Hong Kong Adventure
Simon Lockington

The eight hour flight over was filled to capacity, and a woman sitting a few seats over from us filled her seat to over flowing, much to the
discomfort of the poor guy who was sitting next to her.  Having her snore like a walrus would have added to his travelling experience also...

AIRPORT
Hong Kong airport, like many of the facilities I've been to so far is very clean, and very efficient.  Much like Singapore, there isn't much in the
way of customs to go through when you come in.  You get through immigration and suddenly you're on the taxi rank thinking "Did I miss
something?".

TAXIS
The taxis here are painted three different colours depending on where their eventual destination is.  Red taxis go to local Hong Kong, green
ones go to the New Territories (buffer zone really between Hong Kong and the real China), and the blue ones pretty much take you right into China. You want to be sure you take the correct taxi, lest you end up in a place where you shouldn't be.

Getting around Hong Kong is pretty easy, both the taxis and the trains are very cheap.  The 45 minute taxi ride from the airport to the hotel cost us about AU$40 or so.  At the moment the exchange rate is about HK$6.5 = AU$1.

I'm staying at the Holiday Inn Golden Mile right in the middle of Kowloon and it's very handy to all the important places (clothes stores, fake handbag shops, camera shops etc).

SAM THE TAILOR
We had a couple of things we wanted to get done, first of all was organising to get some suits tailor made for us.  Don knew of a place just
down the road called "Sam's tailors" which looked very ordinary until you walked in.
What set this place apart was that all over the walls of the office are pictures of Sam the tailor with all the world's current and past important
people.  There's pictures of him with Bill Clinton, Colin Powell, Margaret Thatcher, various Royals, Jude Law, Peirce Brosnan, various music stars
etc.  Then there were all the letters of thanks and appreciation from various Royal Families and other famous dudes.
I figure he had enough credentials to make me a suit.
Sam had some of his underlings measure me up (when I say measure, I mean measure EVERYTHING) and presented me with the various didn't cloths that the suit could be made out of and there were tonnes of them.  Everything was "Yes sir, no sir, I'm very sorry sir, ofcourse sir".  This tailor made suit that was going to make me look like a young Pierce Brosnan is only going to cost me AU$250.....
Sam wanted us back at 2pm for the further fitting where once again the underling measured the fit and tolerances of the suit in every part of
your body which was a bit interesting.  Said underling is supposed to be delivering the suit to the hotel today.
Once finished with Sam it was off to the camera shops.

THE SLIPPERY CAMERA MAN
Don had done extensive dealings with this camera shop in the past.  To say that the camera guy was a rogue would have been insulting to career rogues I would think.  This guy had a further level of slipperiness about him...
For laughs, we asked him how much the top of the range Canon Digital camera was (a Canon 1Ds Mark II for camera nerds).  This thing has a
market retail in the US of over US$8000.  Our mate came back to us with HK$6000 (ie AU$1000) which smelled a lot like bullshit from where I was
standing.  We asked him about 6-8 times to clarify the price.  Yep, HK$6000 he said.
We went away to do some homework to make sure we weren't getting a sound shafting.  Yep, sure enough the camera was worth US$8000.  Don was intent on buying it given the price so we went back to get it.  Our mate got it out of the box so we could test it.  I was playing with it being Mr Paparazzi when Don said "I'll take it".  Our mate starts talking HK$60,000!  Ofcourse we asked where the HK$6000 went to and all of a
sudden he's playing dumb.  What's a decimal place between friends he seems to think.  We walked out and down the street laughing at the attempted shafting this guy had tried to put on us.

CLOTHES SHOPPING
Next mission was general clothes shopping.  This is where Hong Kong excels.  When you look at the price tag, the clothes look about the same
cost as they are at home, but remember, you divide that by 6.5 and then you're looking at what it's costing you in real money.
For example, I bought a flash jacket that in Melbourne would easily cost around AU$280-300.  I paid AU$45 for it here.  I bought two sets of work
pants, shirts etc for AU$38.  I've gone pretty hard with the clothes shopping and now I need to go buy another suitcase to take it all home in. Also, these are the same brands that you buy in Melbourne.

GUCCI, PRADA AND THE TRIADS
Don often buy's his wife and daughter handbags while in Hong Kong. They're not quite off the official Gucci and Prada production line, but
you'd be hard pressed to work out they're not the real deal.  He's often talked about how you have to go about buying these products and thought it'd be amusing to show me.

We walked up to this woman who was minding a simple suitcase store in the street.  Don said to her "Louis Vuitton, Gucci?", her eyes narrowed and she looked left and right looking for cops.  Once satisfied she turned into the store and barked some orders at some shady looking characters at the end of the store who signalled us in.  They opened a roller door and were about to let us in when they all of a sudden got cold feet and went all nervous and ushered us out.  One of them then signalled us to follow him who took us to another guy who took us up some dark, dank, shady looking stairs and passed us off to a further guy.  This guy then took us to a door guarded by video cameras and knocked and looked into the cameras.

By now I'm starting to question the sensibility of the whole exercise, but then a narrow looking dude opens the door and invites us in and displays
his collection of Prada, Gucci and Louis Vuitton handbags all over the wall.  In addition to the Rolex's, Tag Heuers and various other mega-dollar watches.

Don commenced the traditional haggling and got three handbags and we both played with some watches.  While I'm no watch expert, I easily thought they could have been real.  A Rolex Oyster Submariner was going for AU$100.  I've got no idea what they are retail, but they're a damn sight more than that.  I didn't buy any cause I know my place in the world and I'd look like mutton dressed as lamb cruising about with a big ass Rolex on my arm while driving a Holden Commodore.

FINE CHINESE DINING
By now it's lunchtime and I'm hungry.  Naturally with us being in Hong Kong there was plenty of Chinese on offer, but we went to KFC instead.
It's interesting to see how these world wide stores differ from country to country.  The things on the menu are a bit interesting.  How does a
"Seafood Submarine Chapter Two" sound for lunch? Strangely I passed on the Seafood Submarine Chapter Two and went with
chicken wings.  Very nice.
There's no such thing as understaffing over here.  Every store has more staff than it needs and they're all keen to show how needed they are.  As
soon as we stood up to leave our table was pounced on by a person who had cleaned and prepped the table before we'd even made it to the door.

PUBLIC TRANSPORT
Next on the list was going to visit one of the largest helicopter shops in the world which you can imagine was a very high priority for me.
This dictated getting the train though which was going to be an experience.  Everything started off well, we worked out the route we had
to take and even managed to figure out the automatic ticket machines. We thought we'd bought tickets that took us to our final destination.  It
became apparent this wasn't the case when the gates wouldn't let us out of the train station so we could swap over to another line.  A bit of
pleading of ignorance and stupidity to the customer service lady got us tickets to get out of the station, but then we had to go buy some more so
we could get onto our other train.

CYBERHELI
We got picked up from the train station by our mate Stephen, the owner of the helicopter store in his little bright yellow Mini Cooper S and then we streaked across town to the promised land of helicopters.

I had often thought of Cyberheli as a place where Raptors frolick in the meadows with Sceadus, Furys lay in the sun with 3DNT's getting a tan while Sylphides sit in deep leather chairs smoking cigars while discussing share portfolios with Eagle 3's and Calibers.

It's not quite like that.

Instead, Cyberheli is a busy place with boxes and packing tape constantly on the move. 9Z's line the walls with OS engines and Webra's. At first I was a little bit underwhelmed, I thought the place would have been bigger. That was until Stephen showed me one of the storerooms where there were floor to ceiling boxes of Raptors. Rooms of the them. "My stock is down at the moment" said Stephen. It sure as hell did not look like it.

On the floor were numerous machines in various states of repair, the one that caught my eye particularly was the Xcell Spectra Gasser which I have real high hopes for. I think MA is onto a winner with this thing, but I haven't yet seen one fly in real life yet. What was interesting was there was a Heinselet Rocket parked right beside it. I picked both up and noticed that the Gasser was no heavier than the Rocket. Will be interesting to see how it goes...

I wandered around the place looking at all the boxes, it was much like Christmas Day morning, but I couldn't open the presents... I was also trying not to get in the way of the guys who were busy packing boxes that were getting ready to go out on the couriers the following morning.

DINNER
Stephen took us out to dinner at a restaurant located on the harbour's edge.  The Hong Kong skyline at night is incredible.  Pretty much all of
the large buildings have beautiful decorative lights that set the whole place off.
I had worried that we'd be doing a full customary chinese dinner.  As a person who's not a great fan of seafood and such, eating a fish who was
staring back at me from the plate could have presented a problem.  The hamburgers we did end up having though, presented no problem.

THE ROCKET MINI
After dinner Stephen took us back to our hotel in the little Mini.  I should probably point out that this is no ordinary Mini.  A standard Mini Cooper
S is a bit of a hotrod as it is, Stephen felt it necessary to hot the little beast up some more until it was producing 260hp.  Damn could this
thing go!  Streaking across Hong Kong in a 260hp Mini with your ass about 3 inches off the ground gives you a new perspective on things I'm telling you.

Today we're off out to do some work at the horse race course and then to buy some suitcases to take all our booty back home with us.
Hong Kong is a very cool place, kind of a cross between Singapore and Bali.  Slippery Indian dudes stand on the street and try and sell you
knock off watches or tailored suits, cars don't care for pedestrians much, and there's a lot of cheap stuff.  I'm looking foward to coming here again
hopefully sometime in the near future...

Si