Hong Kong i suppose, its about time

My commitment to this thing is appalling. During the day i want to write, i think about what i will write about and how i will say it but then i open it up and its all gone and the prospect is too daunting. But I'm quite far behind now, so i shall tell ye about Hong Kong.

Which is hard because i was there for a month so i did a lot of things and went a lot of places and thought a lot of things but i dont think its long enough to have a grasp on city, the longer i was there, there more i realised that i understood nothing. Hong Kong, i could safely say though, is a city like no other, uber modern, wealthy and quite luxurious, well designed, well planned and well organised but crowded and hot and sticky and slow moving and often quite sinister. The purpose of the city is money and at times that is very obvious. What made it so interesting I suppose though was the fusions that it embodied; east and west, ancient and futuristic, contemporary and traditional. Cathy lives at one of the universities, which is new and high tech and sponsored by billionaires but in the middle of it there is a 200 year old village whose inhabitants, im assuming, still live in largely the same way that they have for years, communally with wild dogs and a smell of soap. The university just built around it and leaves the village in peace.

Well, mostly. One night after a fair bit of drinking we were convinced by Cathy's brother Will that the best possible thing we could do at that time (around midnight) was go into the village, find the wild dogs who barked and chased and most probably bit, and let Will shoot them with his air rifle. So we did. Having been chased by wild dogs before, i wasnt too keen, in fact i was terrified and held on tightly to Georgie the whole time. We didnt find any dogs but that didnt stop everyone pissbolting everytime we heard a dog bark. On leaving the village we found that someome must have closed the gate after we had gone in as it was padlocked and we were locked in. Luckily for us this sort of thing had obviously happened before and next to the gate there was a big whole in the wire so after some ungraceful climbing and with some fricken amazing bruises newly acquired, we were out.

I think my favourite thing about Hong Kong though was having a month with Cathy and Georgie. Being best friends in high school, its been five years since we have had any decent amount of time together, so it was amazing being there with them. And we travelled a little bit too, Cathy and I went to Tibet and then the three of us had a weekend in Macau, another autonomous province of China and probably the strangest place i have ever been. Like Hong Kong is a former British colony, Macau is a former Portuguese one and Macau looked like a Chinese Portugal. Macau is also the only place in China that gambling is legal so it has become a sort of Vegas for China, complete with Vegas style casinos. I think the wierdest point for me was when we were in an Irish pub inside the Venetian hotel, a Vegas style casino made to look like Italy, in the middle of Macau, a province of China, which looked like Portugal. The artificiality of it all was fun for a while until we discovered that outside of casinos there was nill all nightlife in Macao and Macao casinos are awful places to drink and not gamble at.

We had a few odd nights out, Hong Kong has incredible bars, some big, plush ones, some with incredible views, some enormous, sports bars, wine bars, pretty much all there is but what is lacking is nightlife, or perhaps we didnt find it. Everywhere we went there were white men in their forties and on their arms Chinese girls in their twenties. This was heightened when we went into Wan Chai which is the place i'm pretty sure Cold Chisel had in mind when they wrote 'there aint nothing like the kisses of a jaded Chinese princess, im gonna hit some Hong Kong mattress all night long'. It was like everywhere else, forty year old white men and twenty year old Asian girls except that the clothes were skimpier and everyone gave us funny looks, the women of 'get the fuck out of here im working' and the men of 'are they? aren't they?' im guessing. we didnt stay long in Wan Chai.

Well thats all im gonna write about tonight i think, I'm tired. I ended up staying ten days longer than i had originally planned in Hong Kong cos i had such a great time and i was so confortable there and with Cathy and Georgie that leaving felt like a forced tear and i suddenly found myself profoundly alone on arrival in London. But thats for another time.

Goodnight!