FIRST VIEW OF THE FAR EAST - HONG KONG DAY #2

Tuesday 18th December 1984 – Hong Kong

It was still dull and grey and the locals seem to think it will stay that way until we go on Friday. I said yesterday I was worried about overweight baggage. This is because Lynne says they are very strict here – and that they also measure and weigh hand luggage. We are considerably overweight and of course normally our hand luggage is bulky. I intend to make some enquiries about forwarding one suitcase as unaccompanied baggage.

I have all sorts of doubts about the camera which will only be finally resolved when I get home and see if the sound and the pictures do come through OK. They should do, I am sure, but we keep being warned about these fiendish Orientals and their wily ways. Of course I have also been worrying about Matt so it was nice to hear him so chirpy.

Was this dinner for anyone?

After a rather indifferent breakfast served by some fairly sullen staff we, with David and Chris, boarded Mike Burrell’s  Mazda 626, driven by chauffeur Tong, and set off for Stanley, a little fishing village past Repulse Bay, where all sorts of clothing is sold. Jim says a lot of overruns from the fashion houses are sold there, although we didn’t see anything that good. It is a lovely little village and there were some interesting scenes with the junks in the bay. Rab and Chris had a fine old time wandering through all the lanes which are jam packed with little shops.

  

We got back to the hotel about 13.00 and popped into the Pickwick Tavern in the hotel for a quick beer. We finally landed up with a couple of pints of San Miguel draft, which was very good indeed and a pub lunch which was excellent and tasty. Rab had cottage pie and I had roast beef on French bread.

The flat ducks fascinated us.

We spent the afternoon drifting around the shops in the vicinity of the hotel, just exploring really. There are a couple of very large and pretty expensive Japanese department stores and one selling goods from mainland China. We bought a few things there – mainly sweets for Matt (the White Rabbits – a white toffee were a big hit) and fruit juices and beers for ourselves. Both were good. During the course of our wanderings we saw so many interesting things that it is impossible to write them all down. Shops selling  snakes for instance – it is the best time of the year for snakes we are told; the flat ducks which look as if they have been run over by a steam roller, but which turned out to have been deboned and stretched on a frame to dry like biltong (jerky); the sharks fins for sale decorated with bright Xmas ribbons – an unusual gift indeed. We also bought a small bottle of what appeared to be melon spirit and when we got back to the hotel to dump our goods we tried it – rather awful.

Rab decided to give this one a miss

We decided to continue with the Western cuisine in the evening so we headed for an Italian restaurant in Wan Chai. I had a nice pizza and Rab had spaghetti. Washed down with a litre of Chianti. From there we caught a cab up to the lanes where Benny had taken us yesterday, but Rab had her opening hours wrong. Caught a tram back to the hotel – quite an experience.

(I was obviously running out of steam – or time – or maybe the Chianti had a soporific effect, so I didn’t expand on why the tram ride was an ‘experience’. Rab always likes to use local transport when we travel. It is part of the overall experience for her. I don’t like it one bit. I rarely use public transport at home where at least we know the rules, where the transport is safe and where it is built for normal sized human beings, let alone in a place where none of the above apply. But she was insistent that it would be ‘fun’ to catch a tram. At that time the Hong Kong trams were wooden double decked structures. Passengers entered through a turnstile at the rear of the tram and exited through a door at the front, paying as they got off. Well that was the theory, although when the tram was as crowded as the one we caught, it was difficult for large people to make their way through the packed citizens. Rab managed to find a seat, but there was no way I could have fitted in the narrow gap between the rows. So I stood, but not upright as the ceiling was too low to do so. My bowed head was between two of the beams that reinforced the floor of the upper deck. That was when I discovered how rapidly the tram accelerated and how effective the brakes were – banging my head on the beam behind me as we shot off and cracking my forehead on the beam in front of me as the driver braked, which he did frequently. Finally arriving at our destination, we pushed our way through the masses, hoping the driver wouldn’t shoot off. Quite an experience.)