Hong Kong

Our final stop -because we had to at some point- was Hong Kong.  Once in possession of the British Empire, most of the Hong Kong streets have very British names. They also drive on the correct side of the road and they use our plug socket configuration.  Even though the taxi drivers drive like fiends, everything seems slow and orderly compared to the last couple of months.  They even stop at the red lights, an act the likes of which had faded into distant memory.

The weather was gloomy and damp, which I was quite happy to accept at this point.  I'm sure the novelty will wear off within 48 hours of getting home, but it’s nice to walk outside without feeling like you’re breathing through a damp cloth.  It’s also the lack of the smell of burning.  It occurred to me that there has been something burning nearby everyday since Bhutan, be it cooking flames, garbage disposal or forest fire.  This was the more familiar, civilised exhaust fumes of the developed world, and it’s more like home.

Somewhat like home too are the pubs that one finds on Lockhart Road with names like Churchill's or The Queen Victoria: bars with an exaggerated British theme that attract pretty much anyone from Europe or the Anglosphere.  They all have Premiership footy on massive TVs and pissy European beer on tap, just like home.  There was no-one throwing up or arguing with the door staff, so it lacked a little something in authenticity.  It’s all in the details, guys.

Visited before stayed one night in Kowloon (huge storm)

The extravagance on this leg was brunch at the Upper House,  49 floors up and peering down at downtown, which is a perpetual building site.  Such is the premium of the real estate there that many operating buildings were having floors added to their roofs.  The waiter, in repeating my order back to me, corrected my pronunciation of 'steak tartare' to the American manner ('steak tar-tar'), and almost sustained a frenzied butter knife stabbing for his efforts.

Our night on the razz found us at Ori-Gin – a gin-based cocktail bar.  It cost a fortune but Chan did get a cocktail served in a miniature bathtub, complete with earl-grey ‘bubble bath’.  She got to keep the tiny rubber duck.

One of the scenic things to do in HK is take the cable car up to The Peak.  Last time we were in town, several years ago, we were too ill to go up (courtesy of a local Italian restaurant - that'll teach us for not eating local) and this time it was misty as hell, with what looked like an hour wait.  Sack that; it's not going anywhere. Maybe third time lucky.

But the real focus, and our final stop, was to go to Disneyland Hong Kong.  We do quite like Disney and have been to 4 of the 5 (soon to be 6) parks (I’d go to Tokyo, but I need some convincing about Shanghai, when it opens).  We stayed at one of the Disney hotels and got a couple of days in the park.

Apparently the park was designed in accordance with Feng Shui principles, which must’ve been a happy coincidence, because it looks just like the other parks.

It feels a bit less Disney-ey than the other parks.  You don’t get the terrifying enthusiasm of the American ‘cast members’ and they cancel parades at the merest glimpse of rain. But it was fun enough, and I could see over everyone’s head for the parade.

Also, I've found that if you compile several bad pictures of the fireworks, it looks like someone's called in a drone strike on Sleeping Beauty:

One of the janitors did have a knack for drawing characters with water and his broom, which was a bit out of left field:

This park is aimed at the mainland Chinese, and as such is more focussed on shopping and photo opportunities.  There are literally hundreds of reminders about the park-wide selfie stick ban. Also there is no ghost stuff, due to the Chinese being a bit sensitive on the whole departed spirits and references to death, so we get Mystic Manor rather than the Haunted Mansion.

The hotel was OK, and you could walk to the park inside of half an hour, if so inclined. The food both in the hotels and the parks was a bit disappointing.  Somehow Walt's Cafe managed to add cheese to my ice cream.

Chan got a chance to coo over the multitude of Chinese babies, for which she has a particular weakness.  Even the ones throwing white-hot tantrums looked adorable. They were equally transfixed with us when queuing up, so everyone was happy.

The trip advisor reviews for Disneyland are a mixed bag. Most of the negatives are from people who visited in August, in the middle of the Chinese school holidays, when it is consistently boiling hot and packed. No, ta. There has been quite a lot of hostility towards the mainland Chinese tourists from everyone in SE Asia, which made our lives easier because everyone's we're always easier by comparison. The Chinese government is a bit concerned about their behaviour too, and has set up a no-fly register for overt offenders against foreign sensibilities.

Here's Mickey riding a Whale's spout. Because: Disney

One thing we noticed was that, when flying everywhere between Australia and here, the routine air safety briefing has been amended to include warnings about stealing life jackets,  as apparently a number of Chinese passengers thought they were take-home souvenirs on account of not being nailed down. This lady from Singapore has some compelling hypotheses as to why the PRC tourists can be such a pain.  I didn’t get too much trouble with the queue-jumping or pushing, but I am about 30% taller and 100% heavier than most of them.  Chan, uncharacteristically gave one lady a kick for being a twat.  Disney, where dreams come true.

And then, just like that, we were done. 
I’m writing this and  the Macau post and editing Chan’s Hanoi post (she has a short attention span) on the flight home to Blighty.  So this is the last location post.  I do have some final post-trip naval-gazing stuff to write, so swallow down that lump in your throat for a bit longer.

Macau

After a brief stop in Hong Kong, we took the ferry across to Macau. If you don’t know: where Hong Kong was British until 1999; Macau was Portuguese.  Like Hong Kong, it was a great trading port which also enjoys ‘Special Administrative Area’ status. Which means it’s China but not really, as it has its own currency, laws and border controls.

It is actually a series of islands, linked by bridge or reclaimed land.  Cotai, the area we were staying in,  has been summoned back from Neptune at some point.

"I remember when this were nowt but industry-contaminated sea water" 

The biggest draw to Macau is gambling.  They take six times more money from gambling revenue than Vegas, which is rather a lot. The Chinese don’t have casinos, so they take weekend breaks here to get their fix.  Their game is baccarat – a game I don’t play because I wasn’t written by Ian Fleming.  We could find blackjack tables, but the lowest bet was HK$500 per hand – which is about £50 or US$75. Fuck that. We don’t mind allocating a couple of hundred dollars of written-off money to a night out in Laughlin or Vegas, but those stakes would make any normal budget vaporise in ten minutes.  The casinos here are owned and styled by the same companies  who run Vegas so,  accordingly,  there is a Venetian, a 1/3 scale Eiffel Tower, an  MGM, a Sands, etc.

The Venetian does have an M&S, however.

It becomes very obvious, very fast that the Chinese are not here for fun; they’re here as an investment. So the atmosphere is decidedly less jovial. Whatever. We save more money that way.  They do have the normal casino trappings of bars, clubs, restaurants and shows, so there is other entertainment to be had.

So, our normal source of decadence denied us, we took one of the free shuttles across to the mainland to look at the Portuguese old town.  This really does look air-dropped in from Europe, with plazas, churches and whatnot.  What breaks that illusion are the Hong Kong-style ultra-dense apartment blocks sprung up all over the horizon.

Popping into the museum, it was refreshing to walk through an actual museum, curated and designed by actual academics, rather than the Politburo.  They have a rather nice part at the beginning where they compare the religion, philosophy and technology of Europe and China on opposite but parallel walls, tracking like-with-like thorough the ages.

The Museum is set in the base of the old citadel and finishes on its ramparts.

Pictured: temptation

The local delicacy is the custard tart, by the way. Yes, the same ones they sell in Nando's. The Portuguese influence there runs deep, with tarts, biscuits and cakes of European origin being touted by competing Chinese-run bakeries all over town.

We stayed at the Hard Rock Hotel (pictured further above) which was part of the City of Dreams complex which also hosts the $250 million show 'The House of Dancing Water'.  We’ve seen several of the Cirque du Soleil shows in Vegas and elsewhere, and this was similar, albeit minus the annoying french clowns molesting each other with foam blocks.  It was closest to ‘O’ at the Bellagio in that it involved an incomprehensible plot, acrobatics and water.

For some reason the penultimate scene involved motorbike stunts, which was a bit odd given that the rest of the show had been set in some manner of contortionist watery Narnia   Anyway it was a good show, and what the mainland Chinese lack in ability to stand in a queue, they make up for as an enthusiastic audience.

Back to Hong Kong, to wrap this whole thing up.

Kurzfassung auf Deutsch: Macau ist der Ort, an dem Festland-Chinesen am Wochenende zu spielen fahren. Wir bevorzugen Las Vegas.