Hong Kong in October, part 3

Following Suit

October 18

I may be adjusting to the time difference. You may notice that I can now remember what month it is.

I didn’t take a nap yesterday. By eight o’clock last night I was so wiped out that I started to fall asleep in front of an open beer in the hotel room. It was my first beer of the day, so that proves how tired I was.

I slept through till five or so. I had so much energy when I woke up that, after three coffees, I had a caffeine high.  That’s always a good sign.

But before I went out for coffee, I developed a plan. We leave for Macau on the 19th and return to Kowloon next week. If I drop the laundry off in Kowloon and order a suit there, I can pick them up in a few days, when we get back.

First order of business, though, was to send a postcard to Karl and Jeanie. Karl likes postcards. He sends me one when he’s traveling and I try to send him one.

It took us over an hour to find a store that has postcards. We finally found a rack of them in Kowloon next to a currency exchange office. The post office was easy enough to find. Right off Nathan Road on a street not far from PJ Murphy’s Irish Pub. Need you be told where Harry had lunch? 

Nothing exotic, but it was good: half pints of Guinness (for Joanna), Lowenbrau (the German one, not made somewhere else under license), and Boddington’s (a light English ale). We shared a steak sandwich as a break from all the Chinese food we’ve had lately.

We dropped the laundry off at a cleaner on Hankow Road and then checked a few tailor shops. We didn’t bother with the dozen or so guys who came up and pressed their business cards on me. 

I had flashbacks to Pattaya. I was wearing the linen suit again, and everybody offered to make me an exact duplicate. I bought that suit at Daffy’s for a hundred dollars.

I wasn’t going to buy until I checked Sam’s on Nathan Road. It is supposed to be legendary. 

And maybe it is. The inside of the store is filled with pictures of celebrities and framed checks from members of the British royal family. 

In the room where I changed my pants, there is a photo of some duke named Henri. Lucky for him he’s a duke, because he can’t spell.

I figured if this is good enough for Kevin Spacey, it has to be good enough for Harry. So I bought a navy two-piece suit. It was about 75% of the price I’d pay for a made-to-order suit at My Suit in New York. It’s about half what I’d pay for off-the-rack at Lord & Taylor, where I generally do not shop.

Joanna had brought a skirt that she wanted to have duplicated, and she ordered that.

A tailor measured me, and then Sam and crew told me to come back at four, (This was before lunch, around noon or so.) So we had time to kill in Kowloon.

Nathan Road is the same kind of commercial overload that you find on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Only instead of St. Patrick’s and St. Thomas, the big church is a mosque. There is also a St. Andrew’s so the Anglicans aren’t left out.

We found our Kowloon hotel, the Kimberley on Kimberley Road. So we won't have to search for it when we get back from Macau.

Unlike the neighborhood in Central Hong Kong, they have bars there. 

Across the harbor, where we are staying in Central, I have to travel for draft beer to Lan Kwai Fong or to the Red Light District.

Our street in Kowloon is also in the wedding district. Every second shop sells bridal gowns or other whatnot for Western style weddings. A few also show traditional Chinese red dresses with the high Mandarin collar.

One of the great finds in our wanderings was Kowloon Park. The part we saw this day was paved with mosaics, but best of all was the Avenue of Cartoon Stars. 

One, Lo Fu Ji, was familiar to Joanna from when she was a girl, and she had passed the tradition on to her sons. He is a symbol of wisdom. [Later, I’d see Lo Fu Ji on posters explaining proper coughing manners, a leftover of the SARS era.]

I was down to the shirt on my back after spilling breakfast on one and sweating liberally into the other two. So they were in the laundry. It turns out that shirts are as hard to find here as postcards. I finally bought two overpriced models at a Tommy Hilfiger shop on Nathan Road.

The photo of the day is a shot taken from Nathan Road. I have a feeling that Gaultier did not approve that message.

Joanna pointed out, quite literally by the way, that it’s easier to find a Tsui Wah restaurant (like the one next to our hotel) than it is to buy a shirt in Hong Kong.

By four, Sam’s had the shell of my new trousers and the jacket tacked together. The tailor secured the fly of my trousers with a straight pin. The jacket had one sleeve. The tailor marked adjustments.

Wherever I go, the fitter wants to make a suit fashionable. If I wanted to be fashionable, I’d settle for one of these new tight suits they sell off the rack.

I kept trying to explain. No. I like the trousers loose. I have very big thighs and when I sit down they get bigger. No. I want the jacket big and roomy. I haven’t been happy with fashions since the Miami Vice zoot suit went out of style when the 80s were over.

It was pushing five when we left the tailor shop, and we had reservations at a tourist restaurant called Cafe Deco on Victoria Peak. As it turns out, we were lucky that we didn’t have too much time. We took the subway to Central Hong Kong and a cab to the peak. We were dropped off in a transport hub that might be what the New York Port Authority Terminal would look like if it was a single story.

We weren’t sure where to go, so we headed for the same exit where the traffic was going. Then we saw the iconic building that is the tourist navel of the peak. We went up the stairs, and there was Cafe Deco, so we wouldn’t have to look for that.

We had about an hour to explore the park.

The dominant feature of the peak park is a grotesque building that looks like a slice of watermelon balanced on a pedestal. The roof is an observatory. The rest of it is filled with fast food and sellers of souvenir trinkets. Somehow Swarovski also got in there.

We started going up the escalators. To encourage us to continue were signs telling us that at the top was “the higest 360-degree viewing platform in Hong Kong.” Kind of a qualified statement, even if it is “the higest.” I remembered the sign on I-80 between the two exits for Clearfield, Pa.: Highest point on Interstate 80 east of the Mississippi. Almost impressive.

We decided to bag the escalator trip and hit the trail instead. We couldn’t find how to get out of the building. I started to get claustrophobic. We wandered up one promising avenue of escape and encountered a horde of people coming towards us—sort of like trying to catch a train out of Penn Station during the morning rush hour. Did they fit all those people into one tram car? That must have been a gruesome experience. I was glad we took the cab.

But this still wasn’t the way out. Maybe I was going to be trapped in this place full of chattering kids and lost tourists forever. This isn’t right, Buddha. I gained merit yesterday. I said a Hail Mary in front of Kuan-Yin.

We  finally found a lady in uniform who couldn’t understand “How do I get out of this building.” She did understand the question phrased less desperately by Joanna in Cantonese.

Night was falling when we got instructions to the trail head. It’s a gentle climb with trees and shrubs lining the walk. Every now and then there is a sign pointing out highlights of the flora or history. There was one about ferns, but it was dark and I couldn’t see them.

There was another about possible derivations of the name Hong Kong. A fierce pirate surrendered here to the imperial authorities early in the 19th century, and for a while after that, Hong Kong was known as the Peaceful Island.

According to one legend, a red incense burner washed up on one of the shores. So the place was named for that: Ho Heung Lo Kong (Red Incense Burner Harbor). 

Heung Kong is now generally interpreted to mean “Fragrant Harbor.”

About 15 minutes up the trail, we had been told, was a spectacular view of the city. And yes, there is, right on schedule. It was night and everything but Harry was lit up when we got there.

The restaurant sat us near a window. All the tables are near windows. “I can’t believe I’m tired of Chinese food,” Joanna had said earlier in the day. We shared a salad of grilled asparagus and arugula. Then we each had a pasta dish. Joanna’s was scallop tortellini with fish roe and a crispy salad on top. Mine was a clam sauce with tomato.

I had an Italian Chianti, which was mild as chiantis go. Joanna’s wine was more interesting, an Australian mix of cabernet sauvignon, shiraz, and merlot. It had an unusual edge, which I attributed to the shiraz. I’ve had wine made of that before, but not for a long time.

The tram line was still miles long and we were worn out, so we took a cab back to the hotel.

I didn’t even try to open a beer.