Category: Asia

Posted on

Shanghai: A (partial) apology

Still the best skyline in the world

Back in May 2014, in the second most recent entry to this ever-prolific blog, I published an article that may have been a tiny bit negative about Shanghai and its residents. 

I suggested that the city populace lacked even the most basic social graces; that walking down the street required the dodging a near-constant tsunami of saliva; that even if you avoided the spit then you would almost certainly be mown down by a reckless motorist (or at least deafened by the ever-present fanfare of car horns); that to be white in Shanghai is to be gawked at like a Victorian circus freak and, finally that the Shanghaiese had bulldozed much of the city’s rich history in a relentless stampede towards modernity and money.

Well, I revisited the city last month and so it’s time to revisit those opinions. 

We hear much about the breakneck rate of development of China but it’s something else to witness the change firsthand.  The cashless society has well and truly arrived – during our stay, we were the only people I saw pay for anything with paper money.  Everyone else uses Wei Chat (an all-purpose social media app, communications hub and payments platform) or Alipay (the Chinese version of PayPal) via their phones. 

Incredibly this even included an elderly lady – to all intents a destitute – who appeared at our restaurant table one night, desperately pleading with us to buy one of her flowers to try and raise a few cents.  No chance of getting away with the old pat-of-the-pockets-shrug-of-the shoulders-sorry-I-haven’t-got-any-change routine as she accepted payment by Ali Pay.  So we told her to fuck off instead.

But more impressive than the technical advances are the changes in behaviour: spitting, for example, has both metaphorically and literally dried up.  The traditional soundtrack to Shanghaiese life – hawking Chinese on the vocals with accompanying horn section courtesy of gridlocked traffic has fallen silent.

A ban on horns within the city centre is largely respected but that”s not to say that there has been an accompanying improvement in driving standards.  Just that the regular traffic atrocities are now carried out in silence.  Traffic lights are still considered at best advisory and there are regular near misses involving the constant flow of electric scooters but, overall, the feel is of an organised, efficient chaos.

Patriotism is a concept that manifests itself in a variety of ways.  At best it can be a joyous and inclusive celebration of national identity, at worst a poisonous bigotry.  A sliding scale from St Patrick’s Day to Donald Trump. 

Saluting the flag

And the Chinese are nothing if not patriotic, something that is ingrained into them from a young age as we were able to witness first-hand.  Presumably with an eye on the paedophile market, our hotel room had been positioned overlooking the playground of the local junior school.  From memory, my mornings before school were spent milling around the playground or hurriedly finishing homework that had to be in that day.  For the Chinese student, the school day starts at 7.30 with exercises followed by marching around the playground, the forming of perfectly straight lines and saluting the Chinese flag whilst singing the national anthem.  Whether you think this is a positive reinforcement of national identity or the creepy brainwashing of impressionable young children almost certainly depends on whether you are Chinese or not.

It can be difficult to understand the Chinese mindset from a western perspective.  We fret (rightly) about the treatment of the Uighurs in Xinjiang and the protestors in Hong Kong and, more broadly, about the suppression of personal freedoms but for most Chinese these issues just doesn’t cut through.  Partly this is down to the Communist Party’s massive censorship operation but, for many, the struggle for survival is too recent a memory for anything else to matter.  To put it another way, when your living standard has increased so greatly and so rapidly, it’s difficult to worry about the darker side of the government that created it. 

This rapid development has left parts of central Shanghai homogenised and looking like any other city.  Costa Coffee shops – established in London in 1971, their sign proudly proclaims – appear on every corner.  There is definitely a sense that traditions and history are dying but for many those traditions were contiguous with a shorter life expectancy, lower income and a lack of indoor plumbing.  I think that we can all agree that an increase in ubiquitous western coffee chains is a price worth paying for not having to defecate in a bucket.   

An oak-lined street in the French Concession

A booming city tends to bring with it a booming property market and Shanghai is no exception with sky-high prices commonplace.  We saw an ancient 60m2 in the city’s desirable French Concession area selling for $1.3M.  Housing affordability is hardly an issue unique to Shanghai and the government has introduced rules to try and address this. 

One example is limiting the number of properties that a married couple can own but we heard of one long-married couple who circumvented this in the most obvious way: they split up (on paper only) and proceeded with building their property portfolio.  A divorce of convenience if you like.     

Another rule states that only married holders of a Shanghai employment permit card can buy property in the city.  Shanghai operates a quasi-immigration system that limits the rights – and therefore flow – of citizens from other parts of the country.  We heard a story of a cosmetic surgeon who was granted this permit and moved to Shanghai.  However the surgeon’s brother and his fiancé were not able to secure a permit but wished to buy an apartment in the city.  In a bizarre turn of events, the surgeon ended up marrying the brother’s fiancé and the newlyweds bought a flat together which the brother now lives in with his sibling’s “wife”.

The sanctity of marriage is alive and well in Shanghai.

Times have changed

So where does this ramble leave us?  Was my first impression of Shanghai wrong?  Maybe although I should add in the caveat that we more or less stayed in the French Concession for the entire trip which is a bit like judging London without leaving Mayfair.

Nonetheless, the streets are definitely cleaner (they are almost constantly attended to by an army of hose-wielding cleaners), standards of behaviour have improved and the city is as vibrant as ever.  Shanghai was always worth visiting but now it’s actually worth sticking around.

Posted on

The Australia Dairy Company

The Australia Dairy Company was founded in 1970 in the Hong Kong suburb of Jordan and has established itself as something of an icon in the island’s budget dining scene. Despite the name, the restaurant’s only Antipodean connection is the somewhat tenuous claim that one of the original owners worked on a farm down under in the 1940s.

As it transpired, the dubious name was the least of the crimes committed against dining norms by this particular establishment.

The restaurant is famous for the long queue of eager punters that normally forms outside its door so we were delighted that none was in sight when we arrived on a warm Saturday evening. Sarah carefully examined the menu (in Chinese, obviously, no quarter given to the tourist here) displayed in the window before attracting the attention of a passing staff member to ask if this was the daytime or evening menu. The waiter, head cocked to one side, regarded her coolly, his expression a heady mixture of pity, contempt, incredulity and indifference. Finally, after a short period of time, he apparently decided that that the question was so idiotic that he wasn’t going to bother answering it at all and walked off.

We looked at each other in slight disbelief for a few seconds before a different waiter appeared and Sarah asked him the same question. He barked in the affirmative that this was indeed a menu so, deciding not to risk any further enquiries, we headed inside.

To be fair at least we couldn’t say we weren’t warned. Describing the service in the Australia Dairy Company as rude would be to do the word a massive disservice. This was studied, practiced, performed rudeness; the art of the abrupt; a burlesque of the brusque; Fawlty-esque, pantomime stuff.  It’s all part of the show and we lapped it up.

I would like to say that the waiter showed us to our table but that would give undue credit to the ledge he gestured dismissively towards. A cloth used for wiping tables hung from the partition separating it from the adjoining table and two miniature stools sat below it. These were fine for Sarah but, as I am a normal-sized human, it was something of an effort to contort my body sufficiently to perch under our shelf for two.

The shelf, cloth just in shot.

We quickly ordered. We knew what we were getting – everyone knows what they are getting at the Australia Dairy Company – the set menu; although we jazzed up ours with some Hong Kong style French toast. In the seconds (this is not an exaggeration) that passed before our food arrived we gazed at the tumult erupting around us in the fluorescently lit restaurant. The noise level was incredible as white-coated waiters scurried around, seeking new and imaginative ways to abuse the patrons; to our left a bemused looking tourist couple looked even more confounded when they were ordered to shuffle round their tiny table to accommodate two local Chinese.

Masters at work

First to arrive was a cup of Hong Kong tea which was banged down with such force that half of it slopped all over the ledge. No apology was sought or, obviously, offered. The rest of the dinner followed quickly (and I mean quickly) – scrambled egg on toast with ham, a bowl of macaroni and the aforementioned French toast. The tea was unspeakably vile – a consequence of using condensed milk and the bowl of macaroni was everything you can hope for from a bowl of macaroni.

The scrambled egg, however, was something to behold rich, creamy (as befits something that was probably 60% cream) and moreish. Hong Kong French toast is basically the same as the western style other than the fact that a slab of butter is placed on the top slice which melts quickly and drizzles over the bread, combining with an (un)healthy glug of maple syrup. I could feel my arteries hardening just looking at it. As you would anticipate from a small plate of food containing more than one thousand calories, it tasted marvellous.

A final insult awaited when we asked for the bill. The summoned waiter poked each plate dismissively with his pen, scrawled down the total before theatrically ripping the top sheet off his notepad and thrusting it in my direction. Instinctively, and equally theatrically, I snatched it from him before he gestured towards the door twice with his thumb, an action that has only verbal translation; the second word being “off”. He did at least have the good humour to break into a broad, toothy grin at this final affront which we could only reciprocate.

Timed from first insult to last, the entire Australia Dairy Company experience lasted less than fifteen minutes but the memories will linger a lot longer than that. We emerged into the pulsating streets of Hong Kong dazed, ever so slightly nauseous from the richness of the food but both wearing unshakeable smiles. I’ve had whole nights at stand-up comedy gigs where I’ve laughed less than I did in the quarter of an hour spent in the Australian Dairy Company. I found myself craving bad service afterwards, desperate to be scorned or derided by some inhospitable hospitality worker somewhere.

The next evening we dined in the two Michelin star Shang Palace at the Shangri-La Hotel in Kowloon. The staff were unfailingly polite in every respect – they bowed, they scraped, no request was too difficult, no enquiry was met with anything less than immediate and helpful assistance. Truly world-class service.

How boring.

 

A more sanitised version of this blog will soon appear at www.thernbdiary.com

Posted on

Japan: Beer, bowing and bewilderment

Matsumoto Castle
Matsumoto Castle


Is there a more ludicrous statement than the airplane pilot telling you to “sit back, relax and enjoy the flight”? Enjoy? Unless you are one of the fortunate few with the means to make the fabled left turn when entering the aircraft, surely the best you can hope for is to endure?

It was with these optimistic words from the pilot that the start of my most recent holiday was marked: two weeks in Japan which had been at least six months in the planning. Planning, needless to say, that was meticulously undertaken by my wife although her preparations unfortunately didn’t include actually packing her pre-loaded debit card with her resulting in half of her holiday money being left in Sydney.

Arrival in Tokyo got off to a less than auspicious start when I was yelled at by a taxi driver for the crime of trying to close my own door.  Little did I know that this demanding task is taken care of by the driver simply pressing a button on the steering column which opens and closes the door automatically.  It is striking how common automation is in Tokyo – why have a staircase when you can have an escalator?  Why order from a waitress when you can press a button on a vending machine? Why wipe your bottom when the toilet automatically shoots a jet of water up your arse instead?  There are so many buttons on the average Japanese toilet that it can feel like an IT degree is required before you dare use the thing.

Tokyo is a hulking, heaving, seething behemoth of a city with a population of thirteen million making it fifty percent larger than London or New York.  It’s said that everything is bigger in America, well in Tokyo everything is brighter, shinier and louder.  Take, for example, slot machines – the UK has fruit machines, Australia has the insidious pokies and Japan has Pachinko – pinball on speed if you will, played to an ear-splitting soundtrack of cartoon pop music.  Every street in downtown Tokyo is ablaze with neon signage and arrival in each subway station is greeted by an electronic music-box style tune piped through the station.  Tokyo is truly an assault on the senses but, like any major city, there is a slightly seedy underbelly if you look hard enough for it.  Which obviously I did.

A trip to the electronics district of Akahibra offers a glimpse into the slightly unsettling Japanese view of women and, in particular, the merging of cartoons and pornography.  Not to put too fine a point on it, Japanese men like ’em young.  Young and preferably dressed in school uniforms or maid outfits judging by what was on display in Akahibra.  Most people are familiar with Japanese style anime cartoons but it is striking how weirdly suggestive they are there – every girl wears the shortest of skirts, has the biggest of chests and, oddly, no discernible nose.  Whatever floats your boat I suppose but it was all a bit Saville-esque for my taste.

Not to suggest that all Japanese men are deviants but, conversely, women-only carriages operate on the Tokyo subway at peak times. They were introduced to tackle the problem of persistent groping by unscrupulous male passengers which is apparently a major problem during the sardine-like conditions of rush hour in Tokyo. Apparently two-thirds of Japanese women aged between twenty and thirty have been groped whilst travelling to work. I’m torn between shock at how commonplace this behaviour is in Japan and disappointment that I never received so much as a friendly smile in all my journeys on the Central Line.

The most bizarre aspect of the sexual, er, peculiarities of the Japanese is that they are so completely at odds with their public persona which is ultra-polite, excruciatingly so at times.  Being born English makes you no stranger to the extremes of politeness – the inability to complete a single transaction in a newsagent without saying “thanks” and “please” at least five times for example.  This is taken to the next level in Japan with their bowing etiquette – someone gets in your way, they bow, you get in someone else’s way, they bow.  They bow to say hello, they bow to say goodbye – usually multiple times.  I watched a group of five friends part and the farewell process must have included in excess of thirty bows.  It’s all very charming but being bowed to for buying a can of Coke from 7-11 is a slightly curious feeling especially as reciprocating will undoubtedly elicit another bow.

Bowing is the most obvious example of the culture of respect in Japan – respect for each other and an obvious respect for the environment judging by the lack of litter and graffiti even in Tokyo.  For example on the subway system, paper adverts hang down from the ceiling throughout the carriages.  You could practically guarantee that on the London Underground these would have been defaced / used for roach material / set on fire but they remain pristine on the Tokyo metro.  This isn’t to suggest that Japan is in the grip of an authoritarian regime with the population cowed by a harsh system of arbitrary rules enforced by an overbearing and intrusive police force in the manner of, say, North Korea or Australia; more that anti-social actions just aren’t the done thing.  There is plenty of personal freedom as far as I could make out.

Lunch on our first day took a controversial turn when, unable to help myself after spotting it on the menu and much to Sarah’s disgust, I ordered a dish of whale sashimi.  Japanese whaling is never far from the news but, interestingly, whale-eating is actually very much a minority interest these days with five thousand tonnes of unsold meat in deep freeze storage.  Whale hunting is also extremely expensive so the industry constantly runs at a loss and has to be heavily subsidised by the government.  In short it would be no great loss to the country if it disappeared; so why do the Japanese defend it so vehemently? This is partly down the whaling industry being well connected politically but mainly because the Japanese simply don’t like being told what to do by other nations, “cultural imperialism” as they see it.

Anyway, politics aside, how did it taste?  Pretty underwhelming if I’m honest – very meaty to the point of being closer to beef than any fish I’ve eaten but not with any hugely noticeable flavour.  I think Shamu can sleep safely tonight – I don’t see whale gracing many western menus any time soon.

A night out in Tokyo is obviously a must do and the brief taste I got of the social scene didn’t disappoint. Unusually for Asians, the Japanese are big drinkers and, luckily as Sake is off-limits to me due to a previous unsavoury incident with rice-based alcohol, they can knock up a decent beer.  A typical Japanese night of drinking is punctuated throughout with small dishes of food served throughout the evening.  This style is typified by the beautifully named ‘Piss Alley’ in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo.  Piss Alley is actually a block of narrow laneways that feature dozens of small bars, most only seating a handful of people and all containing a grill on which the chef prepares traditional Yakitori (skewers of slightly dubious meat) whilst engaging the patrons in conversation.  These bars are packed in the evening when they fill up with the identically attired (white shirt, dark suit, brief case) Tokyo ‘salary men’.

We made our way down Piss Alley and Sarah managed to find a bar with two free seats where the owner indicated she could sit down.  I say ‘she’ because when he noticed my paler, western features it became clear that we wouldn’t be quite so welcome and he growled “upstairs” in my general direction.  Never having been the victim of racial discrimination before I was tempted to sit down anyway much like a latter-day Rosa Parks but, on reflection, I thought it best not to tempt the ire of a man with so many knives in easy reach.

Favouritism of their own (or racism as it would be called in the west) is not an uncommon feature of Asian life (different prices for natives and foreigners for example) but Tokyo, in stark contrast to most major capital cities, is strikingly homogenous.  Apart from in the major tourist areas, there are few white faces and even fewer black or south Asian ones.  In fact the only sizeable group of non-Japanese that we saw were the Nigerian touts who have bizarrely carved out a niche for themselves harassing people leaving Rompongi subway station in the hope of luring them into a nearby bar.

I suspect that one of the reasons why there are so few ex-pats in Tokyo may be the language barrier – less of a barrier, more of a fifteen metre high reinforced iron gate, topped with electrified razor wire, surrounded by an alligator infested moat and protected by snipers.  Unlike Hong Kong or Singapore, English doesn’t get you far in Japan.

Signage uses a mixture of English, Chinese and two different Japanese alphabets which would be confusing at the best of times but on the already fiendishly complex Tokyo train system it is a recipe for missed trains, incorrectly bought tickets and general, all-round confusion.  Fortunately Sarah can read Chinese otherwise I can’t imagine where I would be – probably still lost on the Tokyo subway.  Spoken Japanese isn’t any easier: to the untrained ear “excuse me” sounds exactly like “welcome”, “thank you” sounds the same as “good morning” and the word “Hai” seems to mean almost anything depending on the context.

Japan is a diverse and disparate country and after Tokyo we witnessed the stunning bloom of the Sakura (cherry blossom), the Jigokudani national park where the monkeys descend from the mountains to bathe in the hot springs and pose for pictures with tourists, the majestic Alpine Route where coaches wind through mountain roads with snow piled up eighteen metres high on either side.  We dined on melt-in-the-mouth marbled Hida beef as well as the deadly Fugu fish and we marvelled at the UNESCO-listed historic Shirakawago village and the raked gravel of the Ryōan-ji garden in Kyoto (although I may possibly be missing something there).

No, Japan certainly doesn’t begin and end with Tokyo but this blog, quite literally, does.

 

Posted on

Shanghai Stories

Futuristic Shanghai skyline by night.
The futuristic Shanghai skyline

Deng Xiaping, the historical leader of China responsible for many of the economic reforms that have led to the explosion in the country’s growth famously said:

“Not only should we push up the economy, we should also create a good social order and a good social mood.”

Well, one out of three isn’t bad right?

Before I describe what’s wrong with Shanghai and risk accusations of blatant racism, I’m going unashamedly trot out a “some of my best friends are black” type mitigation:  I am happily married to a Chinese girl whose family all seemed (as well as anyone can when they speak even less English than I do Mandarin) pleasant, friendly and generous

Now that caveat is out the way, let’s get to it.

Not to put too fine a point on it, the problem with Shanghai is the people.  There, I said it.  In many ways Shanghai is the epitome of a 21st century city – a skyline to die for (the highlight being the brilliantly alienesque Oriental Pearl TV Tower), an excellent public transport system, fantastic shopping, buzzing nightlife, superb food (although I would personally recommend staying clear of the duck feet which taste as vile as you would expect them too and the pork ligaments which manage to be both stringy and fatty) and, obviously, a thriving economy.

All this is fatally undermined, however, when much of the population are still “pig farming peasants from the village” as memorably described to me by an (Asian) friend.  Let me give you an example:  The Huangpu River is a huge waterway cutting majestically through downtown Shanghai but, unfortunately, I’m firmly convinced that the majority of its great flow can be attributed to the saliva that is continually gobbed out by the populace of the city.  There are two dominant noises in Shanghai – the beeping of car horns (more on the traffic later) and the continual sound of energetic nasal hawking followed by spitting.  Sarah assured me that the fact that most of the culprits at least make a cursory effort to aim their spit at a bin (if there happens to be one nearby) represents considerable progress.

Another example:  The Shanghai subway has sprung up in the past fifteen years and now provides comprehensive coverage across the vast city.  It is frequent, reliable, cheap and clean.  Again this is all to naught when every attempt to board a train degenerates into an orgy of pushing, shoving and elbowing.  The concept of standing aside to let other passengers off clearly hasn’t reached Shanghai whereas the concept of ‘every man for himself’ seems to be the default position.  It is rudeness on a staggering scale and the only real option is to laugh at it.  I’m not quite sure how funny it would be if you had to endure it every day though.

Third exhibit for the prosecution:  Staring.  If you happen to be white and want to experience life as a celebrity – not an A-Lister such as a Beckham or a Clooney, you understand, more a C-grader: the sort of celebrity who attract unwanted stares rather than positive attention; a Chegwin, a Blackburn, a Davro, if you will – then venture fifteen minutes from the centre of Shanghai.  I could probably cartwheel naked down the middle of Regent Street and not receive so much as a second glance but my Caucasian features drew gawking across Shanghai.  And I’m not even talking about furtive, fleeting looks – people would literally stop what they were doing to inspect me as you would an artefact in a museum.  Like the pushing and spitting you become used to it after a while but it remains unsettling.

Fourth and final exhibit:  Shanghai traffic.  I have lived and worked in London and spent a reasonable amount of time in Asian cities so I am relatively immune to erratic driving and constant noise.  However, the taxi ride from Pudong airport to downtown Shanghai taxi goes straight in to my top five most terrifying journeys of all time.  The weaving in and out of traffic, cutting up of other vehicles and excessive speed would be bad enough normally but, bizarrely, the cabbie seemed to be convinced that she was a dab-hand behind the wheel.  “I am an excellent driver” she declared, whilst simultaneously cutting across three lanes of traffic and nearly into a head-on collision with a bus.  The instinct was to hold on for dear life but the cab was so filthy (like much of Shanghai; I saw several dogs wearing shoes) that to touch anything within it was probably to risk a dose of the bubonic plague.  “Foreigners behave disgustingly” came another pearl of wisdom as she nonchalantly threw an empty Coke can out the window.  A little light relief came when she congratulated Sarah on marrying an Englishman as “they are all very rich”.  How little she knows.

It’s said that crossing the road in Hanoi in Vietnam is a life-changing experience – thousands of motorbikes throng the streets and the only way to get across is to steadily walk out into them whilst, like a sea of Kawasakis parting for Moses, they drive around you as you make it safely to the other side.  The situation in Shanghai is similar in that there is no point in waiting for cars to stop as nobody obeys traffic lights anyway.  The difference is that I’m convinced that most Shanghai drivers wouldn’t think twice about mowing you down.  A life-ending, rather than life-changing experience.

If life is cheap in Shanghai, it’s one of the few things that is.  For a country that has really only started developing towards western standards in the past twenty years, they seem to have got the hang of capitalism pretty quickly.  Coffee, for some reason, is absurdly expensive – $9 seemed to be a common price and we even saw one café charging $25 for two ice creams.  That’s not to say that there aren’t bargains to be had – taxis are very cheap (possibly because they kill so many of their passengers) and you can eat for next to nothing but some of the ludicrous prices on display are quite jarring when you see the abject poverty that many Chinese live in.

Nowhere is this huge inequality more evident than on one of the main roads in downtown Shanghai – The Bund.  At street level witness people living on the very edge of existence, collecting rubbish or begging, but take a lift up ten floors and you enter Bar Rouge where cocktails are $25 and attitude comes for free.  The bar’s main selling point is the fantastic view it affords across the Huangpu to the stunning skyline but it is primarily a place to show off.  The main bar is surrounded by roped off table service areas where ex-pats and rich Chinese sit, looking miserable and playing on their iPhones with untouched bottles of Grey Goose in front of them.  Fortunately the horrendous sound track of R&B and commercial house music is played at such a high volume that it drowns out the distant sound of Chairman Mao spinning furiously in his grave.  Communism this ain’t.

The embrace of turbo-charged capitalism to escape to an impoverished past and pursue higher standards of living is understandable.  What is more depressing is that this process seems to have led to a wholesale junking of Shanghai’s past, architecturally and culturally.  This is evident in the French Concession area of the city where many of the traditional Shikumen dwellings have been bulldozed and replaced with a soulless Canary Wharf-style development complete with high-end shops and the aforementioned $25 ice creams.  Bizarrely they have attempted to model the area on the Shikumen style but the result is a total loss of the original character.  According to Sarah the area is a suitable metaphor for the Chinese character now – superficial, money-obsessed and with absolutely no regard for their history.

Despite all this I would still recommend a visit to Shanghai – although it would probably be more accurately described as an ‘experience’ rather than a holiday; it certainly isn’t one for Asia virgins.  I found it to be a bit like a cross between Hong Kong (the downtown area itself) and Bangkok or Saigon (the chaos) but populated by, to western eyes at least, an essentially alien life form with few redeeming features.  The native Shanghaiese will tell you that many of the behavioural problems lay with migrant workers (Xiang Wo Nin, pronounced Shao-wen-ee – which roughly translates as peasant) who travel to Shanghai from across China in search of a better life (the mind boggles at what they must be leaving behind) but are basically treated as foreigners with few rights.

It’s a shame as Shanghai has many plus points as I mentioned at the start of what has turned into a rather unsavoury rant but the truth is that you can’t divorce a place from its people.  Londoners can be rude, miserable and cynical (or maybe that’s just me) but they generally have a sense of humour that redeems many of these faults.  Maybe in a generation or two, the social behaviour of Shanghai’s residents will have caught up with its rapid economic development and the city wouldn’t be such an ordeal but, until then, it will always largely be a place to endure rather than enjoy.

Posted on

A Cautionary Tale

Bali: Beautiful coastline, not such beautiful hospitals

Insurance companies. Tossers aren’t they? Slippery, mendacious, faceless behemoths who are quick enough to take your premiums but equally quick to wriggle out of their obligations should you be unfortunate enough to need to claim. All, arguably, valid statements but having heard the story of my flatmate Greig and his recent ill-fated trip to Bali, I’ve started to appreciate that one day an insurance company might just save your life.

The story begins in the heady days of the summer of 2008. Shoppers were busy indulging in the last days of credit-fuelled hedonism prior to the economy imploding, Gordon Brown (remember him?) was busy enjoying his short-lived political honeymoon and Greig was busy getting kicked by a horse. The horse in question had already been responsible for breaking several of Greig’s brother-in-law’s ribs in a previous assault which, to my mind, makes it a prime candidate for a trip to the glue factory but they seem to be more tolerant of these equine misdemeanours in Scotland.

Anyway, using the sort of logic whereby you deal with an alarming noise coming from your car’s engine by turning up the stereo to drown it out, Greig chose to ignore the pain in his leg which began that day and never truly subsided; a ticking medical time-bomb that ultimately nearly proved fatal.

Spot the Difference

Fast forward two-and-a-bit years and Greig is in Bali, enjoying the last day of a week’s holiday with his friend Vivian in a restaurant. It had been an enjoyable few days and Greig and Vivian were busy taking some final pictures before flying back to Australia that evening. At one point Greig crouched down on his knees to take a photograph from a slightly different angle and found that he had some difficulty getting back on his feet again. He also noticed that one of his legs had turned completely white. It’s worth pointing out that Greig is a ginger Scottish man so the fact that the lightening of his skin colour was noticeable was a cause for immediate concern. The change in skin tone was accompanied by a shooting pain in his lower leg and after a few minutes of procrastination, they decided that a trip to hospital was required and jumped into a taxi.

The first doctor they saw took one look at Greig’s leg, shuddered and sent him off to a better hospital, after relieving them of £200 for the consultation, naturally. This was the first of many, many medical expenses; initially Greig and Vivian were able to settle them on their credit card but, for reasons that will soon become apparent, the insurance company had to step in and this is the reason for my Damascene conversion to their virtues.

At the second hospital Greig underwent two ultrasound scans (£500 each) which identified a blood clot in his left leg that was apparently causing the flow of blood to be restricted to his calf and foot. They immediately diagnosed deep vein thrombosis and put Greig on a course of Warfaran (£250 per day), a coagulate which, it was hoped would thin the blood and dissolve the blood clot.

This was obviously a major inconvenience especially as Greig clearly wouldn’t be able to fly until the clot had been cleared and certainly not that day but fortunately both Greig and Vivian were between jobs at the time so work was not an issue at least. They therefore accepted their fate; Greig was admitted to hospital (£550 per night) and Vivian returned to the hotel as they both prepared for a few more days in Bali.

The Indonesian Ritz

Comically, three days after Greig began his stay in hospital, he had some well-needed company when Vivian was also admitted after suffering an unfortunate reaction to some hair dye. Laurel and Hardy have got nothing on those two.

Five days and another cancelled flight later, it became apparent that Greig was not responding to the treatment so the doctors ordered a CAT scan and things began to take a turn for the serious.

The doctor informed Greig that the CAT scan had identified an aneurysm on the back of his left knee and this was the actual cause of the restricted blood flow to his lower leg; this was the legacy of the horse-inflicted injury. The doctor informed him that this would need to be immediately removed or Greig risked amputation, paralysis or even death and, oh, the operation will be £10,000 which we need before we will start and, just to be difficult, we don’t accept bank transfers.

Prior to this Greig, in order to stop them worrying, had kept his parents in the dark with regard to his ongoing medical plight but this turn of events meant that he had little option now but to ring them and drop the bombshell. You can only imagine the reaction of Greig’s dad at the other end of the phone line upon hearing that his only son might at best be returning home with a wooden leg, at worst in a wooden box. Fortunately Greig’s parents are reasonably well off so were able pay the £10,000 on their credit card. Another hasty phone call to Scotland was made when, twenty minutes before the operation was due to start, the surgeon informed Greig that they would be undertaking a slightly different procedure than first anticipated and that the new procedure would be another £3,000.

Unfortunately it would appear while £13,000 may get you an operation in Indonesia, it does not necessarily guarantee a decent anaesthetist as Greig actually woke up mid-way through the surgery. He came round just as the surgeon was cutting the light-bulb sized aneurysm from his leg but, whilst he was conscious and could feel pain, he was still sufficiently anaesthetised to stop him alerting the medical staff. A situation that could literally be described as a waking nightmare.

To rub salt into the wound (not a standard medical procedure in Bali but it wouldn’t be a complete surprise), it quickly became apparent that the surgery had, in fact, been a complete waste of time (and, obviously, money). The basic premise of the operation had been to remove the aneurysm and then divert the artery, via an artificial plastic vein, to a working vein further down the leg and return the flow of blood to Greig’s foot. It doesn’t exactly take Quincy to work out that diverting the artery to a vein that is completely blocked with congealed blood is not going to work does it?

It was clear that they had reached the limits of medical ‘expertise’ in Bali and with Greig’s prognosis deteriorating by the hour, the decision was taken to transfer him to the nearest hospital that would be able to treat him with some degree of competence. Unfortunately the nearest such institution was in Singapore and Greig’s condition did not allow them the time to wait for the next charter flight so, naturally, a private jet was called for (£40,000)

Air ambulance Singaporean style

and Greig headed swiftly to Bali airport. The patient was accompanied on this trip by fifteen different people including four whose sole occupation were to hold umbrellas over his stretcher whilst he was being loaded onto the plane as well as the obligatory nurse who, helpfully, instantly fell asleep the minute they were aboard.

Two hours later they arrived at the Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore and Vivian (she was still with him at this point) asked the doctor if Greig would be allowed to fly home in the next day or so. The doctor looked at her quizzically before pointing out that there was still a very real chance that he could lose his leg, suffer major paralysis or even die.

The situation was still very much critical.

Another five hour operation followed in which the Singaporean surgeon attempted to remove the pointless plastic vein inserted in Bali and basically re-wire Greig’s left leg with veins removed from

This is what £76,000 buys you in Singapore

his other leg. This time round the operation was much more successful or, more accurately, just ‘successful’ and Greig settled into the £5,000 per night intensive care to begin his recovery with his leg held together by 130 staples and 20 stitches.

The following period is slightly sketchy in Greig’s memory which he attributes to the major loss of blood he suffered at this time including one occasion where he was talking on Skype to his parents and failed to notice that his leg had completely opened up and blood was literally flooding out of it – the drugs prescribed at the time inhibited the ability of the blood to clot – and the first of two blood transfusions was swiftly administered. The second transfusion followed a slightly less sympathetic episode when Greig, against doctor’s orders went out drinking and the alcohol reacted unfavourably with the Warfaran causing another massive haemorrhaging of blood.

One month and £76,000 worth of Singaporean medical expenses later Greig was allowed to fly back to Australia with the conditions attached that he had to travel in Business Class and be accompanied by a nurse – total cost: £11,000.

The result of the injury and subsequent surgery is going to be with Greig long after the insurance company has paid up the total claim which will be in excess of £150,000: He now has to undergo six months of intensive physiotherapy, cannot have any exposure to cigarette smoke whatsoever and can only fly business class for the rest of his life as his leg must be kept elevated at all times when flying.

There’s two real morals to this story that I can see – as I always suspected horses are inherently malevolent and untrustworthy animals and secondly, whilst those two adjectives could also be applied to insurance companies, it’s well worth paying a bit more for a better policy. It’s a dangerous world out there.

Posted on

A Gwei Lo in Hong Kong

Evidence of its colonial past is all over Hong Kong

It’s almost certainly a cliché to write that Hong Kong is a city of contrasts but it’s true so I’m going to write it anyway. It’s a city where east meets west, colonial past meets financial hub, Chinese proverb meets conspicuous consumption, Mr Miyagi meets Gordon Gecko. You get the idea anyway.

The build up to the trip started over the weekend of 17th / 18th April with some trepidation as I was glued to Sky News watching the unfolding disaster of the Icelandic volcanic eruption and its after-effects. I was extremely fortunate in that UK airspace was reopened the day before I was due to fly otherwise I would probably still be sitting in the UK now cursing the civil aviation authority. As it was I sat in the Heathrow departure lounge feeling even more trepidation about two things:

1. The impending journey ahead.

2. The fact that the BBC weather forecast for Hong Kong was for torrential downpours all weekend.

I managed to reduce my nervousness on the first part by two swift double vodkas and need not have worried about the latter as the BBC forecasters are obviously as incompetent in Asia as they are in the UK – Hong Kong was bathed in gorgeous sunshine and very pleasant 20 degree plus warmth for my three days there.

The flight was uneventful and I can highly recommend Cathay Pacific – they had at least one hundred films to view and double that in albums to listen to. Initially I did wonder of the flight was going to be long enough for me to see everything that I wanted to although the novelty had well and truly worn off by hour four though.

I landed in Hong Kong to face the traditional Asian greeting of banks of immigration staff wearing surgical masks, as if I had inadvertently landed in a leper colony. I managed to clear these without too much incident and made my way to the very modern and efficient airport express which took me to the centre of town, it was a bonus that the train contained a TV for in-journey entertainment but less of a plus that said entertainment consisted of an endless loop showing highlights of the recent Crystal Palace v QPR match. Luckily the journey was mercifully short and, after negotiating the equally smooth, efficient and cheap (around 30p for a short journey) MTR (underground) system I arrived at the location of my hotel, Wan Chai. It is worth pointing out at this stage that Wan Chai was recommended as a desirable location by my Hong Kong friend Melissa who subsequently pointed out that

1. She had only been to Wan Chai once and that was when she got off at the wrong MTR stop and quickly rushed back down to the station again after taking one look at the place.

2. It is well known for two things – Triads and general seediness.

Fabulous.

From the outside, my hotel looked alarmingly (or enticingly, depending on your perspective) like a brothel. A perception that was seemingly confirmed when I discovered that the password for the Wi-Fi was ‘Fanny’. I needn’t have worried though – there was no way my room could have been used for any bordello-type activities as there was no physical way that two people could have fitted in it. It was tiny – a bed and a very small bathroom plus about a postage stamp’s worth of floor space was all I got although I didn’t plan on spending any reasonable amount of time there so it scarcely mattered.

I quickly dumped my bags (or rather piled them up on my bed) and headed out to discover what horrors lay in store in Wan Chai.

To be honest I probably do the area something of a disservice – it is a reasonable part of the city to stay in – close to the centre and with a certain amount of appealing Asian bustle to it. That said I am used to living in Bow so a hotel in downtown Baghdad would be fairly appealing. I intended to do the Lonely Planet ‘walking tour’ of the area but after wandering round aimlessly trying to find the start of the tour I gave up, happy that I had seen most of what Wan Chai had to offer i.e. block after block of convenience stores and an interesting, albeit slightly disturbing, wet market where locals shop for fish that are literally flapping around on stalls at the side of the road. So far, so Asian. I decided to head a few stops on the MTR to Central and discovered a whole different side to the city.

Central is the CBD (central business district) of Hong Kong and has a very modern, almost European feel to it. Astonishing high rise office blocks are sandwiched between designer stores of almost every hue you can imagine with Bentleys and BMWs constantly cruising past. I’m a slight building geek so I was particularly impressed by some of the skyscrapers on display – the HSBC, Lippo and Bank of China buildings are worthy of particular mention; they laugh in the face of the sterile offerings of Canary Wharf.

After a few hours looking in shops and at cars that I will never be able to afford I decided to check out one of the ‘must-do’ Hong Kong experiences – The Peak.

The Peak is basically a viewing point that overlooks the dramatic Hong Kong skyline and is accessed via a gravity-defying near-vertical tram that climbs the side of one of the mountains surrounding central Hong Kong. It is an impressive feat of engineering that is slightly cheapened by three floors of shops selling the ultimate in Chinese tat that you have to negotiate before you reach the viewing area. Worth it though – the city is stunning when viewed from this height. I was disappointed that the conditions were not really good enough in the evening to justify a second trip up there to see the same view by night.

Whilst marvelling at the display I fell into conversation with an American guy who excitedly told me that his company were soon moving him to London as part of his job. I asked him which part of London. “Slough” he replied. I didn’t have the heart to tell him.

Me at The Peak. Picture courtesy of the Slough-bound American.

After I descended from The Peak I headed for a well earned couple of beers before the effects of jet lag as well as twenty four hours without sleep began to hit me and I returned to my shoebox for a couple of hours of rest.

Fifteen hours later I awoke in sheer panic that I had wasted some of my precious time in the city and immediately jumped in the shower and headed out again.

I spent the first part of the day in Causeway Bay whose notable feature (apart from endless rows of designer shops) is the Noonday Gun which is fired across the harbour each day (no prizes for guessing at what time). The gun was apparently made famous by Noel Coward’s satirical song ‘Mad Dogs and Englishmen’. No, me neither.

After being deafened by the gun I headed off to Stanley which is a small coastal resort

Stanley

about nine kilometres out of the city. This was a welcome break from the frenetic pace of Hong Kong and there was also a market to explore if you like that sort of thing (which I don’t, but still).

After a few hours here I made tracks for the hotel and prepared for my evening’s entertainment courtesy of Melissa. We met in Tsim Sha Tsui and went to a Korean barbeque, the novelty of which is that you are presented with the meat you order raw and then you (or more specifically Melissa) cook it at the table. All very good.

We left there around 8PM to go and see another of Hong Kong’s ‘must-do’s’ i.e. the light show. This basically involves the various skyscrapers around the harbour being lit up via lasers in time with classical musical pumped out around the harbour. Call me a philistine but I have to say I was slightly underwhelmed by it all and left after about five minutes. Apparently it is an unspoken secret amongst Hong Kongese that the light show is a bit, well, shit.

Me and the Hong Kong skyline - one of the most spectacular in the world.

Never mind, we soon managed to mask this disappointment with several bottles of wine at a bar on the 25th floor of the Princes building which offered stunning views of the Hong Kong skyline including the aforementioned HSBC building. We were soon accompanied by Mel’s husband Jonathon and a friend, TC. It was here that I learnt that white westerners are sometimes referred to (in a not altogether complimentary manner) as ‘Gwei Lo’ which literally translates as ‘White Ghost’; I think it has similar connotations to ‘Farang’ in Thai. Not to say that the locals aren’t unfriendly – I found them to be very welcoming and hospitable in general.

Anyway all in all it was an excellent night which my sore head the next morning attested to. My pounding head, combined with the on-going jet lag that I was suffering from meant that a nice relaxing final day in Hong Kong was called for. My to-do-list for the weekend had other ideas though and I soon found myself in a terrifying (or at least terrifying in my hungover state) cable car carriage on the way to Ngong Ping Village to see the famous Buddha statue. Whilst the Buddha, standing at over twenty six metres tall, was impressive, the Hong Kongese once again showed that they never miss a chance to fill an area (no

The Buddha at Lantau Island

matter how holy) with tourist crap:  The road up to the Buddha was littered with dozens of stalls and shops offering all manner of buddha-related tut.

Apart from one other harrowing experience where I became trapped in a seemingly inescapable shopping centre in Kowloon which was too traumatic to recount here, that was pretty much me done in Hong Kong.

As it turned out I had nowhere near enough time, mainly due to the jet lag which I couldn’t shake off, so I will definitely have to return. It’s an amazing city with a huge amount to see and do and, after hearing how much a Gwei Lo can earn teaching English there; it is also an attractive place to live and work.  Cheap it ain’t though – my shoebox hotel room was £70 per night, a mid-range bottle of wine in the bar that I went to with Mel was about £50, another bar I managed to end up in sold local bottled beer for over £5 a pop and the copy of The Economist (check me out) that I bought at Hong Kong airport for the flight to Sydney was £7!

That said, I still think it is worth every penny. It’s a very good introduction to Asia for the uninitiated as there’s still plenty of touches to remind you of home – three-pin plugs, signs in English and the fact that they even say “Mind the Gap” on the tube but the Chinese influence is also obvious: Feng Shui is huge (before the construction of any building is started, a Feng Shui master is consulted) and the fact that ninety five per cent of the population are of Chinese descent means that you are always aware that you are many miles from the west.

I will definitely be returning at some point but for now – next stop Sydney.

Proudly powered by WordPress