“Taxi!” Any good Australian knows to call this out when some poor unco-ordinated (read: pissed/blathered/shedded) person drops their beer/wine/rhohypnol-and-coke glass onto a hard floor resulting in a nice, crunchy sound of breakage. So of course I call it out even though I’m in Hong Kong in a bar called heat and I don’t know the guy. There is breakage and I’m a good Australian. The perpetrator is a middle-aged, goatee’d Englishman. He looks across at me with a forlorn expression and reverts to the age of 8 before my very eyes. He actually pouts.
“Y o u c a l l e d i t b e f o r e i t e v e n h i t t h e f l o o r .” It’s a sluggish whine but there’s also a sweet note of self-deprecation. The 40-something year-old suddenly reappears. “But I think you might be right.” The next time we look over to see how he’s doing, he has indeed taken my unintentional advice. Another over-lagered Gwai Lo (‘ghost man’, i.e ‘whitey’) drifts away into the neon Wan Chai night.
I love Hong Kong. I first came here in the 90s with The Rocky Horror Show. I remember someone scored pot from the son of a high-ranking official and I had to almost wrestle my producer to the ground of a sky-gondola who wanted to spark up as we cable-carred toward the fun park on the windy side of the island. Naughty. And with a one million dollar fine, unthrifty.
This time around I’m visiting my good mate David and his fiancé Deanna during our week off from Mamma Mia. They live in Macau but we’ve ferried over to HK for a spot of dinner and snazzy camera shopping and to throw soft abuse at drunk Englishmen. In a bizarre manifestation of cultural Twister, they take me to an American-owned Aussie-themed restaurant chain called ‘Outback’ on this small Chinese Special Administrative Region island. I had suggested we eat in a restaurant featuring the local cuisine, but I was quickly made to realise this is like asking people who have worked in a chocolate factory for three years if they’d like a cup of cocoa whilst having a melted Mars Bar smeared across their face. Our waitress was called Amen. Not so strange when I mention that one of the dressers in Malaysia was called Tuna. The menu was sprinkled with the words ‘Roo’ and ‘Shrimp’ and the amenities were tagged ‘Blokes’ and ‘Sheilas’. All very subtle, but I feel the ‘Toilet’ sign could have read ‘Boghole’ if they really wanted to push the theme home. But the food was bloody beaut and the service was bonza. Amen to that.
But let’s go back a couple of days. I arrive in Macau from KL and one of the first things we do is head to The Venetian, the third largest building in the world. We’re talking 51,000 square metres of casino floor, with 3400 slot machines and 800 gambling tables. It’s as if your local RSL has taken the same experimental drugs as Bruce Banner and turned into The Hulk. And I haven’t even mentioned the indoor sporting arena or the 3000 hotel suites serviced by 250 lifts or the fact that the staff-only area has its own McDonalds. The endless shopping district is a re-creation of Renaissance Venice and the roof is painted like a blue sky with wispy clouds and it felt like I was in an old Italian version of The Truman Show. Deanna stops to talk to an employee she knows. The speech patterns are unmistakably homosexual, so I wander over to ask this really gay fake gondolier in a real gondola on a fake canal in a fake Venice in a real casino in the really strange Macau if there are any really gay nightclubs on this really fake island. There really aren’t. One has to go to HK. He recommends a place called Volume, which I think resonates nicely with the Swedish one called Deep. Which goes perfectly with heat. But what’s with all the nouns and adjectives? Personally, I would go for a multi-syllabic adverb, like Indubitably.
Where we we? Oh yes. Casino town. We eventually leave The Venetian and go to another, less glamorous casino, The Lisboa. There is a very subtle aroma in the air and I think it might be Eau de Yakuza. On the gaming floor behind the bar area is a small stage. With perfect timing, the show begins as we sidle up to order a round. Four Caucasian girls come out in skimpy costumes and dance and smile and nearly manage to hide their utter contempt for the crowd. It’s as if the Folies Bergère in Paris has taken the same experimental drugs as The Hulk…but now they’ve worn off. The local men crowd around for this and two other numbers and I sincerely admire these girls. It must be as artistically satisfying as performing Swan Lake in aisle four in Coles.
Later, we’re in a bar called MP3, practically a rite of passage for new-comers to Macau I’m told. It’s a small bar with a silver pole near the DJ. The pole has a few dints and I wonder how the hell you create a dint while pole-dancing. There’s some young blonde thing in a mini-mini-skirt and fuck-me boots sitting on a couch with a cigarette in one hand while she leans her forehead in the other. She’s not happy. The Macanese DJ tells us to welcome ‘Sexy lady’ and she ditches the fag and approaches the pole with all the enthusiasm of Telly Savalas’ barber. But goodness me, she and the pole are clearly good mates and they work well together. It’s like watching Astaire and Rogers, if Fred just stood there. When her number is over, she’s back on the couch, forehead in hand and I want to wrap her in cotton wool and send her back to Latvia. I think this is what Liza Minelli probably looked like after Michael York left Berlin in Cabaret. Then there’s two other girl dancers, who may or may not be girls. The jury is still out. But they certainly knew how to work a pole. Nudge nudge wink wink shave my Adam’s apple.
A few days, casinos, shops, walks, meals, bourbons and laughs later, Friday, I’m up by 6am to catch a ferry to Hong Kong at 8am to be on a plane by 11am to get to Amsterdam by 11pm to get on another plane at 1.30am to get to Heathrow by 2.30am to then get the tube to London Bridge by 3.30am to then cab it to my mate Steven’s by 3.45am - even though it’s actually 5.45pm GMT and it’s still Friday here although on Casino Island it’s Saturday - and I’m so tired I haven’t got the energy to fall asleep so Steven and I jump on the 47 bus to be joined by his fella, Stephen, and we go to Shoreditch House and drink wine and then more wine and then I finally declare defeat because my Friday has been going for at least 32 hours and oh-look now it’s Saturday even here in England and my warm Asian adventures are well and truly over for now as we stumble out into the East End streets and light snow and it’s then I hear Steven or Stephen utter the most beautiful word of this last, long day…
"Taxi!"
Hasta Manana ‘til we meet again.
