My second cousin David had been living in Hong Kong on and off for some years so I arranged to meet up with him while I was there. He lived about half an hour outside the city center at a small town called Kam Tin.
Him and his girlfriend Agata came to teach English but he couldn't because he did not have the qualifications. She could despite being from Poland, she learned English herself from scratch in less than a year. David had a job delivering furniture which was not the best work to be doing in the heat and humidity.
David gave me the rundown on life in Hong Kong. Since the 1997 handover 2 things have gone downhill for the British people who live there. Firstly job prospects as the Chinese people now get first priority. Second was the nightlife as loads of the working class british people have since gone. David used to DJ in some of the clubs and says it was nothing unusual to them to charge a small fortune on the doors only for it to be only a quarter full and no atmosphere in there at all. This set up pictured above was in his house.
They let me stay round their place for the rest of my time in Hong Kong. Most people don't know that three quarters of Hong Kong is green national park. The area around Kam Tin was a bit dull, I did a few trips into the city that included a boat trip across the harbour. I also went to the highest point in Hong Kong......
During the evenings we would go next door to a friend of David's who had a car repair place. Often sitting in there talking and drinking beer until the early hours of the morning.
They hardly ever went out drinking in town because of the shocking cost of alcohol in the bars (double the cost in England!!!). They did make an exception one evening when there was a football match on.
Both of them were leaving in the following month to find teaching jobs in Taiwan (same wages half the living costs). My plan was to meet up with them again after visiting the Philippines. However something obviously went wrong because they were back in England a few weeks before I got there. I still had a great time in Taiwan however. At the time of writing I had not seen them since as they live in Manchester.
No comments:
Post a Comment