29.10.13 - Ultramarathon man. With more falling over than recommended

I was thrilled, as I sat aching and wincing on Sunday night while shovelling celebratory pizza into my mouth, to discover that 50km – despite being just 8km longer than a normal marathon – officially counts as an ultramarathon. Which quite simply sounds much more exciting.

And so, around 3 hours before, I had become an ultramarathoneer.

All the running that gets referenced in this blog has actually been building up to something. Sometime in July, I read through the fug of a hangover and stifling morning heat in the Sunday paper about the vogue for 50km+ races in HK. Feeling disgusted with how gross I felt, I immediately found the first one I could see and signed up without thinking too hard about it. But since then, the early mornings and hours of pounding trail had been building up to Sunday.

I knew, as I limbered up with my bleary eyed band of supporters (thanks to Cathy, Trevor and Claire for trogging all the way to the Peak at 630am) near the start that I was fit enough to finish; bit I had zero idea how I’d actually react on the day, when the trail was clogged with 900 other runners, ad I’d need to scale 8000 feet in total. The longest proper run I’d done in training was about 40km, but with much less hill than that, on usually deserted routes.

I won’t run (haha) you through a blow by blow account…but here are a few morsels:

Piece of advice – if you ever do such a thing, try to keep your footing. It tends to help. I fell no less than 5 times on trail, the first just 6km in, with almost disastrous consequences. I actually managed to trip so hard I fell off the side of the trail head first and began plummeting down a slope. I caught onto a tree with arm and clung on until an incredibly strong fellow runner bodily dragged me back up. This cut both my legs and my arms, broke one of my shoes and wrenched my thigh. The next 4 were less dramatic but hurt a great deal…and by the end my shoe was audibly flap-flap-flapping with every step as the sole started to come away. Something to avoid for the aspiring long distance runner.

Podcasts on trail are a treat. But can lead to odd moments. One of my favourite bits of training was saving up some juicy comedy, news, documentary and history podcasts to entertain myself with while out for hours on end. For this run, I hoped these would help keep me sane and distracted from the pain. Instead, it led to several runners asking if I was OK around 25km mark, as I looked in great distress…whereas in fact I was hiding behind my sunglasses trying not to shed a tear at a very affecting radio play. And I had a bit of an out of body moment as I leant on a tree at 37km in, breath ragged, halfway up a steep mountain scrambling path, looking out towards China, while listening to Melvyn Bragg explain the evolution of the Book of Common Prayer. Not sure those things have ever come together before.

No matter your achievement, there’s always someone else to admire much more. As I came off the last hill at 45km, dog tired and almost done in, I knew I was on the home stretch. But only got the will up to run those last 5km when a man who must have been in his 60s saw me coming, and began to run to stay out of my way. I had to run and tuck in behind him to save face, but in the last 200m, he accelerated away as if he hadn’t a care in the world. That, and the fact that the over 50s winner beat me by an hour and a half; and the overall winner beat me by almost three; put things in relief.

Nonetheless, 7hrs 58 and 119^th place is fine for me thank you very much. And even as I winced in the arm chair, pepperoni slice in hand, I found myself googling when the next one might be. 50km in Sai Kung in March, you say? 3 big mountains on the way? Interesting…

28.10.13 – what do you get when you combine a jockey club, philanthropy and a government land monopoly?

A public golf course!

No, that’s not a joke because a) If that were the punchline, it simply wouldn’t be funny and so count as a joke and b) Because it’s true.

With Claire’s parents in town, it was time for me at last to try out the Kau Sai Chau public golf course, something I’d been dying to do for ages. Wait, non-golf lovers! This is still pretty interesting, even if you don’t like golf…

When you think ‘public golf course’, i.e. one with no members, in the UK, you imagine a municipal course. I’ve played some good ones at home, but they cannot compete with the higher end members’ clubs, and some can be downright tatty. But that certainly does not apply to Kau Sai Chau.

Here’s how it happened. The Hong Kong Jockey Club is a strange, but rather likeable, beast. It has a monopoly on legal gambling in HK, and as such is the largest single taxpayer in HK; but it is also the largest single philanthropic organisation too. Its speciality is to build or restore buildings or massive infrastructure the government is not inclined to take on…which usually means hospitals, schools, sheltered housing, that sort of thing.

But in the 70s, it was persuaded to right another social imbalance of sorts that doesn’t feel quite so urgent…but I am pleased they did. They pressed the Government to allow them to build a non-members, public golf course, because the very few members clubs could not cater for everyone (and did not want to).

What has that to do with the Government? Well, in HK it technically owns all the land aside from a small patch on which the Anglican cathedral stands. So to build this venture, they had to give up some land.

And so, some leases signed for next to nothing, a gargantuan infrastructure project and billions of HKD later, and the Kau Sai Chau Golf course appeared on an idyllic island just off the picturesque coast of Sai Kung, that is only accessible by special ferry. And boy, what a course – 3 18 hole courses plonked onto rugged and hilly terrain, with views that look so jaw-dropping it’s as if they are a painted backdrop or a picture on Chinese porcelain.

It could only happen quite like that in HK.

It was well worth the two hour slog there by taxi-tube-tube-bus-ferry-bus, and we had a belting time…

For the non-golfers – the course was really good; Trevor played well; I played very inconsistently; we had a nice time. If you don’t care about golf, stop reading now.

For the golfers – we were on what is meant to be the poorer cousin ‘South Course’…but from my mandatory buggy seat, it looked pretty impressive. Every hole seemed to have a great view of the scenery. The tees were placed very imaginatively. The rough was frighteningly unplayable, which added to the fun. Plenty of fiendishly placed bunkers and water traps that seemed to suck your ball in. Incredibly well kept, lightning fast greens. And on form – Trevor shot 36 stapleford points, which as a golfer will know is impressive with borrowed clubs on an unfamiliar course. I shot 33…but in two of the most divergent 9 holes I’ve ever played, with a pitiful 7 points on the front, and an impossible 26 on the back, including 3 birdies. Almost as weird and inexplicable as this most unlikely of course’s itself.

20.10 - In a World of Pure Imagination

I attended the Mandarin Oriental hotel’s 50^th ‘birthday’ party this week. Well, to say I attended is stretching it. I was there because of work (which I shan’t go into  due to my self-imposed rules for the blog). So it’s more appropriate to say I was present.

Nonetheless, it did mean I got to witness one of the biggest parties in the HK social calendar all year, if not for several years. A place to see and be seen for the rich and famous, from tycoons to film stars to star-dust-sprinkled ‘friends of Hong Kong’ who flew in especially. And conversely a chance for the Mandarin - with its location comparable if it were in London to flanking one side of Trafalgar Square – to re-stake its claim to being the most exclusive place to stay in HK.

How to describe, I thought, how the Mandarin went about doing just that? I could talk about the actual red carpet they rolled out, complete with snapping paparazzi pack. The limitless champagne, whose price per bottle when it was whispered to me made my head spin. The gourmet food laid on in miniaturised style. The stars they got to attend – Helen Mirren was a highlight. Or perhaps the performers they managed to recruit to play – the headliner (oddly, but brilliantly) being Brian Ferry.

All of those things were candidates. But the thing that really hit the high-note for a statement of opulence was actually just a sideshow, and many people did not even notice it. The fact that is the case only goes to show how the Mandarin pulled out all the stops. It was a mocked up garden composed entirely of sweets and desserts [a photo filched from a friend, as my own was pretty grainy…thanks to Ruth!].

I had passed it a couple of times while going to and fro in line with my obligations at the do. It was not until later, when the crowd thinned, that I took in that the display was more than just a quirky arty garden scene put on for decoration.

Trees made of macaroons, whose trunks and the body of the tree the macaroons stuck to were edible. Elegant plants complete with dainty flowers (with macaroons at their centre) – all edible. Piles of what looked at first glance to be rocks, but on closer inspection were made to look like a gold-encrusted rockery. Those too, entirely edible.

I stood agog in front of this scene for some time, stupidly asking a member of staff if I could eat this part of this display over and over again, when clearly the whole point was that everything was up for grabs. And so, I had brief burst of Willy Wonka-ish childlike joy, where I started picking up anything from the display and recklessly throwing it into my mouth. I doubted myself, though, when I plunged my hand into the pots of rocky ‘soil’ and plucked up what felt like small black stones. Even these turned out to be jet black chocolate with a slither of almond tucked in the middle.

By that point, if a troop of Mandarin-liveried oompah-loompahs had turned up to provide the next round of entertainment, I would not have batted an eyelid.

15.10 - Shing Mun - not so redoubtable after all...

 

Our guests Jo and Adam sadly left yesterday, and the fun they brought with them will be missed. Months ago, I had been looking forward very much to their visit because I knew that, in Adam, I would finally have a hopeless history geek companion.

Shortly before we left the UK, the four of us had a ridiculous weekend away to Luxembourg – 500+ miles driven all by Adam – to go look at the Maginot Line. So enthused had we been by this trip, I was very excited to learn when reading up on HK history that buried in the New Territories there lurked a “Maginot line like structure”.

What on earth is the Maginot line, the majority of normal people cry? It was a line of formidable concrete semi-underground forts built by the French before World War Two to keep the Germans out. One of the largest such systems ever built, it failed totally – the Germans simply went around the side. Oops.

The structure in HK was, rather wonderfully for a British colony where the drink it was named after was quaffed almost as a national duty, called the Gin Drinker’s Line and designed to keep out the marauding Japanese. And I’d heard for a history boffin it was a treat.

A hard-earned treat, mind. We travelled for almost an hour and a half by taxi, train and taxi again to reach a trail that wound up into the mountains to find it. After a couple of thousand foot climb, we were rewarded with signs of what we’d come to look for. Helpful signs pointed out corners of pillboxes and bunkers poking out of the thick undergrowth, entrances to tiny long abandoned tunnels and the odd gaping jagged hole leading into concreted blackness. We explored with boyish enthusiasm.

Our 15k wander saved the best till last. Perfectly preserved tunnels of the Shing Mun redoubt, the lynchpin of the line. The tunnels snaked and burrowed under this hulking hill, linking pillboxes, protecting its defenders and dominating the surrounding countryside. And most charmingly, all were named after London streets, and still accessible on foot.

Here’s the actual history bit, for those who are interested (you’ve been warned!). So what became of the line? Records showed the Japanese were very worried about attacking it, expecting to suffer heavy losses and take weeks to break through. The British hoped it would last 6 months, or more, with little resources.

It lasted one day. Why?

Certainly not a lack of valour. The day after it fell, the numerically superior Japanese were almost thrown off the hill by a bayonet charge. Imperialist drum-banging, but harrowing, stories abound on the island of bloody last stands where Canadians, marines and local volunteers fought desperate battles to the last bullet. So why did that happen? Depressingly, it seems, the answer is incompetence…from what I read it was because:

a)      Lots of armed men garrisoned HK, but the forts weren’t manned properly. Shing Mun was meant to hold 120, but had 30 men in it.

b)      The soldiers in HK had never been trained to man fortifications at all.

c)       Prejudices. The Brits appeared simply not to quite believe the Japanese would be up to the task. Myths existed like the idea that the Japanese did not fight at night because they couldn’t see at all when it was dark. The fatal attack came at night.

d)      And on trail, we were astounded to find big concrete blocks set into the path on the hill itself that gave directions to where the bunkers were.

For us though, we didn't have the most redoubtable of days either. We were scared out of our skin by the packs of monkeys 30-40 strong that lined the road just shy of Shing Mun, and had to resist the urge to run away screaming…and later we failed to resist that urge. When traversing a pitch black tunnel with a phone to light the way, feeling intrepid, we shouted aloud and bounded back to the daylight bouncing off the dark walls when we convinced ourselves there were snakes in the puddles on the floor. Turns out we had no fight in the dark either.

13.10 - Moktoberfest. With a side of Fatboy.

Moktoberfest, with a side of Fatboy.

A joke for which the whole of this post is the punchline…Some Chinese, a bunch of white westerners and a genuine German oompah band walked into a mock beerhall constructed on top of a swimming pool a couple of kilometres from communist China…

Everything about Macau’s casinos and the hotels/entertainment industry attached to them is breathtakingly ridiculous. You sometimes feel like you’ve stepped onto the set of a post-apocalyptic movie, where the society that has emerged is obsesses with hyperconsumption and hedonism. If you’ve not read my posts on our trip to Macau, I would (clearly!) recommend them…

So we did have some idea what we might be experiencing when we booked into the Sheraton Macau Oktoberfest party as a warm up to seeing Fatboy Slim live next door. And so, I was not that surprised to see that they had constructed a mock-rustic wooden stage and a faux beer hall, complete with sturdy stomp-proof long benches and tables, and shipped in a 7-piece Bavarian band complete with four German ‘Beer wenches’. What we were not prepared for was how hilarious this unlikely clash of cultures would be.

Some quick caveats…the revelries of Oktoberfest beer parties are unusual. There is no reason everyone should know how they work. Imagine a ceilidh, but the dances are all based around staying at your tables, and involve (benignly enforced) beer quaffing. The key is – everyone participates. However, there is no reason mainland, HK and Macanese Chinese should know this; and there were zero explanations or translations for them.

BUT. The band - its banter and silliness well-honed, their musical skills excellent – and supporting wenches could have done no more to get across that everyone needs to copy what they do, and join in. Until the very last hour, when the beer finally broke the dam, the only table out of 900 people to dance, shout responses to the band, raise glasses etc was our small enclave of 8…see video.

The baffled Chinese tucked with relish into the German food on hand, and clapped politely when the songs ended. This caused us endless merriment, and made us friends for life in the desperate beer wenches, who kept joining our table when their efforts failed. Some particularly good lost in translation moments:

-          Beer wenches jump on a table full of Chinese and gesture them to copy. They respectfully back off to one end of the table, thinking this is a show, not an invite to dance, and take photos.

-          Beer wenches approach another table, and its inhabitants get up en masse, and flee.

-          In response to pleas for everyone to stand and raise their glass when a certain word is shouted, the only table bar ours to respond remains seated and raises their knives in unison, like some weird salute.

-          A small Chinese lady joins our table, as it’s close to the stage, to take photos; and when we all stand and start to dance as one, she visibly flinches, clutching her camera to her chest, before half-falling off the bench in an effort to get away.

On the flipside, we were hilarious to everyone else in the room. As they had no reason to know how this was meant to work, they – understandably – thought we were the crazy ones. Openly pointing and belly laughing, small groups gathered to take photos of us (from a safe distance). You could fully understand why. We looked preposterous wiggling and shouting on our own. Look at the crazy gweilos – why are they standing and swaying about like that? All this stamping, shouting, jumping on benches…don’t they see how embarrassing they are? Why aren’t they just watching the show like everyone else? Must be drunk already, look at their huge beer glasses [few tables got the 2-litre steins bars us]! And why is that one ripping up the table cloth? Oh no, that one’s seen me watching and is coming over gesturing for me to dance, quick run away!

And to cap off the surreality of the evening, we promptly decamped to a huge club next door, and at around 2am found ourselves watching Fatboy Slim live, from about 10 yards distant, with only marginally more people than were at the Oktoberfest party…

 

06.10.13 - Board of the standard Saturday routine? This one leaves the others tailing in its wake...

Claire and I don’t give our guests an easy intro to their times in HK. We had Jen and Ed with a cocktail in their hands on a party junk within four hours of landing. Sandie was quaffing an expatty gin in a rain storm under a sagging Central bar’s awning before her feet had touched the floor.

Jo and Adam were no exception. They found themselves being dragged behind a motor boat at speed in the South China Sea less than 24 hours after their tyres hit the tarmac.

We had heard some time ago that wake boarding – imagine waterskiing, but with a snowboard – was available on the south side of the island. It’s not at all difficult to book into, and is doled out (for what ultimately looks and sounds at least a tad technical and dangerous) with no checks for experience. The four of us, along with our friend Rachel, simply grabbed a taxi to the tiny village of Tai Tam, met our boatman Brian, jumped on his little boat, strapped the boards with bungee ropes to the back, and chugged into the bay.

As most of you will know, I am Mr Risk Averse. HK has beaten quite a bit of that out of me – who would have predicted I would be happy to run through bamboo groves, along ridges with sheer drops or through streams at night before I came out here? But I drew the line at trying to ride a wave on a snowboard-type device in the middle of the sea behind a boat. I settled for marvelling at the backdrop (so picturesque and repetitive as we circled the bay, that it reminded me of the repeating 2D cityscapes that you used to get as background in early 90s platform computer games…anyone remember what I mean?!).

My companions were much more intrepid.

Rachel, pictured in the top photo, only ever fell when her arms got too tired or when trying to perform jumps and tricks. She stayed up so long we almost ended up on the several miles distant Stanley beach several times.

Adam struggled a little to get into a standing position – apparently there is a knack that, when you’ve done it once, is easy to replicate – so sadly we saw quite a bit of the below off the back of the boat as he battled the waves.

 

Jo, with a distant memory of waterskiing back in the day, took to this like a duck to water, and by her last run she was almost as hard to shake off as Rachel. And this is how thrilled she was about it.

 

Claire – with her excellent balance and the dancers’ strength in her legs – really got the hang of it in the end. Though not without some spectacular falls – this photo is the frame before we catapaulted face first into the sea. She can’t wait to try it again…so a future standard Saturday plan might be a taxi to Tai Tam, Claire goes out in a boat, and I run around the beautiful hills ad reservoir for 2 hours, and lunch in Stanley. Perfect.