Of Hong Kong and Moderation

Mike greets me at his MTR station in Hong Hong with a cheap local beer, and I quickly sense that any level of restraint in my visit will be short-lived. When we take a brief walk through his neighborhood on the way to dinner, a huge building looms a few blocks down his street--the Nina Tower, Mike tells me, built by and named for recently deceased billionaire Nina Wang. Originally it was designed to be the tallest building in the world, but because of its proximity to the airport (it really isn't *that* close), it had to be remodeled into two separate structures, the taller of which is still over 1,000 feet tall. Mike says it was a totally unnecessary development, built mostly for pride and extravagance. Another early indication that Hong Kong and moderation are essentially polar. ___________________________________________________ I do some sightseeing the next day while Mike is working, capped by a visit to Victoria Peak, which really is a complete mind bender the way in which the views dwarf such a massive set of buildings. When I meet Mike back down at the bottom, we head through some of the central business district, and I get a brief tour of the architectural advancements contained within. For example, I learn that the HSBC Building can be taken apart quite easily--you know, just in case the time ever arrives when HSBC needs to transport their huge headquarters down the street a few blocks. We stop for a quick drink at a swanky downtown bar, one where we very noticeably do not fit in, overlooking the river and then Kowloon (the mainland) on the other side. Scotch and Amaretto for me, Brandy and Coke for Mike. When we polish them off, we leave as inconspicuously as possible with glasses still in hand. Apparently this is standard procedure for Mike. He stops us at a wine store in the shopping center below the bar and buys a cheap Chilean red wine, and he refills the glasses before we pass through a fancy department store on the way out of the building. Nobody seems to mind too much. ___________________________________________________ Across the river by way of the Star Ferry, we head to a riverfront plaza to watch the light show. The show, done every single night at 8 PM, is a symphony of neon lights that dance on various buildings along the unbelievably long skyline comprising the west side of Hong Kong Island, harmonized to the tune of cheesy Chinese music that can only be heard on our side of the water. These are the highly practical everyday occurrences that show the Hong Kong leadership is hard at work (I have to be honest though, it was pretty damn cool). Once the show is over, we head through another uber-fancy set of stores along the water and in some indeterminate direction inland, passing a couple of Ferraris along the way. We end up at a Korean Barbecue, where we indulge in a huge assortment of meats and pickled vegetables--it was celestial--and finish the bottle of wine, leaving the glasses from the bar on the table. Nobody in the restaurant seems to mind that we brought the bottle in either. Joined by another friend of Mike's, we head through a big night market and spend way too much time looking through an enormous collection of patches at one stand (I found and bought one of these), and we head back to the apartment to crash well after midnight. Mike is a hell of a team player--I was able to sleep off the wine but he had to go to work early the next morning. ___________________________________________________ The rest of my tour of Hong Kong is a little more low-key, but lots of fun. We get proper dim sum on a Friday afternoon, get a couple drinks in the bar district with Mike's buddies the same night, and the next day go to Mike's old stomping grounds: a big, isolated hill (above the park where Bruce Lee used to train) with a great view of Kowloon from the other direction. Getting up on the hill took a small amount of trespassing, but was of course totally worth it. The only time I ever felt the need to question Mike's sense of adventure was when he cooked a meal of fresh produce--very fresh produce--from his local market. I was semi-comfortable eating unknown meats in Nanning, but feeling the crawdads kicking in the bag before they met their demise on the stove was a little further outside of my comfort zone. ___________________________________________________ We had planned to do some other sightseeing--a tour of the light rail in a more working class neighborhood (kind of reminds me of a nuisance from life back home) and a trip to a theme park--but on the way back after visiting Mike's hill and playing some basketball, I begin to feel pretty under the weather, and my condition gets worse as the evening goes on. I spend the last two days of my stay barely able to leave the couch, and had just enough of my energy back the following morning to get to the airport and catch my flight to Tokyo. Mike made sure I had everything I needed (basically the couch, water, whatever food I could manage to swallow, and a few comedy DVDs)--I suppose I was going to get sick and one point or another, and I feel fortunate enough that I caught whatever I caught at his place rather than in transit or at a hostel somewhere.