Hello from Hong Kong!
Wednesday, January 19th, 2005I am here! I made it!
Hi guys, Im in Hong Kong! I arrived yesterday evening. I am staying with an old school friend, Tavneet, in a very nice part of town called Mid-Levels if anyone knows it.
Had a really cool time getting here on the Virgin party plane. Ma and Pa dropped me off at Heathrow and then I bought myself Life of Pi to read on the flight which lovely Dermot was supposed to lend me but I forgot to take it with me, but I found myself sitting in between a crazy Chinese student and a crazy Irish bloke who managed to get a conversation going between three rows of people and two aisles, I kid you not. That as well as the amazing range of movies made sure that I slept not a lot and am now suitably jet lagged!
Tav came to pick me up and then we headed to her place which is in a massive, massive apartment complex covered in fairy lights halfway up Victoria Peak. I was well impressed, I even had someone open my car door for me. A guy from Clapham called Tim came out here to live just 4 days ago, to work for Goldman Sachs, and he lives in the same place so we all went out for dinner in Soho, which was a little bit like Soho back home. We went to a Szechuan restaurant and we had their walnut chicken with Szechuan chillies. I started eating it and after a couple of mouthfuls felt my tongue go all tingly and then numb, a sensation I had not felt before (!) I started to panic a bit cos I thought I might be allergic to something and I couldnt even feel if my throat was clamming up or not because everything went numb. I could see the headlines: ‘Traveller dies from allergy to Szechuan chillies on first night in Hong Kong’, at which point I downed my coke and went to check out my tongue in the bathroom mirror to see if it had quadrupled in size or not…. It was then that I saw the baby terrapins. They had a bowl of turtles in the bathroom, next to the toilet! Talk about entertainment… Anyways tongue calmed down, finished dinner and headed for D’Aguilar street which has lots of bars on it.
I woke up at 5am this morning and couldnt get back to sleep so I went for a walk and ended up climbing up Victoria Peak which was a hugely steep climb. The view was rubbish thanks to the smoggy air quality here so might try it again before I leave.
Anyways, am in a cafe waiting for Tav to come and see me for lunch, so will email again soon!
Farrah xxx
PixieDoux