How do you like your eggs!

What a sensational weekend! England took control of the first test in Pakistan, GB destroyed NZ at rugby league, the England footie team beat the Argentineans and the mighty mighty England rugby team beat the Aussies 26-16 at Twickenham, oh yes and I went to Bangkok!!

In next to no time I'd decided I liked the place, I think it was as I screamed down a random street on the back of a tuck tuck late on Friday night, not having the first clue where I was going, seeing an elephant casually strolling along the street and letting the colours and smells of a new country beat me in the face, happy days!

As I had a little under 40 hours in Thailand my options were a little limited, to try to cram masses in would guarantee failure so I decided to stick to the really important stuff, I drank!

Now in my defense I was there for a birthday party and even so found time to do a little exploring and get lost twice (both times very quickly and on tuck tucks), hand feed a baby Indian elephant (lot more chilled than their Africa cousins), take a boat along the river and visit Patpong, the Grand Royal Palace and the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. But mainly I drank!

I also saw an egg being broken into a bowl without the use of hands, I've never tried it so don't know how hard that is but I'm sure if you saw what was used to break it you'd be impressed, disturbed but impressed! Yes you guessed it, I went to one of Bangkok's infamous shows...

The mistake most people make is thinking these are sex shows, they really aren't. Admittedly the performers are naked women but they couldn't me less titillating if they tried. I went to the place with Sean, Bev and some friends of Sean's parents and it was pure comedy, and I don't think I've laughed so much in years!

There are a lot of names for the female sexual region not all of them very nice, this weekend I discovered a few more uses for it of which the same can be said! Bottles were opened, darts were shot bursting balloons and lengths of ribbons long enough to wrap every present I've ever given were removed. Ping pong balls were fired as were bananas (one even hit a bottle of beer on the table next to me, I'm told if I'd of caught it I'd get a free drink - and syphilis!), candles were blown out and horns hooted and all using nothing more than a rather well trained vagina! I don't know how or even why but I do know it was an experience.

I could go on but no amount of words could quite do my wonderfully bizarre weekend justice, so for now I'll bid you farewell.
Jonathan

Recently returned from Bangkok
Thailand

Winds of Change

About a fortnight ago it would appear god turned the air con on in HK, the humidity dropped to a mere 50% and the temperature fell to around 25 degrees, magic!

Another fairly major change is that I moved out, you may of heard Bev cheering! Now you may think moving house when you can pack all your belongings into a couple of hold alls would be easy... trust me when I say there were issues.

The first place I found seemed perfect, a nice one-bedroom apartment about 20 min walk from the office, unfortunately it turned out I wasn't "bohemian" enough! Now this wasn't a flat-share, this is a rental property and the mad hippy bird that was subletting it came out with "you're not very bohemian", I'm stood there in a suit, what was I going to say... The next place I found seemed to be a winner. It was a flat-share, again not far from the office and sensibly priced, then I found out what my flat-mate to be's name was, Tina Tucker - Sorry but no!

Then it appeared I got lucky once again, in a drunken chat it turned out a mate was about to move into a place that had a couple of spare rooms. I went and had a look - cheap, clean, central, perfect, I was due to move in a week or so back but no, it all fell through, bugger! Having promised to be out of Sean and Bev's about a year ago this was a problem so I pulled out all the stops and within hours found the flat of my dreams.

Now these dreams aren't very nice, I invariably wake up with a cold sweat but ... It's actually just what I need, proper local Chinese multi-occupancy flat, on the island (10 minute tram ride to work) clean, all the doors have locks and so cheap it's embarrassing. I moved in on Saturday and it's already home, I've even bought myself an ironing board - a new experience for me and now don't know how I survived 28 years without one! I'm not sure how long I'll stay as the room does resembles robben island cell however I've made it onto HK island at last, happy days.

Even beyond the house moving saga it's been an eventful couple of weeks. First was the Sunday night stag do. Not the best idea if you've work on the Monday if the truth be told but highly entertaining none the less. I've a vague memory of stumbling out of Joe Bananas in WanChai in the early hours but I'm saying no more.

Following the stag do was the wedding, my first of the Chinese variety and it was different! I couldn't actually make it to the ceremony (apparently they had the pleasure of eating 1000 year old eggs, gutted I missed that one!) but made it to the reception, ten courses and lots of toasting, photos, hand shaking and bilingual speeches. I was most impressed by the best man (a gwylow) who valiantly battled to tell uni stories to about 200 local Chinese while hundreds of waiters teemed around the room service shark fin soup.

Yes, we had shark fin soup, not something I really wanted to try having heard the stories but as it probably cost Alan (the groom) about 6 months salary what could I do. From my hard to kill, great to eat theory I warn against picking a fight with a whole suckling pig (another dish) but it turns out sharks can't be as hard you'd of thought!

The strangest thing about the wedding festivities was how it ended, there were only a couple of tables of westerners and as the last of the 10 course was settling we suddenly noticed we were the only people left. As we were relaxing after the feast and finishing off the wine everyone else got up and ran. This left just one option – karaoke! A special way to end the proceedings and I don't believe Um Bop has ever been so well performed.

I don't think my liver particularly likes me after the last few weeks, as well as the wedding there have been birthday inspired junk trips and all night drinking sessions in honour of a mate leaving HK. There was also Halloween, which was scary to say the least. It would appear the Chinese like nothing more than dressing up and parading around town, understandable for small kids but an entire city!!!

And that's about it, I've played a couple more footie matches (won 8-0 and lost 5-0, we've a bit of a consistency issue!) and used my gym membership a few times. I've also learnt another valuable phrase in Cantonese - lei seung um seung yum bui chau -
meaning "can I buy you a drink?" the only problem is that I can't understand the response yet, d'oh!

So, until the next exciting installment.

Jonathan

408 Des Voeux Road West
Shek Tong Tsui
Hong Kong Island