Packing up in Dave and Jenny’s flat, we are hot and bothered. We have so much stuff to fit into our already over-full packs that we have to perform the usual feat of jettisoning some cargo. Walking down to the pier, the sun is burning down, despite the fact that it is only mid-morning. We join the second shifts of island-dwelling commuters on the ferry, sitting our packs down against a bulkhead out of the way. No one gives us a second glance. On Lamma, people are always coming and going.
Out on the teal-blue water, the ships are at anchor as usual, their sterns turned towards the open sea, their bows pointing towards the promised land of Hong Kong. They are a league of nations, these ships, registered in Panama and Jersey and Odessa and a hundred other places. No wonder boys who live near dockyards long to go to sea. The lure of those far-off places with such evocative names could be more than anyone could stand. I too wish I could see them all.
From the central pier, we lug our packs across the elevated walkway above Kong Place and descend into the MTR. We take our packs in the elevator to Dave’s office building. The scene in the office is one of chaos, as Dave and his co-workers strive to build the perfect paper plane. The streets below are even more littered with the wreckage of crashed prototypes, but occasionally a chair goes up as a successful launch is completed and a flimsy paper craft soars upward on one of the complicated air currents circling around the buildings. Leaving our packs beneath one of the desks, we set off to Dave and a girlfriend of his to have lunch at a local curry mess.
The messes in Hong Kong an interesting throwback to the pukka days of colonial Hong Kong, now almost an anachronism as Hong Kong slides towards 1997. We are served by a towering Sikh, and the food – I have mutton Rogan Josh – is absolutely delicious. True to form with any Indian meal, we eat far too much and leave feeling decidedly uncomfortable.
Catching one of the crowded trams heading east, Linda and I leave the others and make our way down to Causeway Bay. The Times Square Tower is brand new and stands incongruously amid a neighbourhood of squalid tenements. Hong Kong is full of such juxtapositions of new and old, derelict and opulent, poor and rich. Around the Times Square complex, the buildings are filthy and decrepit, with washing hanging from open windows above tiny sweatshops and food retailers. From the street, with its smells and textures, we ride a long escalator into the atrium at the heart of the building. Inside, seven floors of shops compete for the consumer dollar, and we, as good consumers, withdraw our credit cards and shop.
Following our spree, we went to a movie at the cinema complex beneath the tower. The movie was Blown Away, starring Jeff Bridges and Tommy Lee Jones. After the movie, we emerged into the daylight and pushed our way through the crowds of Chinese on the street. On our way back to the tram, we stopped and looked at a brick game unit in an electronics shop. It was fifty-nine Hong Kong dollars and we didn’t quite have enough money, but just along the street was a credit card money machine, so we withdrew the cash and bought the game.
Back at the office around 5pm, chaos reigned in the paper dart design room, and I couldn’t resist attempting a cunning design of my own. Unfortunately, it plummeted to the street below. Collecting our gear, we went back out into the sultry evening air. Darkness was approaching, and everywhere people were homeward bound. It took some time to find an airport bus stop, as Dave got lost and we ended up running to catch one of the buses after a 20-minute walk.
Our goodbyes to David were swift, and we leave him standing on the sidewalk in the sultry heat of Hong Kong night, as the air-conditioned bus sweeps us under the harbour and out through the neon hallucination of Kowloon to the airport. There are long queues at every stage of our passage through the airport: lines of jostling Chinese and indignant Westerners. It was chaotic and seemingly devoid of a system, but we are soon in the aircraft and relaxing in our seats next to one of the amidship’s doors.
Precisely on time, the plane shuddered out of its berth and lumbered along the taxiway to the runway. The engines scream into life, and with the pressure of sudden acceleration squeezing us into our seats, we are airborne. An orange glow flares briefly through the window, then we are in darkness, Hong Kong and China falling away behind us as we bank over the South China Sea and head south towards Australia. Dinner is served, followed by a movie, Maverick, which we had seen in New York at the start of the trip: a sort of “close brackets.” The night drags and as daylight breaks we are descending into Sydney.
CurseOfTheTraveller 