Simple, impartial, humorous...my kind of magazine
I have just found a great online magazine for travelers, travel bloggers, travel writers – www.bravenewtraveler.com. Seems to have everything fro top tips for improving group emails home and practical gumph like what to pack for a RTW trip to funny advice on nudist beaches and dorm room sex. Love it, love it, love it.
Po lin's Big Buddha. Worshipping the idols of capitalism
If there was an award for the most cynical place of worship ever then Po Lin monastery would win hands down. Situated on the Ngong Ping Plateau of Lantau island, Hong Kong, it is home to one of the world’s biggest Buddha statues (over 24 metres tall and weighing more than 2 tonnes). It’s also home to a ‘village’ of faux Chinese hostelries, including a ‘zen noodle’ and a Starbucks (for Christ’s sake), fronted by Carlsberg umbrellas and signs inviting you to enjoy the ‘fabulous shopping and dining’.
It’s no longer a place of worship but a ‘must-see attraction’. The place should be called ‘Buddhaland’, and probably will be one day. It rivals Disneyland for the sugar coating and fakeness of it all. There are even monkey mascots who – a la Disney – you can have your picture taken with.
Not only does the cable car up to the plateau have the option of standard or crystal cars (yes that’s right, the world’s first cable cars with crystal decor) but the ‘experience’ includes the option to visit the world’s first multimedia presentation of the Buddha’s life: Walk with Buddha(tm).
Outside the temple itself (just in front of the temple restaurant and the tenple cafe) there’s the temple souvenir shop where folks can buy all manner of Buddhist-inspired tat. Most people were paying up for varying size bundles of incense. The biggest sticks were $688HKD dollars each (about £55). There were 12 of these mofos burning when I was there. And I thought that Buddhists were against worldly posessions.
Hong Kong officials are obsessed with public health and safety. Every conceivable risk has been identified and then warned against. Every activity seems fraught with danger, if you take the time to read all the millions of signs dotting every public (and many private) walls.
It occurred to me today when I was on the Hong Kong MTR (Mass Transport Railway, like the tube), listening to the ridiculously frequent Health and Safety announcements [Hold on to the handrail at all times, Hold on to the handrail...keep holding it, don't stop holding it...Keep holding the bloody handrail] that I realised I had forgotten to post my blog about health and safety in South East Asia.
Well, actually, if it was about health and safety then it would be a pretty short blog as the south east Asians don’t have any concept of what this means.
Coming from the UK, where you have to wear a hard hat to bring a builder his lunchtime sandwiches, or wear full high-vis day-glo body armour to cross a site road, I was delighted and amused by this at first.
“Oooh…look at that bloke on the Laotian building site wearing a straw hat, rather than a hard hat. And above him, look at that bloke standing under that wobbly pile of bricks. Oh and – ha, ha, ha – look at that guy 50ms up a scaffold with no rail and no harness painting the roof on his tiptoes.”
After a while I realised when people would point these sanity contraventions out that it had ceased to be strange. Even some seriously odd things. “What? Oh, yeah I see it, a wheelbarrow full of bricks being winched 12 stories up a building.
“Wait, are those BRICKS falling out? Yes, it appears they are.”
Seriously, some of the things that you see in South East Asia are so that’s-not-ok, what-are-you-doing, don’t-be-a-fucking-idiot unsafe that a 2-year-old would point at the person doing whatever it is and say: ‘moron’. Not that I’m some kind of – god forbid – health and safety inspector but there are a few that make me want to get my virtual clipboard out and start tutting with the best of them.
These include:
1. In many places petrol is sold at roadside shacks in plastic litre-size soft drink bottles. Soft drinks are also sold, often at the same places, in plastic litre-size soft drink bottles.
2. Scaffolding seems to be made out of balsa wood/kindling.
3. Dogs (I know they’re not capable of knowing what they’re doing but still) lying in packs in the middle of the road asleep. So much so that bikes have to swerve to avoid them and cars often have to wake them up so they can drive.
4. Motorbikes being ridden by four or five people, their kids, their dogs, a couple of chairs, a table, wardrobes, livestock, trees, goldfish in bags, full-size mirrors etc.
5. Temples open to the public often have massive holes in the ground. At Angkor Wat there are ditches cleverly overgrown with long grass; at Ayutthaya after sunset one evening I managed to fall into an open manhole.
I could go on but if you’ve been to SE Asia you’ll know what I’m talking about. Life is cheap here and people do what they can to get by. If necessity is the mother of invention, poverty is the mother of necessity.
And yet, despite the nuttiness of it all, I do like the way people are allowed to think for themselves, expected to look out for themselves, rather than in England or Hong Kong where the nanny states assume you have a mental age of 6 and the self-preservation instincts of a pissed lemming.
Hongkongers call this time of year Bitter Moon as the city is at its coldest in the few weeks before Chinese New Year. So why was I perched on a wall by a very cold harbour in the path of an arctic breeze? To see the sound and lightshow, of course. Hong Kong’s unique display of neon lights playing across the skyscrapers of Central – the “Symphony of Lights” played every night from 8 til 8.20pm – is a major draw for tourists.
Choreographed to a modern jazz symphony and completely in time across a dozen buildings, it really is amazing – especially when lights run up and down with notes on a scale. With beats measured out on buildings over a kilometre apart, the coordination and synchrony of the show is testament to the brilliance of modern electrical engineering. And it looks pretty.
But – and it’s a big but – there’s something a bit tired about the whole concept. The music is the kind of jazz-opera that was popular with loveys all through the 80s and it’s the soundtrack to parts of my childhood being dragged round the Barbican. Anyone who remembers Variations will know what I mean.
'Symphony of Light': possibly outdated, sadly blurry...
The whole concept is essentially a bit naff, and out of synch with modern attitudes. China is making much of its new proto-eco credentials in the press these days. So how can it justify what is essentially wasted electricity? The time for wowing over electricity is over. It’s the 21st century. Why not save the displays for special occasions and set an example to the rest of the world?
Hong Kong: English past, Chinese future
I have decided that Hong Kong is like London, except with more interesting and effective public transport. Travel here not only includes tube (MTR) and bus, but old-fashioned trams and the futuristic ‘travelator’ – an escalator that takes people down from the hilly suburbs in the morning and takes them back in the afternoon.
Most of the public transport can be paid for with an Octopus card – it’s basically an Oyster card but much cheaper and more useful. For instance, any tram ride in HK (except the tourist trap that is the Peak tram) is just $2HKD…about 17p. The tube is about 35p a journey. Not only that but you can use Oyster to pay for everything from fags and a pint of milk (at the ubiquitous 7 eleven) to your MaccyDs.
It’s a dangerously cashless society. Dangerous because the cash you ‘save’ by paying for your groceries with Octopus can then be given away in exchange for more exciting goods; frittered away at many of the great shops here. My shopping addiction is now pretty much in hand (it has to be) but that doesn’t stop me having terrible ‘shopping neck’. I have almost stumbled into the road twice looking at sparkly shoes, and yesterday I was staring over my shoulder and simultaneously throwing my scarf around me: almost punched a girl in the solar plexus.
Shops – like restaurants and even my workplace – are random places to be as you hear people swapping so fluently and quickly between English and Chinese. At a stall where I was buying thermal underwear (It’s cold!) this week I heard a businessman and the stallholder change language every sentence, until I wondered if it was a strategic move – trying to unsettle their haggling opponent?
The magazine I’m working on is published in a combination of English and Chinese so every little bit of work has to be translated. I haven’t any Mandarin yet but I’m sure I’ll be fluent any day now. Oh no I lie, I know 2 words: 大 means big. 火 means fire. And people say you don’t learn anything from blogs.
Two more useless facts I have learnt this week:
1. Before Walt Disney created Mickey Mouse his main character was a bunny called Oswald the Lucky Rabbit
2. There is a real-life lift company called Schindler’s Lift.
So far I’ve been given loads to do at work and am loving being busy again. I take the tram to work because I can imagine it’s 1924, plus it’s cheap. I am working my way through the boxsets of West Wing that live in the flat I’m borrowing. And when I have a minute I’m fitting in all the sightseeing I can manage/handle.
And so ends my first week in Hong Kong. It’s a great, mad city and I love it.
I’ve got a flat! Well, it’s not mine – just a loaner until next week – but I don’t think I have ever been happier about anything ever in my life, ever. Living in the Hong Kong hostel system had me at the end of my tether, and if I had to spend another consecutive night in one of those hellholes I would have thrown either myself or one of the other occupants out of the window.
Last night was a case in point: no hot water, again and unparalleled rudeness from the hotel manager, again. Then two Korean girls arrived at 3 in the morning and woke me up, and another girl woke me at 4.50 on her way to the airport. At that point the Koreans started having a fight about having no hot water with the rude manager; I took this as my cue to leave.
My miracle flat, my haven of havens in this mad, bad, city belongs to a friend of a friend (of a friend of mine). The wonderful Charlie emailed the wonderful Jess who asked the wonderful Charlotte and suddenly I have a free flat in Causeway Bay, close to the heart of the city.
The first thing I did – obviously – when I let myself in this morning (having got the keys last night) was have a good nose around in the essentials – bookshelves, DVD shelves, the fridge (Charlotte is moving out and doesn’t want to keep it’s contents, when she goes…very good news for me). To my utter delight the flat is like a treasure trove of guilty pleasures. The pastel covers of terrible chick lit covers peek out from between humorous blokey titles with cartoons on the front; an innocuous paisley box contains much of the later work of both Jennifer Anniston and Angelina Jolie (not such an innocuous combination) and the fridge freezer contains BEER. PEANUT BUTTER. FISH FINGERS.
And there’s hot water. F*cking spiders. Christ on a bike. Oh, mother of god. I am so happy. Praise be and thank all the spirits for my good fortune. I just hope it doesn’t make me a home hermit for the next week. I’m already missing the place. Just 4 hours and 15 minutes til I can go home to an actual abode!
So, it has come to this. Chucking in life on the open road to write for in-flight magazines in the unrelenting urbanity of Hong Kong. Is it the ultimate sell out…returning to the office after 8 months of freedom as intrepid freelancer? Or is it just common sense?
Although I have loved the easy-going mornings, the my-own-pace writing, and the divine locations of the road-based writer, it’s not exactly making me millions of bucks. In fact, nothing I have written since October has brought me in any money yet, what with loose deadlines and magazine pay dates. It’s not exactly the kind of job where you get a gold Mastercard; it’s actually the kind of job where your gas and water get cut off.
I’m also craving some kind of routine. Since November I have been feeling a bit rudderless and untethered, as if I might just float away at any time. Whatever else the monotonous routine of an office job gives you it always gives you structure, plus distractions in abundance – welcome at the moment.
So, I am adjusting to the fact that my purse strings – and my sanity, to be honest – require the restoration of order over the joys of chaos. As part of my grand plan I have started applying for desk jobs for my return to the UK. This is also the reason that found me in Hong Kong at 8am this rainy morning, heading out for my first day at an internship with Ink Publishing.
If you’d been here you’d have seen what those HongKongese commuters saw: me dressed up like corporate journalist Barbie, all boots and leggings and more layers than I’ve worn since London. I look in the mirror and see that I have returned to being a faceless drone; the only reminder of my intervening adventure are the tatty bits of string bracelet from the kids in Sapa and the key to my backpack padlock, which I wear for safekeeping around my wrist.
Still, it’s not half bad being back at work. I’d forgotten how the florescent lights give you eye ache, but apart from that the people are kind, the work is pleasant and the freebies are quality (hopefully going to a Vivienne Westwood cocktail party – woop!). My office is on Hollywood Road, which I thought would have loads of stars on the pavement and so on, but it turns out to be an achingly trendy antiques district in Central where sandwiches cost the earth.
It’s a far cry from sitting huddled over my laptop and a cup of tea in a little Thai shack and I do feel momentarily homesick for the warm breeze and wicker chairs of the past. But then the world is full of many different experiences and if you spent your time trying to put them all in order of preference, noting all the ups and downs of each, then you’d go out of your mind in a couple of hours.
I’m just going to take a lesson from my 8 months of the ‘easy life’ and take things as they come. It’s pointless to wonder what life would be like if things were different; they’re not. And life’s not fair, as my mum has always been so fond of telling me. I haven’t given up on my dream, at least not in my heart, but it’s evolving quickly into something a bit more livable. I don’t – I can’t – see it as selling out. I’m just buying something slightly different.
Budgies at Kowloon Bird Garden
Arriving in Hong Kong was a little overwhelming. The desire to go everywhere and see everything tempered by the confusion of momentarily confusion, the manic pace of life like headlights to my frightened rabbit. My first full day here I decided to split my sightseeing up into easily digestible, bitesize chunks.
Kowloon was going to be my first stop, mostly because the guidebook said it was a bit more grubby and less impressive than Hong Kong Island. Located across Victoria Harbour, this area has a slightly seedy reputation but also bustling local markets and great museums. It sounded like my kind of place.
So without further ado, here’s my walking tour of Kowloon, which fits in all the good stuff that the visitor should see.
Start off at Prince Edward MTR station in the north of Kowloon, follow signs to the Bird Garden. Although there are some tourists here, you’ll mostly find local people buying pets or food for pets, or old codgers just sitting in the midst of all the squawking and flapping. I was fascinated by the cages stuffed with budgies and spent ages trying to get the perfect snap. One of the parrots looked a lot like my grandfather, in a wise, kind, beaky way (he had a pretty big nose). Wander through there, past the big plastic bags stuffed with live cricket bird food, gross.
Some of the best things about Kowloon are the weird and wonderful markets – selling “anything and everything a chap can unload”, as they say in Bedknobs and Broomsticks of Portobello Road, but it’s even truer of here. Kowloon’s a shopper’s paradise, and a feast for the eye even if you’re not buying. The most northern of these – the flower market – is just at the end of the bird garden. The scent is heavenly; the bouquets are huge and elegant. There are roses of every colour, delicate orchids and tiny little bonsai trees: this is where the Hongkongers come for their wedding arrangements.
Take a right onto the high street and the second left and you find yourself in another unusual market – goldfish of every shape and size, then puppies and kittens. Watch the locals watching and giggling over these pets. Take photos of the hundreds of plastic bags filled with fish (not for animal lovers) but try to avoid the eye of keen sellers – they don’t like it. Keep along that street (Tung Choi Street), through the meat market and the veg market and you’ll come to the women’s market – a good place to stop for lunch (try one of the cafe’s on the right at the end for cheap, warm, filling grub) although the stuff is universal tack. Turn right and then left for the jade market and the Temple Street Night market (this doesn’t start til later so you’ll have to come back).
From the markets, head south some more along Nathan road and then cut west through Kowloon park and check out the flamingos in the bird park. There’s something about flamingos that just makes me smile – they’re quite the most ridiculous birds, especially when you catch one napping on one leg, its long neck tucked in so it looks like an underdone rotisserie chicken. Come out of the park on the western edge and overlook Victoria Harbour from Dolphin Square (named for its dolphin statue, not alas for any real-life dolphins, although it is a good place to see birds of prey and cormorants).
Head back down to street level and check out the posh shops as you go south following signs for the harbour and star ferry. This is Canton Road, where the taitais – ladies who lunch – come for their Chanel and Gucci. Keep going until you’re down on the front. Take in the clocktower – a famous fixture around for donkeys years, it used to be part of the Canton-Kowloon Railway – and let the full majesty of the Hong Kong skyline hit you in the face. I found the awe took a good 15 minutes to disperse (20 at nighttime but more of that in a bit) so sit and wait for it to soak in.
Next it’s time for a bit of culture. Kowloon is home to many of Hong Kong’s museums; the harbour front is your opportunity to visit the Museum of Art or the Space Museum – both quite interesting. As time is of the essence, pick the one you’re most interested in. Behind the both (on the other side from the harbour) there’s the opportunity to see how the other half lives with a gawp at the Peninsula, one of HK’s top hotels and THE place to go for afternnon tea (about $250HKD). If this is a little out of your price range then skidaddle up Nathan Road (to the right of the hotel) and find a good pitstop cafe – there are plenty to choose from.
After refreshments head off north again, taking in the Kowloon Mosque on the left and the lovely twisted Banyan trees that line this avenue, a curiously European touch, created by such an Asian tree. Take a sharp right down Granville Street. No you don’t need any of the cheap boots on sale down this road – they’ll only fall apart when you’ve worn them for two weeks! It could be a good place to get a haircut though – in the salons here these start at about a fiver.
At the end of Granville you’ll find HK’s best museum – the History Museum – and also the science museum. Leave the science to the 8-yer-old boys it clearly caters for (and attracts) but definitely trawl the award-winning History Museum – ‘The Hong Kong Story’ – which was put together at great expense to the local government and contains scale models of colonial era shops and loads of titbits about unique HK culture.
If your brain’s tired after all this, don’t worry – you won’t have to use it again for the rest of the day. By now it should be about 6pm and you’ll be hungry. So retrace your steps up Granville and head north to Jordan for the Temple Market (again). Grub up on BBQ pork and rice or fried noodle from one of the little restaurants and get your souvenirs here – remember to bargain hard and don’t pay more than two thirds of the asking price.
Don’t linger too long or you’ll miss the light show ‘Symphony of Light’, staged every night at 8pm down on Victoria Harbour. The show itself is a bit naff but the view is really not…it’s one of those views you fly thousands of miles for. So finish your day here and then take the star ferry back to Hong Kong island (it runs to ports in Central or Wanchai) for the perfect end to an exhaustingly thorough tour of Kowloon.
I have to admit that my first impressions weren’t good. It’s cold, it’s expensive, it’s busy.
Admittedly, it’s only because I’m coming from Thailand that it seems cold. Any stray Brit who ended up here now, unexpectedly, transported straight from frozen Blighty, would be cheering abundantly and doing a dance of joy while shedding layers faster than Lewis Hamilton drives. I on the other hand went straight out and invested in a full set of thermal undies and the kind of all-encompasing scarf that well-to-do ladies of the midlands wear to draughty church functions, which looks like a cross between a poncho and a dead cat.
The first evening saw me huddled in my hostel bed under two duvets, one of which I had to guiltyly give back when my Eurotrash bunkmate was about to throw a wobbly to the hostel staff. The second night I slept in a hat, scarf and two pairs of gloves: is there is no such thing as heating in this city?
I admit it’s also only really expensive because I’ve come from Thailand, I have really been spoiled in South East Asia. The last place I stayed in Prachuap Khiri Khan gave me my own room with two double beds, bathroom, TV and furniture for £4. Here it’s £15 for a single bunk bed with a mattress so thin your arse goes numb the second it settles.
Still, who am I to complain, right? It will do me some good to feel poor in Asia, when I’ve been smugly cossetted by the cheap prices and soft beds for too long.
Seems apt that I should have to use the old stiff upper lip in a former colony, and one whose British identity is still so close to the surface too. It was only returned to China in ‘97 and most people here speak English, although in many cases it’s English with approximated sense and syntax.
It’s the kind of English that the makers of the slogan t-shirts much beloved of teens across Asia have. (It’s normal to see sentences like “YOU CAME if you see to my bedroom straight is” or LOVE YoU like life in the smoking gun is”). I’m pretty sure the person who came up with this shop name had little practical English language or they might have thought twice:
["WANKO PICTURE HERE"]
I have noticed that the very modern is the very Asian here, and it’s only the slightly shabby or outmoded stuff with an English tint. Things I haven’t been seen in the UK proper soince about 1989, like: ads for Sealy mattresses (remember them). Litres of Ribena. Mister Softee ice cream vans. Bloke on the metro with a big moustache and an argyle sweater berating his rather chinless wife. A real Sloane Ranger – woman in jodphurs, riding boots, pearls and an ACTUAL scrunchie (I thought they were all ritually burned in the 90s). I will bring in more sightings of Ol’ Britainnia if and when I see them.
In the meantime…I have digressed. The only thing I wanted to say really was that despite the fact that my hands have gone blue writing this and I can’t really afford a third pair of gloves (boo hoo), I am very glad to be in Hong Kong. It may be cold, expensive and busy, but it has already amused, interested and tested me and I am looking forward to spending more time here.
[again, photos will have to follow...there's good stuff on the telly tonight!]
Mai is a wannabe rock star who runs the smallest bar in Prachuap Khiri Khan, “possibly in the whole of Thailand” he tells me proudly. The Small World Bar, opposite the night market in this sleepy coastal town has only been open five nights but it’s already a favourite with the town’s few ferangs.
The original idea was to paint the bar yellow and make it stand out, Mai tells me. But he scrapped that plan because of the political connotations. Once the colour yellow was beloved by all Thais as it was the colour of the king, who is almost worshipped here. Unfortunately the leaders of the military coup d’état in 2006 that ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra (so he could go and play fantasy football in the UK) have now appropriated the colour to legitimise their efforts so now for most normal people yellow is off the table for interior decor.
In a shifting of traditional colour symbolism, the king now is represented by pink – on his birthday in December millions donned pink t-shirts to dance in the streets – and the anti-coup rebels, who support Taksin wear red. Sarah, Ed and I met a taxi driver who was a card-carrying red one day in Bangkok. Both he – and Mai – mentioned their worries that if the reds and the yellows can’t reconcile their differences the country may end up in civil war. I managed not to suggest that they all wear orange.
Joking aside, it seems that the corruption here is getting frightening and the mafia has its hand in everything. Watch this space…
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Maybe its because Prachuap Khiri Khan (‘Pra-juaap’ to those in the know) is a little off the beaten track – located bang centre in the tourist wilderness between Bangkok and Surat Thani (the jumping off point for Ko Pha Ngan) – and that I wasn’t expecting a rocking time but it’s not just Mai (above) who makes for good company. The westerners I meet are an unusually varied and interesting lot, and all lone wolves like myself.
Two of them are cyclists, an English bloke riding from Chang Mai to Phuket and an Aussie who’s on his way to China (davecyclesasia.blogspot.com). There are also a couple of German girls, both here nursing broken hearts, and an old American dude who has been to Prachuap Khiri Khan 25 times and this time is here for a full two months of drinking a bottle of Samsong a night and talking a fair amount of well-intended gibberish.
I end up in a fight with a drunk Irish carpenter about the book (and film) Into the Wild. For the uninitiated it’s the true story of a boy who finished Uni and then threw away all his worldly possessions and severed all links with his past to follow a dream of living wild in Alaska. This guy “Willie” thinks the boy was a god (‘Down with western imperialism’); I think he was selfish to leave his parents without a way to know he was ok. Willie thinks that he was building a brave new life for himself out in the bush; I’m more inclined to believe foolhardy and underprepared.
We eventually make up and compromise on Chris McCandless’ (the guy in the book) last thought in his diary: that “Happiness is not real unless it is shared.” In one of those moment of tipsy traveler togetherness we agree that that applies to us too: although we are all enjoying our own journey, travelling for our own reasons, it’s nights like this one in Thailand and the meeting of so many others also on their own quests – same, same but different, that makes it so exciting and give our own journeys meaning. Or at least that’s what we came up with after a few Singhas anyway.
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And that, ladies and gentleman, was my last night in Thailand, probably for a long, long time.
[photos to follow]
