Linda has Foster’s. Sitting in the small bar with the sun beating down outside, and a few afternoon drinkers clustered around the bar, it is very easy to imagine that we are in Greece, or Spain, or even an English seaside pub. The combinations are the same, inane, fatuous, mostly talk of upcoming parties or parties gone by. All of the accents are English.
Finishing our beers, we lug our bags of shopping up the hill, passing a tall, dark-haired woman on the way. Back at the flat, we sit down to cool off, munching some fresh bread, unsweetened, and some wonderful Edam cheese. Then the same tall, dark woman comes in. This is Jenny. We all sit and chat for the afternoon. Occasional friends drop in to say hello. Raj, a part Indian from Wembley, has been staying at the flat and comes to get his gear. Robert is a friend of Dave and Jenny’s from Pontypool, although he has no trace of a Welsh accent. He is quite a wit, and we become friends straight away.
In the evening, we all meet at a bar in the town where dance music thumps out of the speakers and the barman is Welsh. For my part, however, I don’t enjoy myself that much, as I have a dose of the shits, probably a parting shot from the People’s Republic. I can almost bet that it was the meal I ate at a fly-blown roadside store between Canton and Shenzhen the previous afternoon. Or perhaps it is just a gastrointestinal reaction to the big mac and fries I had for tea, a sort of biological protest against corporate fast food.
Sunday. Rest day on Lama. Some of the expats, including one who is the spitting image of Mick Hucknall, engage in a save the bay clean-up, clearing rubbish from the beach and leaving in a heap for the tide to reclaim. The Chinese look on with quizzical expressions, probably wondering why the Gwailos, white people, go to so much trouble when they, the Chinese, will just throw more rubbish into the water tomorrow. After all, the tide takes it away eventually, doesn’t it?
We join the ritualistic gatherings at one of the bars whiling away the sunny afternoon over ice-cold bottles of Stella Artois and talking about life, death, and the morality of colonialism. Robert observes at one point that this is the only place in the British Empire where you can sit outside in shorts in November. At 5 p.m. the highlight of the day occurs. We all watch Star Trek the next generation on Sky, but it is highly disappointing and a chorus of grumbles greets the end credits. Dave, Jen, Linda, Robert, and I repair to Robert’s rooftop where we get stoned on hash.
Monday. Dave and Jenny leave the flat at 7.15pm to catch the 7.30pm ferry. We hang around until the 9.30pm ferry leaves, almost empty, as most of Lama’s commuters take the early boat. Crossing the bay, I have time to observe some of the many ships that are anchored there. They represent an eclectic group of countries in shipping lines, some shiny and new with gleaming paintwork and modern lines, others old and rusted, verging on hulks, some of them, most of those flying flags of poorer nations and sporting the liveries of obscure shipping companies. One ship moored close to the ferry’s course is named the Kapiton Shmurnov out of Odessa. Its name is written in Cyrillic on the bow.
The ship is a rear-loading cargo vessel with a large rear door for access. At its front, a bulbous bow juts at the waterline like the nose of an alcoholic man. The water of the bay is a pale blue milky color, almost like soapy water, and small pieces of rubbish bob about amongst the crowd of vessels. The skyline of Hong Kong Island rears above the water like a long row of cliffs. A concrete and glass giant’s causeway. We disembark and walk up into the heart of Central, looking for a bank which won’t charge a commission for changing travelers’ cheques. We ride the escalator up into the bowels of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, the so-called Robot Building, where the very physiology of the building is visible within its glass and steel body.
The humans within are, however, as avaricious as ever, demanding a 5% commission, so we walk further down the street to the imposing grey spire of the Bank of China. Here we change our final travelers’ cheques without commission, and pocket HK$1,400. Further along Kongwt Road, we enter the Pacific Plaza, a huge shopping complex where we fill in an hour window shopping. Linda is desperate to find a pharmacy where she can buy some cough syrup to combat the nagging cough she has suffered ever since we were in Yangshuo, but there isn’t one in the plaza.
At 11:30 we catch a tram two stops along to Causeway Bay, the heart of Hong Kong Island’s entertainment district. Here the glitter of Central is replaced by a bustling tattiness, neon signs advertise strip tees and massage, faded hoardings and billboards silently speak of past glories when this area was the hub of entertainment for soldiers on leave from the war in Vietnam. The crowds of free-spending and rampant servicemen are now gone, replaced by tourists from China and the West.
Finding Dave’s office is a little difficult amongst the jumble of street names and numbers. But inside, there is an uproarious band of Brits, all competing to design the best paper dart, prototypes of which are test flown out of the window. The street below is littered with crash-landed paper planes. Dave takes us for lunch at a mess club part way up the peak, where we dine on sausage, egg, and chips, surrounded by a mainly British clientele. The atmosphere is gloriously British, a little tatty, greasy food, and native Pakistani staff. It almost seems to be a shame that Britain is handing Hong Kong to the Chinese in 1997. The edge of colonial mystique, white, outdated, and nostalgic, still adds a genuine air of pleasantry to the place.
We spend the afternoon shopping at the giant Times Square complex, five floors of shops around an enclosed atrium. We buy some clothes at Marks and Spencer, CDs from Tower Records. It’s just like being on Oxford Street. Loaded with goodies, we take the MTR back to Central and catch the next ferry back to Lamma.
TUESDAY Making an effort, we are up with the commuter crowd for the 7:30 ferry. An assortment of people board the vessel, the vast majority European and a large proportion of them British. The scene is reminiscent of any London commuter station. Everyone looking vaguely annoyed at having to go to work, but chatting amiably with each other even so. On the Lamma ferries, the talk usually revolves around the parties that have either been or are coming up.
In Central, we catch a bus bound for Ocean Park, Hong Kong’s answer to Disneyland. Riding in the seat behind the driver, wearing the same white gloves that his counterparts from Kashgar to Beijing wear, we strike up a conversation with an Australian couple, late middle age and here on holiday. They think Hong Kong is dirty. When they tell us that they are off to China for a five-day tour, I inform them that they ain’t seen nothing when it comes to filth. Disappointingly, most of the main attractions at Ocean Park are closed. We decide not to pay the, at any rate, extortionate entry fee, and catch the next bus back to Central and cross the harbour to Kowloon.
On a whim, we walk around to Planet Hollywood and have lunch, surrounded by movie memorabilia and costumes. The food is expensive but good, and the surroundings are unusual to say the least. We leave feeling rather smug at having dined in a place frequented and owned by stars, and go next door to a movie theatre where we watch Joel and Ethan Coen’s evocative and atmospheric film The Hudsucker Proxy. Weeks later I read an interview given by the brothers Coen in which they described their films as flimsy frameworks upon which we hang dubious jokes.
Back on Hong Kong Island in the evening, we ride a bus up to the top of Victoria Peak. Although the temperature is down and the city is humid and hot, up on the peak a cold wind is howling across from China, and a haze of fog covers the sky. The lights of the city are reflected and diffused by the cloud, which seems to glow with its own angry orange incandescence.
Later on, back on Lamma, Jen, Dave, Rob, Linda and I sit up on Rob’s roof, smoking hash and drinking beer. It is a warm, still night on the island, the sort of night that gives credence to the tropic dream, that dream of languid nights under a spreading sky in which time has no meaning or importance. Mostly, this tropic ideal is a fallacy. Mosquitoes, rain or the possibility of being robbed taking some of the mystique away. But sitting there on Rob’s roof, stoned, with cicadas rasping away in the bush nearby, it was as if we were separate from the city and from its teeming population.
WEDNESDAY I join the commuter crowd on the morning’s early ferry, bound for Kowloon. Crossing the harbour, I look at the huge ships anchored in the bay, all of them facing eastwards in line with the prevailing wind and swell. Many of them are tended by small floating barges, each sporting a derrick, with which the barge’s loads of containers are hoisted aboard the vessel or unloaded for conveying ashore. In the distance, the enormous clusters of cranes on the Kowloon Container Terminal seem to mirror the towering clusters of buildings in downtown Hong Kong.
Disembarking with the crowds, I bid Jenny a good day and walk up to the nearest MTR station. En route, I visit the Tourist Information Centre beneath the Jardines building. Waiting outside for it to open, I arrive at 8.50. I listen to an American couple’s loud complaints that the centre doesn’t open until 9.00. Linda is waiting at our appointed meeting place later on, but she has some more shopping to do, so I set off back to Lamma. Crossing the harbour, I dreamily look at the ships anchored in the glittering bay. The heights of Lamma Island rise out of the haze in the distance, and beyond, the hills of the People’s Republic of China are nearly invisible.
I reflect that our odyssey is nearly over, and I am seized by a feeling of anticlimax, the feeling that always accompanies the drawing-to-end of an adventure. As the ferry bobs across the serpentine water, I fall asleep, and am awakened by the deckhand after everyone has disembarked. At the flat, I listen to some of Dave’s CDs until Linda gets back, with Dave and Jenny arriving on the later ferry. We all adjourn to the pub for beers and something to eat, then once again repair to Rob’s roof for another session of hash-smoking and talking. We listen to a Marillion CD which I had bought the previous day, and giggle at silly things such as the reason the… and giggle at silly things.
THURSDAY. Linda and I walk down to a small cove below the flat and sit on a rock talking. The afternoon is overcast and warm, with a gentle breeze wafting in off the bay. The water is tepid and murky, although Lamma has the safest bathing water around Hong Kong because of the bleach poured into the harbour by the power plant. I fool around at the edge of the surf building a sandcastle while we talk.
The cloudy sky is hazy blue, with smudges of gold and silver where the sun shines through. The occasional boat chugs past the entrance to the cove and disappears around the point where the coal tenders unload fuel for the power station. I reflect that behind us lie thousands of kilometres of overland travel from the heat and sprawl of Tehran, across deserts and mountain ranges, through the vastness of the People’s Republic of China, to this little cove with its copper sand and brown porous rocks. Tomorrow we fly home.
CurseOfTheTraveller 