Hong Kong

Hong Kong Airport – December 8th

I had a return flight from Tokyo back to Hong Kong, I didn’t want to have to go back to Hong Kong, I would have preferred to travel direct to my next stop which, after some deliberation, I decided upon Bangkok. I had thought about Manila but I was still recovering from the Japanese Finger and just wanted to travel easy, and Thailand is exactly that, you don’t really need to worry about anything when in Thailand, everything is on a plate, and travellers in Thailand are really just holiday makers dressed in baggy pants. Thailand is also cheap and after spending the equivalent of a garage extension in Japan then I needed to do some pound cost averaging. Like everything in Japan though, flying out of Tokyo is expensive, so I had to do the return flight and get a cheap flight out of Hong Kong. I would have preferred to have continued the travel overland but i hadn’t thought this far ahead and hadn’t arranged a dual entry visa into China or a Vietnamese Visa. Nevermind, I can't do everything and some places I will have to do on another jaunt.

The flight I booked out of Hong Kong Airport left at around 8am on the 8th December and the flight from Tokyo arrived the night before at around 10pm. I only really had 10 hours to kill so I decided to spend the night in the airport like some crusty vagabond. There are websites dedicated to sleeping in airports and train stations so I did my homework and set up my bed in the arrivals hall just underneath the industrial sized air conditioning unit.

I was in good company, there were plenty of us smelly cretins all camped up for the night in the same place, so I found a seat and made myself comfortable.

I must have been the only person awake still when I heard someone dragging their feet towards Skid Row. I looked out and I saw a woman dressed in bright red pajamas, red slippers and with some scarlet red decorations in her scatty hair. She was pushing a luggage trolley with a smashed suitcase on top that looked like it had been salvaged it from a skip. ‘Here we go!!’ I thought.

The lady in Red spoke good English but she was clearly on day release from the local mental asylum.

‘We are looking for people to join us and help us with the children.’ I looked around to find who ‘We’ were. She started, pulling out a homemade book of all her nasty scribbles on paper which had been stapled together. ‘Would you like to buy some paintings?’ They could hardly be described as paintings, more like indiscriminate Ebola bile on tatty paper.

‘Err, no sorry,’ I always struggle for something clever to say at the times I'm confronted with insanity. Don’t you just want to exercise the demons and see what real mad shit is going on in that deranged head of hers? Yeah, I did but I was a bit lost.
‘Do you want to join us in our performance, we need western actors in our show tomorrow.’

‘Sorry, but I have a flight tomorrow.’

‘Would you mind delaying your flight, we will pay you 5,000RMB per day.’

Is this a wind up, I have this crazy woman offering me an acting job for the equivalent of 500 pounds a day, how did she know I was such a good actor, maybe this is the big break that I have been waiting for, a chance for me to shine on the big screen. I knew someone would recognise my talent, she isn’t so crazy after all.

Reality hit me…. I wasn’t going to become an actor.

‘No, sorry I can't, thank you for the kind offer though.’ I tried to be kind, I didn’t want her to start humping my legs while gouging my eyes out.
‘Okay, here is my number, if you change your mind then give me a call.’ She handed me a scrumpled up receipt with a phone number written on it.

She then opened up her case and started foraging inside, I could see nothing but cuddly toys and a bra. She handed me a bottle of green tea she has probably just pilfered from the local 711.

‘Thanks but you please keep it’

And at that she turned and started dragging her slippers along probably to find the next recruit for her performances.

It’s a shame, I think I would be a great actor, maybe one of the best and at £500 a day, I think it would be a steal. Nevermind, a vagabond life it is for me, and so I fell asleep on skid row after being teased with the heights of Hollywood.

Article By David Beattie of Rounton Coffee

Hong Kong – 12th November

I am laid by the pool at the Grand Harbour Hotel in Hong Kong. It is a pleasant 28 degrees Celsius and I am tempted to jump in the pool to cool off. The guy stood over us all is there in case we should need anything, new towel, a drink perhaps, though I'm tempted to ask him to splash the woman laid next to me with some anti-deodoriser, she is a crimped old hag who stinks of expensive perfume, and that’s probably not a fake Gucci watch she is wearing, the smelly old badger.

But instead of cooling off in the pool I end up talking to a doctor laid by the other side of me that has flown out especially to see his patient who has taken ill while in China.

I'm piggy in the middle of these fancy goers, and I daren’t mention that I'm a dole waller, and from Middlesbrough as well, preferring to suggest that I am of the North Yorkshire heritage instead of the council town that North Yorkshire rejected.

I'm looking up at the clear sky which has been hard to see for the while I was travelling around China. I was able to recover a bit of weight in Yangshuo, before losing it all again with a heroic 12 hour intimate session with the toilet and basin, but my mental wellbeing had recovered a little and I was able to recollect those times in China with a little less hostility.

Whilst I laid there lapping up this absolute indulgence I couldn’t help thinking about the hotel I stayed at in Wudang Shan. The family who wanted so desperately for me to stay at their hotel, the guy who’s face lit up when I agreed to stay, the 7 year old daughter who checked me in speaking good English, and the same guy who ran out in his bright red long johns on that early morning to help me check out.

I couldn’t help feeling so guilty. Guilty that I had negotiated a £2 discount on his hotel room which I'm sure would have made quite a bit of difference for him and his family, and yet all I stood to gain was the pleasure of knowing that I had ‘knocked him down’. I didn’t need £2. I had paid £8 for that room, and now I was staying at some fanciful place which the extortionate prices couldn’t be negotiated.

I felt guilty as hell….

But then I jumped into the pool and I forgot all about it.

from this....

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To this....

Article By David Beattie of Rounton Coffee