The Archive

A nation in the toilet

Friday 6th

A word about toilets: I know, you’re all dying to hear more about my toilet experiences around the world, so here you go. I nipped into a public toilet in Hong Kong, expecting to find the usual lack of toilet paper, locks, doors or running water. But no, they do things differently here. For starters, the place was spotless. Everything was working and they had even laid on a choice of western or squat toilets.

But that’s not all, they were even piping in soft classical music to accompany your experience. So if a culture can be judged by the quality of its public toilets, and I think it both can and should be, then Hong Kong is a truly civilised place.

Anyway, it was a big day today as I had to make up for the extended dark time of yesterday, so first thing in the morning (11am) I headed off to the Man Mo temple, the oldest temple in Hong Kong.

The place is dedicated to two gods, Man and Mo (I know, you’re surprised). Man is the god of literature and Mo the god of fighting.

As an aspiring writer I though it wise to avoid offending the god of literature (if this blog hasn’t already done that), so I made a contribution to the temple to buy a bundle of incense to burn as an offering.

Then, considering the likelihood that I will end up in a fight at some point on my travels, I thought it would be good to get warrior God Mo on my side as well, so he got a few sticks into the bargain.

Thus I added a bit of smoke to the already choked atmosphere which was created by dozens of enormous coils of incense hanging from the ceiling. It was quite cool, unless you’re an asthmatic I guess, which I think I may now be, thanks to the delightful Hong Kong air.

Enormous coils of incense in action


I also wandered around the Soho area of the city, which is where a lot of little bars and restaurants can be found. Yes, I know I told you Wan Chai was the Soho of Hong Kong, but it turns out there is also an area actually called Soho which, confusingly, I would say was like the West End of Hong Kong (ie just the same as London’s Soho but without the sex stuff).

Next stop, the mid-town escalator. This is essentially a series of moving walkways and escalators that take you up the steep streets of Hong Kong. It’s quite impressive, so I was considering riding it from the bottom to the top. Then I thought better of it.

Friend: “Hey Peter, did you do anything exciting when you were in Hong Kong?”
Me: “Oh it was awesome. I rode on an escalator.”
Friend: “Um, ok, yeah. You’re right, that sounds awesome.” (Quietly removes my name from social calendar and Christmas card list for ever more).

Then it was time for lunch at the Ritz.

Seriously, I had lunch at the Ritz. Don’t worry though, Maneesh was paying.

In the afternoon, I was accosted by a Buddhist monk.

He tried to hand me a good luck token which looked like a gold book token. Or it may have meant I’ve won a trip to the Wonka factory. Anyway, wise to this game from years of avoiding gypsy women dishing out ‘lucky’ heather, I tried to refuse.

He wasn’t having any of it so I pulled out a few coins, but these he declined.

Wow, I thought, maybe he’s just being nice.

Ha! No chance, next he pulls out a little card that assures me all money collected will be going to the upkeep of temples and the Buddhist Monk drinking and social fund (or something, I can’t recall exactly) AND a little notebook in which previous suckers, er, charitable people, had written down their names, what they wanted the monk to pray for (mostly peace and a few opting for prosperity) and a cash sum. And no small sum either. I couldn't help noticing that most of the names were Western too.

So, feeling the peer pressure, I added my name and matched the (not small) cash sum and handed Mr Monk a couple of notes. I didn’t even have the balls to put ‘war’ or ‘a new bike’ in the ‘what to pray for’ box. The shame.

Sure the monk gave me his (not expensive) bracelet after that, but what a great scam. It had everything, peer pressure, written commitment, gift giving for reciprocity. It was a masterclass in sales technique.

Sly fucking monk.

He’s wasted there. He should be selling cars.

And what about all life being an illusion eh? Well those notes I forked over were no illusion, I’ll tell you that much.

Still, hats off to him, he did a great job. And I don’t care. You know why? I’ve found inner peace through yoga.

That’s right. I took a yoga class in the afternoon. In this I learned

a) to let go of pain and attachment to the body and
b) that yoga really fucking hurts.

I thought it would basically be a lot of sitting about in different positions whilst contemplating the lotus blossom or something. Actually it was all about moving your limbs into positions they were clearly not designed to go into and trying to ignore the screaming, burning pain.

OK, I may be exaggerating a little, but it was actually pretty active and quite a workout and I might do it again sometime in the future, once the feeling has returned to my legs.

In fact the only pose I could do at all was called the ‘corpse position’ which involved lying down flat on your back with your arms out and came right at the end of the session. I was very good at that, I think because I had indeed died about halfway through the lesson.

Finally, after dinner, it was time for the last night in Hong Kong so we headed off to a karaoke box, drinking, dancing and a fun night had by all.

Splendid stuff.

posted by Peter The Great @ 12:00 AM