Part 2 of 2. Fly high

Part 2 - Kong

A week later and ive peaked again, geographically this time, as I reach the top of Lantau peak in Hong Kong. It’s a cool place Lantau, my friend has left the high rise and pollution of the main Island and now lives on the 52nd floor of a block of flats overlooking the sea and in the background, the airport. Twenty minutes walk from their flat and im in some serious jungle, this is not the image I get in my head when I think of Hong Kong, but easy to forget its not just an urban jungle. The other islands have some un-tourist-ed (maybe I could form this into a new word?) trails, beaches, eagles overhead, king cobras, and according to a newspaper report last year pythons that are big enough to eat dogs. The peak is one of several over 900 metres here, and unlike most of the similarly sized mountains in the UK I had to start the walk from sea level- infact its from sea-reclaimed land, so probably slightly below.

The flat is not actually the 52nd as the Chinese don’t like number 3, 13 or anything ending in 4. Its high enough though, and I feel weird if I look over for too long. I know it high for two reasons.

1. If you were to build a paper aeroplane and throw it off the balcony it would fly for 4 mins 35 seconds. Not that id do something like that.

2. On the night before I left my friend heard a very loud thud followed by hysterical screaming followed by an ambulance followed the next morning by the reception guard confirming that there was a jumping incident. Im glad I didn’t hear anything, that sort of noise would haunt me for months.

All too quickly I’m on the National Express back from Gatwick. I see a headline on the front of the Guardian about an incident at the Happy Valley race course in Hong Kong on Weds night.

‘That’s funny’ I think to myself while turning to page 23, that’s where I was on Weds night.

I was on a night out with my other friend who lives in Kong. We’d been to a bowling alley (I got a KingPin esque 154 Get in!) and were now figuring out how we go about putting some bets on. This is the other side of Kong. Super bright lights saturate the hustle and bustle of big money city attitude under a wall of skyscrapers. I buy a hot dog and San Migel from one of the young hotties selling in skimpy yellow outfits and we walk and talk around the venue. I live up to my tourist stereotype and win some money in a few races and then lose and lot more convincingly in several more.

Id left it as that- a happy memory of a night in a life of my old friend, but it seems there was more going on than we’d both realised. According to the Guardian report the groundsman had found a series of tubes in the ground near the start/finsh line which contained poisoned darts. Its thought that they could be fired remotely in order to slow down whichever horses were not doing what the dishonest betting ring wanted. I almost wish the plan would have gone ahead- it would have given me a great reason why my 'system' of picking the horses which had the funniest porno names didn’t work. Double Pleasure and One Eyed Dick both failed to place….. maybe they didn’t find all the darts.

Part 1 of 2. Swing low...

Wow, two weeks have flown bye since I last got on here, its been an amazing time. These weeks will be ones I remember with a big smile when looking back on my late twenties.

Part 1.

My uncle got me a ticket for England France at Twickenham – my first time there – and I had a cool day on the M4, on trains, in a flat, a pub and in Twickenham. I met up with a friend in London, left the car at his, then got a train to Richmond where I was meeting my uncle, cousins and a gaggle of other hangers on for a beer and food before the off. The train was particularly exciting. Im always amazed in London at the quality of people watching on offer, and it was spiked up this time by the fact that there was, perhaps in prelude to the forcomming rugby, some good quality scrumaging requiredin order to get on the hideously over packed train.

This was an interesting social situation.

The first train arrived and was seriously full, a few people crammed on in front of me, but I didn’t have anywhere near the motivation required to brake the social rules of stranger touching, yet alone stranger pushing extremely hard that would be required to win myself an uncomfortable place on the train. By the time the second had arrived id finished my sandwich and was more up for it. I first had to make some attempt at holding back the cocks trying to push in front of me, together with whom we wrote off any chance that a few locals had who were trying to get off from somewhere back in the heart of the carriage. My time to push arrived sooner than id hoped. I put all inhibitions aside this time, and ignored the protests of the people who had quickly forgotten the fact that they had just done a ‘me’ and pushed on themselves, and uncomfortably forced myself inside the automatic doors just before they closed. I’m now stood inside with probably 5 people in the space that might under usual circumstances be called my own personal.

In the ground I was in the new stand, at the front of the top of three tiers. I caught up with my cousin who has just come back from a 6 month post-uni trip round the world. He’d had a great time, as did I, when we even unexpectedly beat the French in a thrilling second half.

Later on i quickly stopped at my friends for a tea, then started the trek back across the M4 - a trip made more frustrating knowing that id be comming the other way again the next morning on the way to Gatwick.

It’s a shame that we later lost to the Welsh, which I watched wearing a crappy Guinness hat in a bar in Wan Chai, Hong Kong.

This post peaks far too early

So much hasn’t happened in the last few weeks I don’t really know where I shouldn’t start.

See, I know that that isn’t funny or clever, but apparently if I write a book in this style and call it ‘Catch 22’ it will be widely regarded (by ‘them’ in the know- I’m really starting to dislike them)) as an all time classic.

Anyway, book reading aside, it’s been a fantastic few weeks. I finished at my temp job and had two interviews, both at Biology departments. Slightly surprisingly I got offered both of these jobs and had a sheepish few days as I juggled the first not-quite-so-good job while waiting to hear from the second slightly-better-and-longer-contract position. The upshot is that Im heading back down to my old undergrad stomping ground in April. This leaves a good few weeks to kill, which led me to be online on Thursday evening searching for flights to Hong Kong.

I had a bit of luck here- it is probably one of those moments which balance out other incidents of bad luck (such as locking your keys in your car, for example…) but that get forgotten in the long run of things resulting in an apparently bad-luck skewed life imbalance. Having looked in the back of the Sunday Times Travel section at ther flights advert bits I was pointed towards the Money section, which had a section on ‘Getting Cheap Flights from the Internet’ This guy quoted a few search engines that compare several hundred travel agencies and flight couriers, and he had an example that got him a flight to Kong land through www.skyscanner.net for £269. In case you were falling asleep, or are not in the know, this is extremely, dare I say fucking cheap. I went onto this site, and it was true; a new company called OasisHongKong fly direct on a 747, and the only catch I could make out was there was no free alcohol. Having previously flown with Brunei Air, this is no big deal. Brunei is a ‘dry’ airline, which not only had no drink for sale but also advertised it was showing Oceans Eleven, which I got quite excited about until the original 60s version started, which somewhat dampened my spirits, which were subsequently fully extinguished when the only available sound was badly dubbed German. In flight entertainment aside, the main trouble with these Far East four-hundred-and-something pound flights (Qatar air, and Phuket Air are other examples of the same ilke Ive been on) is that you also have to endure a 4-8 hour stop over in the middle of nowhere.

My friends out in Kong who ill be staying with both said that the only bad thing they’d heard about Oasis was that there is very little leg room.* Maybe it’ll be so cheap you get a free DVT. Ill let you know how I get on.

*They obviously didn’t hear Be Here Now. Yes, that’s the best joke in this post.