It’s a solid nine hour flight from Sydney to Hong Kong – proof, if it were needed, that Australia is just a comedically long way away.

While I personally was able to grab a wee bit of kip (between some films of very variable quality), sleep simply would not come to Chatham House Rules, or to The Eagle, or even to a Gay Arctic Monkey. This airborne insomnia, in combination with the intellect-sapping heat and humidity we found in ‘Honkers’, might go some way to explain just how difficult we found it to navigate from the airport to our hotel.

Buses were missed or not even found and incorrect train tickets were sourced and a general hash was made of most everything. Eventually, stressed and flushed, we bundled ourselves tightly into the first of many a bright red HK taxi and, bags spilling about everywhere, finally made it across to our final place of rest – the Kowloon Harbourfront Hotel.

This hotel is an interesting mix of the average and the ever so slightly above average – a typically Chinese phenomenon where lofty ambitions sit side by side with clear, easily remedied failings. However, Chatham HR, he of the silver tongue, managed to talk us into an upgraded room with a fine view over the city’s central waterway, meaning that, just about, on a split points decision, the hotel came out triumphant.

Once showered and unpacked, we braved the heat and the wide river’s unspeakable odour and wandered across Kowloon to the Spring Deer – a restaurant which came highly recommended from a good buddy of mine back home. Oh, and what a recommendation! Perfect Peking duck, wonderful ‘shredded beef’ and, of course, plentiful dumplings made for a very, very satisfactory first Hong Kong meal, washed down with round upon round of Tsingtao (in my experience the only Chinese beer worth drinking).

We then grabbed a tube over to Wan Chai for a splendidly trashy Wednesday night session. The crowd out and about were young and very western, and as we hopped from bar to bar we felt increasingly old and jaded. Eventually, around one-ish, during a particularly strange gig with a squat Chinese fellow doing a poor Bon Jovi impression and a long-haired bassist who would wander out into the street mid-riff, the boys’ fuel gauges dipped into the red. It was time, we concluded, to knock this one hard on the head.

*

Post- an impressively average hotel breakfast, we found ourselves a taxi driver looking for a chunky fare and drove all the way southeast to the Shek O peninsula. He we walked up and down the Dragon’s Back Trail, a hot and rather challenging little hike which afforded sensational views, all across the surrounding forests and seas. Chatham House Rules, not a natural hill-walker at the best of times, complained relatively constantly about his ankle, and was only placated by the promise of Shek O Beach at the end of our saunter, where we could ‘chill’ in the sun with some drinks, and maybe even some attractive womenfolk, should the stars align.

However, once reached the beach proved itself a little lacking – certainly nowhere near Sydney standard – with dirty-looking water, litter-strewn sands and UV which could happily microwave a store-bought dinner for one. A prolonged stay was therefore promptly vetoed by myself, The Eagle and a Gay Arctic Monkey – which in turn prompted a now familiar barrage of curses, in a heady mix of Arabic, Assyrian and Canadian, against faithless ‘white boys’ who ‘can’t handle a little sun’.

“I’m solar powered!” lamented Chatham HR. “I need the sun to live!”

“Yeah but this is pretty rubbish, let’s walk somewhere better.”

“Aye, somewhere more shady and all.”

“$*&%£!!” swore Chatham, with some feeling.

[The figurative translation of this particular curse, we later learned, was ‘I disrespect your family’. The literal translation, however, one regrets to relay, was ‘I shit upon your lands’.]

We found a likely looking bus which took us back to civilisation, and then a westbound train to Central/Hong Kong Station. Here we found a famed dumpling joint which placated even the tempestuous young Chatham: Tin Ho Wan, cheap, popular and, would you believe it, Michelin-starred.

Now previously in this very blog I have suggested to you all that we had previously enjoyed dumplings. We believed it, I believed it, and therefore I conveyed this belief to you. This late lunch on Thursday 14th September, 2017, disabused us of this flawed notion. These were dumplings, my friends. Dang good dumplings. Accordingly, we ate a great deal of them  – proving quite incorrect the sceptical waitress who snorted (snorted, I say!) in derision at the sheer scale of our most manful ordering.

Replete, happy and corpulent, we waddled victorious from the restaurant and went over to Mong Kok (oo-er, vicar), apparently the most populated place on the planet, to check out some tat-filled markets. It was then back to the hotel, where all save Chatham splashed about in the establishment’s superbly malodorous outdoor swimming pool, cooling down properly for the first time in a sticky, humid day.

A particularly overpriced Asahi in the hotel bar later, we were all ready for another stroll and another Michelin starred meal. Over to western Kowloon we trekked, up to the third floor of an off-the-rack Chinese shopping centre, and into a celebrated branch of the world-famous Taiwanese restaurant, Din Tai Fun.

Considering the quality of opposition it faced, it was marked how easily our dinner here claimed the title of ‘Undisputed Champion of all Hong Kong Meals’. It was, quite simply, sublime from first dish to last. Special mention goes to the spicy wonton dumplings – as good and tasty a morsel as one has ever placed into one’s mouth (oo-er, vicar, once again).

Lan Kwai Fong, Honkers’ premier boozing locale, then called out our names on the wind. It was time, for the second occasion in so many nights, for some trashy expat libations.

Opting to begin in an uncharacteristically fancy manner, we began with a cocktail at ‘The Boudoir’, where we were kept company by a couple of taciturn Chinese lasses, a young Cantonese gigolo on the make and his sixty-something British ‘john’. Quite the party, I’m sure you’d agree.

From here, needing a wee change of pace, a Gay Arctic Monkey and I got well stuck into ‘Club 7/11’, the best value and most amusing of all the LKF joints. From this comely HQ, we would strike out into various different ‘hot spots’, dominating dance floors and generally running amok. Chatham and The Eagle were less impressed by these gilt-edged drinking tactics, but they came around in time, dear reader…oh they all come around in time.

*

Friday’s was a sluggish start, our quartet regularly waylaid by lost eagles, by breakfasts glacial and poor, and by disappearing taxis. Eventually, we made it way out west, to the Ngong Ping 360 Cable Car which took us all the way up to the top of Lantau Island, over rolling hills and a wide and shining bay. Up here one finds a very large bronze Buddha, apparently the largest around, and a rather fake, commercialised monastery.

Now, here we had been promised by a friend of a Gay Arctic Monkey, delicious, monk-made vegetarian dumplings. What we received was different. Chatham House Rules still refuses to talk about it. Suffice to say, we thought a lot about Tim Ho Wan during the, quote-unquote, ‘meal’ we endured there. There is, on reflection, a good chance we went to the wrong place. Either way, the fare was ‘proper bobbins’.

The walk up to the Tian Tan Buddha himself was sweaty but manageable, and the vistas from the summit almost matched the fabulous views from the epic cable car up, in terms of scale and magnificence. Hong Kong does give a good view, no matter what one’s tastes might be.

Ngong Ping village proved fertile ground for souvenir shopping, and many a HK dollar was dropped on items not necessarily necessary. Then all that was left was a breathless cable car ride back to the city and a swift tube/cab combo back to the Harbourfront. We had every cause to rush – The Old Man had just checked in, and was eager to see his firstborn, that is to say, yours truly.

Now a famous five, we headed to Elgin Street near ‘Mid Levels’. Here, after a couple of drinks and then a couple of restaurant misfires, we found a decent place which would take us in on a busy Friday night – a delicious steak joint named, imaginatively, ‘Craftsteak’. The Old Man, you see, was on a strict vegetarian diet up in Shanghai, and was keen as mustard (and horseradish, and pepper sauce) to get himself outside a decent slab of cow and a bottle or two of Malbec that eve.

The sheer amount of meat consumed went a good way to writing off the remainder of the night, but we made sure to take The Old Man to a particularly happening branch of Club 7/11 for a few quality ‘street beers’. Then, meat drunk (and a wee bit drunk drunk), we hailed a couple of cabs and beat a lazy retreat.

*

Sad but true to say, the final day of our rather spectacular trip had, creeping up like a stalking panther, pounced hard and fatally upon us. Thusly mauled, we packed up and stashed our kit (bags now bulging with various souvenirs, ‘Tim Tams’ and bulky camel suits) in the foyer of the hotel.

We then choked down the stalest of all stale Harbourfront Hotel breakfasts and wandered through the oppressive heat to the Star Ferry terminal. A swift, old-timey riverboat then took us across the city’s central waterway to Hong Kong’s central ferry-port, where a second, larger craft was found which might take us over to Cheung Chau Island.

We had it on good authority that the seafood on this little island was tippity-top-notch and, having found seemingly the most popular place (an unpretentious joint called, with a charming lack of subtly, ‘Delicious Seafood Restaurant’), we told the waiting staff therein to ‘give us hell’.

Once again, the conservative reservations and general lack of ambition shown by the waitresses whose paths we were fated to cross was proven ill-conceived. Yes, we may have ordered enough scallops and crabs and prawns and grouper and the rest to feed a moderately hungry battalion of strong fighting men, but we put away said scallops and crabs and prawns and grouper and the rest with a verve and gusto that was, we felt, highly impressive to see. In short, no regrets were had, none whatsoever.

As good a mood as the food engendered within us, the island’s rising heat and humidity soon put paid to it. The temperature, an unforgiving bastard of a thing, was now in the high thirties, far too hot for we Brits – and almost too hot for Canadian-Iraqis to boot.

Extensive tours of the more beauteous parts of the island were now out of the question – we had to content ourselves with seeking out the better air-conditioned shops, pretending to want their wares while we cooled down to a mere swelter. One serviceable place was a wildly overpriced tea shop, where The Old Man whiled away some time indulging in his favourite pursuit – haggling Chinese women into a blazing fury over goods he neither wants nor needs. It really is quite the spectacle – if ever you find yourself over in Shanghai you simply must check it out.

Putting a pin in this overheated island nonsense, we caught the ferry back to the mainland, enjoying the endless skyscrapers and (in my case) extended catnaps in the sun. We then wandered a little aimlessly around central Hong Kong for a mite too long for my liking, finding a fancy shopping centre, part of a park, a Catholic church and then, at long last, gods and heavens be praised, some bars.

Beers purchased and defeated, the four of us then bid a fond farewell to The Old Man, whose late cameo in our trip I, for one, had very much enjoyed. Following this, we went to retrieve our loot before, a little glumly, a little wearily, we sloped over to Hong Kong International Airport.

The flickering flame of the voyage had, at last, choked out. We quietly ate a final portion of dumplings (better than the monastery’s, but barely in the same ballpark/giant Aussie Rules stadium as the divine stuff from Tim Ho Wan or Din Tai Fun) before, now utterly spent and utterly penniless, collapsing into our seats for the long flight home.

One by one my companions drifted off into well-deserved sleep and happy, spiralling dreams: Chatham House Rules, his incomparable snoring for once but a quiet rumble, dreamt of koalas and dumplings, sunshine and taxis; a Gay Arctic Monkey, ‘new music’ still blaring from his headphones, was visited by visions of split trousers, roast ducks and dancing, prancing fools; and The Eagle, flat-cap pulled down low over his eyes, endured nightmares most cruel, filled with a lass called Hunter and The World’s Worst Groom.

Only I remained wakeful, albeit not for long: I had one final thing to do, before calling time on this trip of trips and sleeping my way back to London.

Ignoring the muted snarls from the well-built Chinese girl on my right, I switched on my reading light and pulled out my pen and notepad, now full almost to bursting.

“Hmm…how to begin?” I pondered.

“$*&%£!!” suggested my neighbour, a little unhelpfully, due to the rustiness of my Cantonese.

“No…no that won’t work…hmm…oh yes, how about a wee bit of this..?”

Pen met page. Slowly, steadily, practically illegibly, I began to write:

It’s a solid nine hour flight from Sydney to Hong Kong – proof, if it were needed, that Australia is just a comedically long way away…