History tells us that a soaring high will most likely be followed by a crushing low. Starting a budget 12 month trip round the world in five-star luxury would seem to welcome such disaster – but only if you have to pick up the tab at the end of it. A promise of a favourable write up led one of Hong Kong's most famous hotels to offer us three nights of free accommodation, with club benefits, which we have taken gladly. The club benefits are quite nice – a lounge where like-minded antisocial money men can sit around saying very little, nervously eyeing the free bar and occasionally snaffling a canape. At an extra £100 a night, I'm glad we don't have to pay for it.
Wee Mo and I are comfortably the youngest people in there – presumably people our age are supposed to have concerns like kids and mortgages – and as such are probably resented by our elders. Little do they know that rather than being rich ahead of my time I am jobless and quite possibly one of the poorest people ever to grace the dark mahogany corridors. All this pomp is only a few stories above the unrelenting chaos of the city below. People dart through bamboo scaffolding; boys and girls sport preposterous, futuristic haircuts; and all around the tempting stench of the street vendors' wares fills the air. At all times of the day the streets are busy; at rush hour its shoulder to shoulder in every direction. Above, a rabble of ageing neon signs illuminates the scene. TIA, Danny: This is Asia.
Days pass with us walking through the city, bags on backs, sweating under the cloudy sky. Having heard of the fabled low price of electronics in Hong Kong, I am to buy a new camera here. It's not as easy as it sounds. A pretty excellent website offers some sage advice, but sifting through the conmen to find a genuine bargain takes a whole day longer than we expected. Still, we get some decent pictures by sharing the camera we do have.
And what of the Chinese? Some parts of the western media would have us believe that everyone in vast mother China is of the same symbiotic mindset: unimpressible, unfriendly, unfeeling. Initially it's quite hard to gauge the truth: it's the job of those working in hotel to be nice, so they don't count; the conmen are bastards by nature, so they're out too. With the vague hope of meeting some locals, we head over to Lantau Island on the morning we check out of the hotel.
We stuff our faces with a pretty horrendous McDonalds before checking into our tiny new dorm room which, at £11 a night, will likely be one of the most expensive places we stay in the next year. That relative expense, though, brings with it the benefit of air conditioning and an en suite shower. There are four beds here in total (the other two will later be filled by strangers from New Zealand and South Korea) and we opt for the lower bunks, quickly get changed then head out to the party.
To our dismay, when we arrive we see that there's a lavish buffet laid on, but stuffed full of filthy burgers we can't manage any more. We are, however, consoled by the free bar and some amazing company. In Dubai, people spoke almost exclusively of their frustration and unending disappointment with work or the environment or the weather or, well, everything. The fact that we worked for a shower of chancing bastards no doubt contributed towards this, but within minutes of meeting my second cousin he assures me that Hong Kong is the best place in the world. I ask another guest why it's so special. “Where else on earth can you walk five minutes from this,” he motions around the pool, “and find snakes heads in the gutter and people eating turtles out of the shell? Where else can you have a sea view from virtually any apartment? Where else can you walk – and I mean walk – 15 minutes and enjoy some astonishing hiking?”
I can't answer his questions. I don't think I'm supposed to.