Why did the Brits ever leave?

With a subtle shiver running down my spine I realised that I’m my mother’s daughter. Rather than get a bus overland straight to HK (very easy, very cheap, pretty comfortable) I decided that the only way to arrive in a world destination is by sea. Unfortunately, I may have neglected to inform a very relaxed Master Southern that this would involve getting a night bus to Shenzhen, hotfooting it across the soulless city at 7am the next morning to the ferry port and then an hour long jet ferry to HK central. Full of vim and vigour following our hour long body massages we set off on what we hoped would be an uneventful journey.

Wrong.

The bus was almost comically uncomfortable, Shenzhen is a vast area of concrete nothingness that is actually quote hard to navigate at 630 in the morning after no sleep and I saw a mangled corpse close up. Sheesh. Whilst trying to soothe my cramped body on the bus by watching How to Train Your Dragon at around midnight I glanced outside to notice flashing lights. Sadly accidents are a dime a dozen on Chinese roads so I didn’t pay much notice. This was until a flash of red caught my eye. I couldn’t quite figure out what it was (and for the life of me I can’t quite understand why I tried) so as the bus slowed down I leaned out for a better look. What it a moped? A dented car? Nope. AS the bus grew level and I was basically on top of the object I realised that it was a battered, bloody man with no left arm below the elbow and no left foot. The reason why I hadn’t realised what it was earlier was that I was looking for 2 feet on a human body. Shudder. I’ve rarely seen anything so visceral (although a recent moments in Phnom Penh spring to mind) and that image will stay with me a long time. I don’t think I went back to watching the film………

Sardine-like, shattered and shaken neither Southern or I got any sleep that night and were mean and miserable by the time they bus dropped us off. Of course our moods were vastly improved when we realised that the bus stop was miles out of the town centre and the streets were deserted. With a little trudging, a little miming and a lot of drawing pictures in the hot morning sun we finally made it to the ferry about 2.5 hours later. Happily all was plain sailing (sorry) from then and we arrived at Central Pier in style and tiredly happy. We had planned to stay at Al’s old work mate Kai’s flat whilst we were in HK but is brother had only just left after a 2 week stay so we decided to bunk in a dorm for a couple of nights to give him a quick breather before we descended. These couple of nights in a dorm were….interesting. I’m not sure that Al ever believed my stories of just how few inhibitions some people have after spending extended periods in a dorm room. Let’s just say that HK proved me right. We had a smorgasbord of human activities normally kept behind closed doors. Whispered (hah!) arguments about who disrespected who by kissing someone else, making up session, full on biblical sessions and mad old Japanese guy who liked to wake up a 3 in the morning to rummage about in plastic bags for 15 mins then go back to sleep. I tried to block this all out with my iPod but I don’t think Al & I will ever be quite the same after my inadvertently hearing ‘why don’t you take our pants off’ and Al’s catching a healthy glimpse of a hirsute male French bottom. Sigh. And shudder for that matter.

Kai has probably never seen 2 people more pleased to move into his flat. We haemorrhaged money in HK anyway getting all giddy about modern services that we have gotten to grow and love. Decent haircuts, toiletries, Subway, clothes that fit my behemoth (in Asian terms anyway) body and, cough, a kindle an iPod all did an admirable job in draining our finances but we would have been in a much worse situation if not for Kai. Both his bottomless well of generosity in buying us moochers drinks but also in letting us cramp his style for staying in his flat. All I can say is he is a glutton for punishment as we are going back for his birthday in Jan.

Having both been to HK before we didn’t visit many tourist attractions but instead concentrated on the finer things in life. Namely a smidge of gambling at Happy Valley (luckily I had a small winning streak or would have been a little peeved) drinking and dancing in bars and clubs singing along to Katie Perry and Justin Beiber (I kid you not), eating half our body weight in dim sum in Maxim’s dim sum palace, lolling on the beach (for the first time since we left home!) at repulse Bay, having a lovely dinner with Peter from Brunswick alongside Suki and Jasmine and the crowning moment of indulgence eating high tea and drinking earl grey and decanted diet coke at the Peninsular listening to a string quartet play such masterpieces as ‘Our Song’ by the eminent Mr Elton John and a few other musical classics. Life doesn’t get much better than that!

We can’t exactly say we did anything hugely worthy but by jiminy we enjoyed ourselves......

and were sad to leave for our next destination, Vietnam.