Everything is getting slower in Hong Kong at the moment. Tomorrow is National Day (to prove HK is Chinese), and all of China has the week off. I've done my Cantonese homework (Ngoh hiah Ngoujauyahn). I've checked out all the blogs on my links. I'm close to the bottom.

Every day I get the Disneyland bus to work. It trails down the mountainside on a two lane road, hurtling past other busses coming the other way. When we drive this road it can be a true test of courage, but as a passenger the feeling is one of fatalism - if I'm destined to make it I will. Plus they drive on the left here, so going down in the morning gives us an extra lane before the 50 metre fall into Happy Valley below. The view of the cemetery above the Aberdeen Tunnel probably inspires these morbid thoughts. The bus then turns left; a right hand turn takes you to the Happy Valley race course. Every Wednesday night this is where everyone in HK is heading to and the traffic is chaos. Usually the bus drivers on Wednesday evenings find alternative routes, that tend to involve detours via such places as Vietnam to get home. We then follow Queens Road through the back of Wan Chai. This is not the seedy bar side, or the hot night spot side. It is the local side. There is the fruit and vegie market, the side streets filled with stalls and local shops. There are school kids heading to there 6 hours of forced learning, the suits heading for their ivory towers, housewives heading from one place to the next and the helpers with the shopping lists. I view all this mayhem from the air conditioned bliss of the bus, with my headphones blasting Macy Gray or Crowded House. The shops are all closed at this time of the morning. Nothing starts much before 10am. But already there is the teeming chaos that is Hong Kong.

Next the bus hits Queensway, an 8 lane highway through town. The cross-town tram runs serenely along side us as we pull up next to Pacific Place, the most expensive shopping centre in the world. Across the street are the heart of bureaucrats in Hong Kong, with various Government office towers. Half the Disneyland inmates alight here to make there way to those office towers at this end of town. This includes such monoliths as the Bank of China building, with its two antennae facing China across the mountains in a giant hand gesture. Not a flattering one either. Hong Kong's buildings are all that is good and bad about the place - they mix all sorts of styles in no discernible plan other than the worship of Mammon. Some work, some don't, but they are certainly not clones like many city skylines.

The bus pushes further on, zipping along Des Veux Road, the old harbourfront. Nowadays it is 3 blocks from the harbour, as the reclamation process continues until Kowloon and Hong Kong Island meet and Victoria Harbour is no more. We pass the old Governor's Mansion, no longer really in use for some symbolic reason. Yet it and the old Bank of China building represent the last of the colonial style buildings in Central and not using them seems a waste of history. But that's another thing about Hong Kong (and perhaps China), it's all about symbols. We glide past between various shopping centres housing some of the exclusive boutiques that make Hong Kong the number 1 luxury shopping centre in Asia. The streets are different here. Narrower again, chaotic as taxis and busses jostle to move a little closer to the next traffic jam. More suits now, fewer wives and shoppers, but now its streetsweepers and garbage collectors fighting for space. There are more gweilos (whites) now, but seeing each one reminds me I am in a city where I am very much the minority. I sometimes wonder what the average local thinks of the presence of such gweilos, until I realise there is no such thing as an average local. Hong Kong is a trading centre and a mixture and people such as me make up a small part of the mix.

Finally the Disneyland bus turns onto Connaught Rd for a brief drive past the Mandarin Oriental hotel, scene earlier this year of the most famous exponent of another Hong Kong pasttime: suicide. A quick turn left into the Star Ferry terminal where another mix of suits and workers heading every which way greets me. I leave the confines of the bus that has kept me in air conditioned comfort for the 15 minute journey and hit the wall of heat and humidity that is Hong Kong's climate this time of year. I make my way by foot across the forecourt of Jardine House, with its porthole like windows and slate paving. The escalator takes me up to the level of the covered walkway. I walk past a plasma TV with Bloomberg blaring out the latest gyrations in world markets, but I figure that can wait another 5 minutes until I get to the office. I keep Macy going. On the walkway there are hundreds of people heading this way and that. Again there are more gweilos but again we are significantly in the minority. Any racist should walk in a city like this and know what it is like to stand out. Past the fountain at the centre of Exchange Square, home of the HK Stock Exchange and perhaps the centre of the whole city. Finally I enter the lobby of the office tower and suddenly I could be in any office tower in the world. But the journey has just reminded me that I am definitely in Hong Kong.

Heading Home

My journey home is dominated by the bus timetable. Traffic or not, the bus is always on time. It always waits until precisely the right minute, the doors shut and off it goes. If I am running late and a little lucky it might be stuck at a traffic light and I can still make it. Otherwise it's ten more minutes looking out from the Star Ferry terminal across at the bright lights of TST and Kowloon. The traffic at nights is always appalling. Each bus driver has his (it's always his) preferred routes. They involve either cutting across 6 lanes of peak hour traffic or climbing up and across a mountain. If it is the first then we crawl along a boulevard of neon and advertisements. There are more cars here and again the mix is telling. Plenty of Mercedes and BMWs, often a people mover, and more often than I expect a Ferrari or Porsche. Rarely do I see a 4 wheel drive/SUV. I don't know why that is. This way takes us up to Causeway Bay before ducking around the race course and heading back up the hill. The journey up the hill is slow but interesting as the lights of a thousand apartments shine out with people going about their nightly business. The alternative route is far less interesting, cutting across the back of various Mid-Level apartment blocks before arriving at the bottom of the hill to home. Finally we crawl back to the confines of Disneyland, at the top of the steepest gradient in Hong Kong. In springtime it is usually covered in fog, dense enough you can see your reflection in the window and nothing else. But in summer it is clear and the entrance of the Tai Tam National Park removes you from the densely populated metropolis below. I get off the bus and walk up to my tower, one of eighteen. Each evening I greet the guard, enter the elevator and head up to our eyrie. I push open the door and I am greeted by the best sounds of the day. JC, PB and Misti all look to the open door and smile and exclaim (well Misti tends to jump up and down instead, but that's the canine equivalent). I give Mrs M a kiss and know that I'm home.