Hong Kong (1982 - 1985)

Have you ever experienced heat, I don't mean heat from a flame or the Police, but heat within the tropics? Temperatures in the summer averaging forty degrees centigrade. Humidity at ninety nine per-cent. The kind of weather where you drank your own body weight in water in an hour and sweated it out in a minute. You took five or six cold showers a day and didn't bother to dry yourself as it was a futile exercise, just made you sweat that much harder. Air that was oppressive to breathe just because of the temperature of it and the amount of water content it held. Welcome to Hong Kong. That is the very first thing you felt when you step out-side the cool air conditioned airport.

The next thing is the assault on your senses of sound, smell and taste. With a population of around five and a half million people, you don't expect it, but you sure do experience it quickly enough. Please, allow me to put this population figure into perspective for you, that’s around one tenth of the population of England (during the same time). Hong Kong has a land mass of, just over, one thousand square kilometres, compared to the United Kingdom that is, just over, two hundred and forty thousand square kilometres. That makes for a lot of people in a very small area - the ultimate definition of "crowded streets." Another way to help visualise this is to think of Oxford Street, in London, or Times Square, in New York, on the last shopping day before Christmas - that is your everyday street in Hong Kong. Your first impression is that the population are so rude because, as you walk down the street, you get bashed and bumped into every second. You soon learn it is simply due to lack of foot space on the side-walks. In fact, the native Chinese population are extremely polite and so very humble. Rudeness is not in their nature (by default at least).

I recall, upon our return to England, just how small the buildings were in London. How empty the streets looked and how clean they looked too. Another thing that struck me oddly was that London was so "green," so many open parks and trees and grass verges. Sure there were parks, trees, grass and other such protected places in Hong Kong, but there was a hell of a lot of concrete, steel and glass too. Hong Kong is actually made up of four distinctive regions: Hong Kong Island, Kowloon and the New Territories (on the main land side of China) and then the myriad of small islands within the South China Sea's.

We moved to Hong Kong due to my father being posted there, after the Falklands war, as part of his duty in The Royal Navy. Getting posted to Hong Kong was like winning the lottery. I later learnt that this was the Navies way of rewarding him for his actions during the Falklands war, a futile attempt to alleviate "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder" that our whole family had experienced due to that conflict in the South Pacific in 1982. To a degree it did help, certainly in me at the tender age of just ten years old, Hong Kong was the best distraction anyone could have received, however in years to come the distraction was almost hollow.

We were granted living quarters, a modest three bedroom, fully furnished, flat on the sixth floor of a ten storey block. No 12, Elliot House, Harcourt Place, Wong Nai Chung Road, Happy Valley, Hong Kong Island, was our address. Happy Valley is famous for its horse racing track and we had what you could only describe as "Grandstand seats" with the view from our balcony. The race track was, literally, across the road and our Youth club was housed in the centre of the race track. On Racing nights the roar of around One hundred thousand people all cheering for their horse to be first past the post was something to behold, I've heard thunder claps quieter than that sound since.

In Hong Kong the wild life is exotic, yellow crested Parakeets are as regular as Black birds are in England. Bright green Canaries instead of sparrows. Praying Mantis, Gecko lizards and cockroaches (Bombay Runners that just laughed at you when you tried to kill them) were the everyday insects in the kitchen or bathroom.

The foods available, on every street corner, local restaurants in their thousands, markets, shops and plaza's everywhere. Fresh fish, swimming only minutes before, being expertly cooked and on your plate for your enjoyment quicker than it takes to get served a Big Mac. I ate foods there that "westerners" cringe at just the thought of eating.

Buildings so high that you couldn't see the tops of, when stood at ground level and looked upward. We used to find ways into these buildings, make our way to the roof tops and scare ourselves silly by looking over the edge at the drop below. Let me tell you at seventy stories you can't make out individual people on the streets below.

I have not returned to Hong Kong since my return in 1985, I was thirteen years old. I remember all of it. My sister has been back many times and has told me how much it has changed since then. I don't want to lose or ruin the precious memories I have of the place that it was back then. Those memories are more precious to me than anything anyone could ever offer me. I never want to lose them. Not ever!