"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.

Where West meets East

Well after a bit of a long week sitting around praying for news on our visas Sini our new Finnish flatmate dragged us out to Mong Kok to try and sort out the wi-fi in the flat. So we took the "Mong Kok Bullet" from Sai Kung which turned out to be quite an experience. I was, (as I'm sure you'll understand) quite exited by the name.  On reflection I think it's maybe a bit of an ironic title, nevertheless it was a good laugh. It's a wee 16 seater minibus, but unlike all the other minbuses in Hong Kong the drivers on the Mong Kok Bullet all wear aviator sunglasses and leather driving gloves. And to keep the Top Gun theme running they drive like lunatics also. Until this I had never seen a minibus overtake a Porsche 911, or heard an engine with quite the same on the edge of exploding sound. For those of you that don't know Mong Kok is the most densely populated area in the world, with 130,000 people per square kilometre. And well having been there, I can believe it. It's crazy! Step out the MTR and you are immediately swept away by the swarm of people. Everyone is in a rush and seems to know exactly where they are going.

Every building and down every dark alleyway and on every street corner someone is selling something. What would you like?  The huge electronics stores, clothes shops of every variety, dodgy jewelers, and even more dodgy designer handbags, a fake rolex, a tailored suit, a kayak, some thermal socks, a cuban cigar, a fridge. Well this is your place. To be honest though all we wanted to do was get someone to come and fix our wi-fi, and after battling through the armies of raging shoppers the man in the shop told us to phone up the customer helpline. At that point all I wanted to do was press the eject button and get out of the claustrophobic sweatbox that is Mong Kok. But for over a million people this is home, and I can't imagine it. Half an hour was enough for me. 

Today, back to the city. But this time to Central. If you've seen a photo of Hong Kong it's probably of the skyline of central. The skyscrapers are amazing and well there's certainly no shortage of them. Hong Kong is the tallest city in the world, and it has 3 of the worlds 10 tallest buildings. 

Although not particularly tall The Bank of China Tower is the most striking of all the buildings with the chopsticks on the roof and the mirrored windows. Off to the right of this photo is the HSBC headquarters, unfortunately I couldn't get a photo of it but the centre of the building is one huge atrium that goes all the way up and criss crossing the atrium are hundreds of escalators. The building holds records for having the most escalators in one building and for having the longest unsupported escalator in the world. So in case you hadn't gathered Hong Kong holds a few records! They do seem to be a bit of a record hunting group of people. I was reading an article in the South China Morning Post (yes I did buy it) outraged that Hong Kong was only 5th in the world for quality of life, maybe they'll have that one sewn up by the time I leave.

Anyhoo, I ventured from Central up the now infamous Central/Mid-Levels escalator to Soho. I think it's a little different from the London Soho. It means South of Hollywood Road and it's one of the most affluent areas of the city. It's also a little odd. This is where my title came from. Walking through Soho is like a cross between upper class London and what the rest of us would think of as China. Rich English and Filipeno wives crowd designer boutiques and trendy coffee shops waiting for their chauffeurs to come take them to the next shop. On the street though the chinese  delivery boys and slightly lost tourists (aka me) dodge the constant stream of Mercs and Rolls Royces. Above the bamboo scaffolders are still climbing to scary heights, and there is still a constant stream of bin rakers pushing their rusty trollies around looking for aluminium cans they can sell for pennies at the scrap merchants. Soho really is the contradiction to top them all.  At times Hong Kong seems so Chinese but Soho seems for the rich to be the answer to this, they can hide away in their champagne bars and pretend they're in Monaco or.... wherever else rich people go.

 In Hong Kong there is obviously a huge divide between the rich and poor, probably more so than in most other countries in the world. But never have I seen rich and poor so close together, or so accepting of each other. The difference is, here the poor are employed by the rich: anyone who is anyone has at least a chauffeur, a maid, a gardener, a nanny and a Filipino wife, and well the poor respect the rich because they pay their wages. I suppose this is part of the new system, but hardly anyone in Hong Kong is unemployed. There is a job for everyone, and if there's not then one is created. A new skyscraper is built or a new tunnel dug and the city continues to expand. Hong Kong's development is in the opinions of many, spiralling out of control. Its only a matter of time before the star ferry will no longer be needed as the island will cease to be an island. Even now more land is being reclaimed for another huge building.

Central is obviously stunning to look at, and for a wannabe civil engineer about the best place in the world. However, Chinese or cultural it is not. And to top off my cultural tour of Central I went for a Macdonald's, yum. Actually not yum it's really discusting i'm never going to have one again. Oh and just in case you were worried about my health...

Good to see they've got it covered.

So to round up a rather long and rambling post, as I sit here listening to the Pulp Fiction Soundtrack and tucking into a fresh tube of Pringles. It's sometimes quite hard to believe im in China, moving just a mile or two through the city going from China to Monaco is quite strange, but I suppose thats Hong Kong... Strange.

So, we're still waiting for visas! How long can it take? And yes it's still hot.... Very Hot!

What have you got to look forward to soon. Well we need to go see the harbour light show, which may or may not produce some awsome photos. Also when we do eventually get our visas we have to leave the country and return to validate them (don't ask me...). So we're going to the Portugese colony Macau. There they have the biggest casino in the world and the biggest bungee jump in the world. It could be quite a trip!

See you soon.

Kenneth

Paradise and Pizza

I should start by saying I have now caught up with my sleep! YAY! This has certainly made the last few days a bit easier and we've had an amazing few days exploring the country. Firstly we decided to go and see the Tian Tan (Titan) Buddha on Lantau Island at the other end of Hong Kong.

It's 30m tall and weighs almost 300 tonnes. To be honest though it's just a bit of a tourist trap. It was only built in the 90's and although it's impressive I can't imagine it's really very important to Buddhists. What was amazing though was Lantau Peak sometimes known as Sunset Peak, a fairly big mountain that towers over the statue.

It's only 923m tall, so not incredibly high but it is really really steep. So steep that the "trail" up is more of a staircase than a trail. Also we now know that midday was not the best time to start climbing on a clear sunny day. Several breaks and a couple of bottles of water later we eventually made it to the top. The eagle eyed amongst you may have noticed that we didn't start from sea level and that the Buddha is actually half way up the mountain. Well, to be honest it was a really hard climb and well boo hoo. Anyhoo the view from the top was amazing!

Well after the painful walk down and the awful rush hour MTR ride home we sat down for a slice of the best pizza in the world "Paisano's" in Sai Kung! Well earned I think.

So how could we follow the mountain adventure? Well I think we did quite well. We hired a couple of Kayaks from the beach club and paddled out into what looked like Ha Long Bay or whatever it's called off James Bond. It was a stunning day, and despite an entire bottle of suncream being used we still got burnt. We found a deserted beach on a tiny island and stopped for lunch.

It really was like being in the Carribean or some other tropical paradise, the water was so warm and well obviously the sun was a little too warm. No wonder the Hongkongers never go on holiday or leave the country, with all this only a short train ride from the city centre it really must be an amazing place to live. The other thing is, on weekdays all these places are deserted because everyone is working. I don't think we'll ever bother doing this sort of thing at the weekend because it seems half the city comes out to the country park to do something. Also the prices seem to skyrocket at the weekend, for the kayak hire it would have been almost 3 times as much at the weekend.

In other news, we are still waiting for visas. It's only been 18 days now and on average takes 30 so still a bit of waiting to be done :-(  But on a good note we are moving to our permanent flat today out of this mice infested one. I'll let you know how the new flat is at some point. Anyhoo I better get packing.

Bye xxx

A city of contradictions

Well the last few days have been a bit of a struggle. I can't sleep at all at night but seem to crash about 8 in the morning and sleep through till 2 in the afternoon. Once I get this jet lag cracked everything should be a little easier. At the moment we are still waiting for our visas to arrive, so for the next two or three weeks we're effectively on holiday. They have agreed that my year doesn't start till I get my visa though so looks like I'm getting an extra month for free :-).

As mentioned, "The Spirit of Outward Bound". The skipper Nigel could be recieving a few beers as a bribe to take us out me thinks. 

Anyhoo, your probably wondering what the title of this post was all about.... 

Over the last however many days it's been I've begun to notice and understand a little more about this city, and the way it works. Hongkongers pride themselves on running the most efficient city in the world, and to a certain extent they should be proud. The transport system here is amazing, it runs like clockwork, they polish it every night so it's squeaky clean and shining every morning and it's mega cheap! To get into the city costs me $15 (about 1pound 30) And this crazy attitude to public service continues throughout everything, landline phone calls in the whole of Hong Kong are free for everyone, and mobile calls are very cheap, like 2p a minute! And on the sailing front, all the watersports centres here are government run, they're open 7 days a week and run courses in everything, it's based on the RYA scheme so you can do pretty much whatever you want, the best bit is membership is only $100 a year (7 pounds 90) and that covers everything! It's hard to believe that in a country with on average 5% income tax and no VAT that they can do all this.

Well, whats the catch? If you actually want to buy a house here you have to be loaded! But from my point of view there are still a few issues. They seem to have completely ruined the whole amazingness of this sailing centre by forcing everyone through  pages and pages of paperwork every time they want to do anything. So if I wanted to go down to the centre and hire a boat, (which FYI i'm not allowed to do as supposedly an RYA dinghy instructor isn't good enough to hire a boat there!) I would have to book 3 months in advance and tell them what my mum's first pet was called and any other irrelevant bit of information they want. What A Fiasco! 

This is just one example of Hong Kong's crippling bureaucracy. Everything needs to be approved by someone,  you must be qualified to do anything (even to jump off the pier!) and if you want to change a lightbulb..... "No no no no, you'll need planning permission for that". So when Hongkongers claim that they are efficient, i'm afraid i'd have to disagree. This is for sure the least efficient place i've ever seen.Ok at home things get done badly, but at least they get done. Hong Kong might have a shiny fast MTR but if you want to get anything done here you better be patient. 

I've only been here a week or something so I don't want to draw too many conclusions from what I've seen, these are just my observations and later in the year I might begin to understand a little more about why it's like this. 

And well as a final comment: For the most health and safety obsessed culture I've ever seen (yes I thought the UK was bad) how come they allow this?

Ok, well plans for the next few days: We're going to try and go see the horse racing at Happy Valley tomorrow night, and theres maybe a trip to ocean park as well. I'll let you know how it goes.

If anyone fancies writing me a letter heres my new address:

Kenneth Laing,

Outward Bound Hong Kong,

Tai Mong Tsai Road,

Sai Kung,

New Territories,

Hong Kong,

Night night everyone.

Kenneth

xxx

Heat, Crowds and Noodles

Well after a pretty uneventful 16 hour flight we arrived in Hong Kong, and my god it was hot! 35 degrees and almost 100% humidity and it was properly sunny (which it turns out doesn't happen too often). Anyhoo we got straight into the van and headed through the city to our new  home.

The centre is in the New Territories of Hong Kong, so it's not actually in the city. Instead it's in the lush and hilly Sai Kung country park. The centre runs a lot of land based courses and kayaking, but the best thing is the   70ft ex BT Global Challenge yacht moored out the front! :-)

For our first meal in Hong Kong our host took us out for a Thai..... Not quite what I was expecting, but when it arrived it was the nicest meal I have ever eaten. The flavours were explosive! There were about 10 different dishes for us to try and each one was stunning! It only cost about $15 for a main as well!

Despite the distance it only took us an hour to get into central, the MTR was pretty amazing and it only cost us 2 pounds. Well heading up the peak to get a first view over the city seemed like a good idea at the time. This was the view.....

Pretty amazing, but I think we'll try and go back up on a clear day to get the full view. Well it wasn't the last blunder of the day either we thought we'd try and walk down to the mid levels escalator. Rather than building a tram or another subway line they thought they'd just build a huge escalator to go up to the flats in the foreground. Well it turns out the escalator only goes down in the morning, and comes back up for the rest of the day. So we had to walk all the way down to the city in the heat and humidity. Wat A Fiasco!

Once we actually got down the city looked pretty amazing, as you'd guess it's very very busy but its so different from Edinburgh or London. For a start there's no litter, and the other thing I really noticed is the air quality is much better , there's no smoky buses, and certainly far fewer lines of traffic than in Edinburgh. The whole city runs like clockwork, the Chinese are very impatient but it's fine because they never have to wait for anything.

Last night we headed into Wan Chai, Hong Kong's famous rowdy party district, for my 18th. I decided it best not to take the camera for obvious reasons ;-) but the city really does look stunning at night. Even for a Thursday night the place was buzzing and most places were open all through the night. Every bar we went into was full of rich expats, and as I was wearing my kilt I certainly got a lot of attention. Best bit was we only had to buy 2 drinks for ourselves for the whole night :-) Just as well to be honest with a pint costing $60! (thats 6 pounds!)  It's amazing, wherever you go, you always meet another crazy Scotsman! This one was a rich architect called Angus, he saw me passing in my kilt and dragged us into his local and him and his Thai bride ;-)  bought us a lot of drinks. All in all a pretty amazing 18th! :-)

Today.. well it was a long lie in ;-) and well jet lag has truly destroyed my body clock, I really have no concept of what time it is and I'm really struggling to sleep at night. Hopefully I'll get there over the next few days. Anyhoo the one amazing thing we saw today was a local seafood restaurant. This was the front....

We decided not to, and instead went for a Chinese with the locals. It was very nice and only cost $16 for a main, but they do huge portions here and I do feel quite guilty when I can only manage half the plate. It rained like crazy today, which was pretty good cos it's much cooler now and for the first time since I arrived we can sit outside without sweating! Might even turn off the air con in the room tonight.... maybe not tho ;-) it is still 25.

Tomorrow we're going to head into Mong Kok the famous shopping district, and there should be lots of photos.

Night.

Kenneth