Typhoon Update

The Typhoon has changed course slightly and will now hit about 200km east of Hong Kong. We will still get some pretty strong winds, around 70-80knots and some torrential rain. I think though that we will escape all but minor damage, and all communications should be ok. 

It was on the news today that 200,000 people have be left homeless in the Philippines from Typhoon Megi.  When it reaches land over the next few days in China it is likely to cause some serious damage and flooding, and will probably reach the news in the UK. It seems though that Hong Kong is to be spared the full force of the biggest tropical cyclone (the generic term for hurricanes and typhoons) of the year.

There still seems to be a bit of panic in Hong Kong, the general public aren't always watching the forecasts too carefully and rely on the government warnings instead. Supposedly over the last few days Billions of dollars have been spent on insurance, and every window is now covered with masking tape. The school that was in for course this week was pulled out in a hurry after the parents saw the forecast, and most people wont be going to work tomorrow or over the weekend. (the "weekend" doesn't mean much here)

I'll let you know how it goes.

SUPERTYPHOON!!

If you've been watching the news recently you may have heard about Supertyphoon Megi. It's a category 5 Supertyphoon that has just passed over the Philippines. It's not yet clear how bad the damage has been in the Philippines, but what we do know is that it's forecast to turn towards Hong Kong and reach land on Saturday.

These tracks show all the different forecasts. This Typhoon is the same strength as Hurricane Katrina was when it hit New Orleans, and we have been told to expect wind speeds not less that 155knots and torrential rain. 







This image shows the size of the typhoon, we are expecting that first rain band to hit us tomorrow. Also you can see the typhoon has a central eye.


It is likely that if we get a direct hit there will be extensive damage to buildings and anything outside. We have been told we may be without water or electricity for up to a week. Outward Bound expects to lose all of it's boats in the event of a direct hit, including The Spirit. 


At the moment however there is still no Typhoon warning in Hong Kong. The Typhoon warning system only starts when a Typhoon is within a certain distance from the city. Once it's out there will no doubt be general panic amongst the population. Everything in Hong Kong will shut and the city will ground to a halt. 


I think there is already a bit of a mounting tension, certainly amongst the staff here at OBHK. Hong Kong hasn't had a direct hit for a number of years, and not of this strength for many decades. Everyone here knows what happened in New Orleans. Hong Kong should not flood like New Orleans but the strength of wind and the size of the storm surge could be as big if not bigger. 


When it does reach land it will probably be on the news in the UK. I'll also put up a post later in the week once we know where it's going. If it does hit, just be aware I may not have any form of communication for a while.


Of course forecasts aren't always accurate, so it might just die away or miss us completely. 

"OH MY GAAAWWWWDDDD!!!!!"

So as I mentioned in my last post our first course was helping on a five day hiking course with a group of 13-14 year olds from a Hong Kong international school. The course had already been out for 2 days when we met them, so fortunately they had already been broken in to the realities of an Outward Bound course. The school the kids had come from was one of the best international schools in Hong Kong, and the kids were seriously rich. Supposedly with this group last year two armed bodyguards accompanied one of the kids throughout the entire course. Fortunately we didn't get any bodyguards this time.

The course involved the kids spending 5 days out in the wilds of Sai Kung country park, walking from camp to camp with all the food they would need for the week, and the tents. And as the week progressed they became responsible for all the navigation and team decisions as well. So at the start of the week the instructor takes a leading role in the group, but by the time we got there we were just checking they didn't kill themselves. 

The trails throughout the park are sometimes quite rough and overgrown and usually very steep! So for kids who have never walked on anything but concrete, never walked up a hill or stairs, and never had to walk more than from the door of their chauffeur driven Merc to the lobby of their luxury apartment block this was like climbing Everest. Every time they saw even the smallest hill to climb, or any sort of animal on the road they would scream "OH MY GAAAAWWWWDDD". They all have ridiculous American accents, and well with the large numbers of hills and animals you tend to find in the wild my ears were bleeding after a few hours. Most of the kids are pretty fit, many play a lot of sports when their not studying Shakespeare or practicing the violin or brushing their pony. So it's not a lack of fitness that makes them so slow, it's just that most of them have never left the city. Some of them don't even realise a place like this exists just a couple more stops along the subway from the city. 

To them, we are almost gods. Just because we can walk up what to us seems just a gravelly hill (it took them half an hour to get down this one). I think they also found it a bit odd being instructed by a Scotsman and Englishman and a Finnish woman. I reckon they now think all Scottish, English and Finnish people are crazy lunatics who live in the hills and hunt animals.

All in all the kids may be very academically smart, but they are thick as mince at everything else. They struggle to walk up hills, and actually physically can't walk down them (instead they just sit on their bums and slide), they just seem to have no independence and no idea how to do anything for themselves. I thought I was bad not being able to iron or cook without some catastrophe, but at least I can open a tin and walk downhill!

The final challenge for the kids involved sleeping under a makeshift shelter on a desert island thats about 5m wide in the middle of Port Shelter and then making a raft and paddling it back at 6 in the morning. Another instructor took over from Sean and I at this point as supposedly we're not qualified enough to go anywhere near water.... Maybe just as well though, I've got  a feeling there may have been a few more "OH MY GAAAWWWWWDDDD"S when they saw the island!

I think the kids do get a lot out of the course, and hopefully learn some life skills. Even though I think many of them don't really enjoy it, and see it more like torture than education, they might look back upon it in later life and be glad they did it. Most of them will never have to open a tin or walk up a hill or do anything for themselves ever again. But maybe they can at least know the hard work their servants have to go through just to bring them a meal or wash their clothes. If these kids knew just how lucky they are they might not have moaned so much about having to put up a tent or open a tin. Many will never have to work, they're parents are rich enough to fund them for life, and for those who do work there will be no job interview and no grumpy boss to keep them in line, they will inherit their parents empire and be the boss from day one. Obviously I can't talk about specific kids or mention anything personal about them, but trust me, YOU will have bought products from some of their parents companies and some are from billionaire families.They're not embarrassed about their wealth. I think in the UK they would be a little more modest and certainly wouldn't be boasting about how many billions "daddy" made last year. But they are the next leaders of the commercial world, and many of us mere mortals will be employed by them. It feels good, even if it's just for a week to be the one they look up to, the one they consider superior.

Next week is the same sort of idea, but with younger kids. It should be a little less intense, and we certainly wont be marooning them on an island.

A $1000000 Sail

 Last weekend marked the Hebe Haven Yacht Club 24hr Charity Dinghy race. Every year outward bound enter a team into the event, and this year we were asked to come along and sail a few shifts in the race. So I was expecting a pokey wee event with a few diehard sailing teams out of a small club. Turns out this is a huge event in Hong Kong. 44 teams were signed up, and the club dinghy park was taken over by hundreds of stalls and food tents. There was a crane so that the TV crews could get good shots for the news, tv display boards showing live results from the race. And the teams were not made up of diehards. Some of the competitors were ex Americas Cup crew members, and even the 13 year old kids were pro! And the real stars of the show were the two guys who each sailed the full 24hrs on their own in Picos! The event raises over $1000000 every year! As I was the most experienced sailor in the team I was asked to helm the start. It was pretty intense, the startline was right next to the pontoons which were lined with hundreds of spectators and a couple of TV camera crews. And there was a commentator blasting out over the whole harbour.



The wind was, as we say in the UK, light and shite. And thats an understatement. It would shift 90 degrees every 30 seconds or so and was a rubbish 2 - 0 mph. As this seems to be the usual wind conditions in Hong Kong, the locals got stuck straight in and started raking in the laps. Anyhoo I managed to wrestle the dodgy old 420 round the course a few times in my first 3 hours, and by the time I managed to swap with someone we were in a not too shabby 23rd out of 44.

Sean and I were asked to come back to sail from 4 - 6am, so we did the sensible thing, and headed to the boozer. Unfortunately by the time I got back we somehow seemed to have dropped to 40th.....  Anyhoo, sailing in the dark was amazing! It was quite hard to tell whether or not you were moving, but eventually the marks got closer.  After our middle of the night sail, and pub trip, I was ready just to crash back at the flat, so I missed the end of the race. But the whole thing was pretty amazing. There was a really good atmosphere over the whole club, and the event was brilliantly organised and best of all was great fun and raised a tonne of money. I've never seen anything like it in the UK. It certainly seems to be an incredibly successful event, and I'd love to see someone try and do something like it in Scotland.

There's not too much else to report I'm afraid. We're going out on our first expedition tomorrow. A two day camping course with an international school from Hong Kong. I'll let you know how it goes.

The New Sin City

Visas have arrived!! :-)

So yesterday we headed to the Portugese colony of Macau an hours jetfoil from Hong Kong. Unfortunately it was a really rainy miserable (albeit 25 degrees) day so I couldn't really get many photos. On first inspection I would say the place is completely insane! I thought Hong Kong was crazy, but this place really is bonkers. It's like going to Portugal, the streets are cobbled and there are loads of colonial European style buildings. And well the general organisation of the place is a little more European than Hong Kong. The traffic doesn't seem to follow any rules (much like France ;-) ) and there are millions of mopeds! Every other street is lined with thousands and thousands of parked mopeds, and on the street they swarm through the traffic without a care for the law or their safety. Obviously all the signs are in Cantonese and everyone is Chinese. So the place is just really confusing, it feels like Portugal but it's Chinese.

We took a bus from the Jetfoil terminal to the centre of town. Well thats where we thought the bus was going. I think I could have navigated better than the driver I swear we went down the same street twice! On arrival in the central square (which looks a lot like that famous one in Venice... whatever its called) we realised it was pouring down with rain, we had left our umbrellas at home, and well it just got a little intense on the streets. It was sooooo busy, like Princes street on a busy saturday before Christmas but on every street! So we decided to head to one of the casinos.

The other side of Macau is the gambling. Macau is the most popular gambling destination in the world and has the biggest casino in the world. It's not very well known in the west, but it's much bigger than Vegas, and no less spectacular.

This is the Grand Lisboa, the second biggest. The biggest, The Venetian, has 3 full sized canals inside it with real life gondoliers for hire! It was a half hour bus journey away on another island, so we settled for the MGM Grand, no cameras inside...sorry.

It was a bit odd to be honest. You really do get lost inside these places. I thought we had been in for an hour maybe, but turned out to be three. I think I started with beginners luck on the slot machines and roulette. I was at one point $300 up. But as is the way with these things I lost it all again in no time. All the crazy chinese tables were crowded with screaming gamblers. This is the town of high stakes, on the cheap tables the minimum bet was $200, but on most was more like $1000. Some of the people looked like they had been in there for days, and some certainly had been making use of the free drinks a little too much. I'm sure some of these people practically live in the casino and just gamble all day to escape their real lives. It really is a hideous place, but god it's addictive.  I think we're going to head back at some point and maybe see the Venetian.

Well just before catching the jetfoil back to HK we stopped for dinner. It was one of these crazy Cantonese places where you get presented a menu in Cantonese and you tick what you want. So we just had to tick and hope for the best. I got chicken, and some egg and some onion or something, it was really nice, and Sean managed to get something edible also.

The Jetfoil was pretty awesome actually. They're huge hydrofoiling ferries that fly at 40 knots between HK and Macau every 15 mins. They are made by Boeing, and are powered by two 800 horsepower jet engines! I think Calmac should get some. ;-)

The only ferry I've been on where they ask you to wear a seatbelt!

Tomorrow we have to go back to Wan Chai to get our Hong Kong ID cards, and then we will officially be temporary workers! I'll probably do another post next week once we have begun work, I believe we are being put on support first. Which means we'll be helping with some of the land based expeditions out hiking for a few days at a time in the New Territories.

Ciao for now.