Hong Kong

Smell of sweet sulphur. Mega city one. A race to escape poverty. Education, religion, a big deal. Crumbling facades and a red brick church. Holy crap. There's people here who live in extreme poverty. No room to build out, so build up. A single room width apartment block. My mouth is actually hanging wide open as we drive through downtown. Fluorescent neon signs flash in store fronts below crumbling dwellings. "You raise me up" plays on the cab radio the couple behind me share a kiss. Ironic? No, probably not. It's cut after one chorus to make way for the news, a sense of humour or just plain in a rush?

Arrived at the hotel, what a marble polished palace! The girl at the desk writes my details on a slip. Her pen pauses before each word and the nib fast rotates as if it's thinking before proceeding.

Stepping out of the glacially preserved hotel into the oppressive afternoon heat is like jumping into a pool. It hits you, totally consumes you from all directions outside and in. It sucks your energy, rips it from you, and instantly you are sticky with sweat.

Awake early, but not so early as suspected. Up to top floor, swimming pool. Feeling groggy, lie on lounger in weak morning haze. There's that smell again, salty like the sea, faint sulphurous like volcano, drifts like sick jasmine on the dense breeze of the young day.

Dragonflies, more dragon than fly, fly soundlessly overhead. I didn't think such delicate life could be supported here. Not so delicate. A cruise ship rolls into the harbour. No-one on deck to see it arrive in Hong Kong. If that's not interesting for the happy cruisers, then what is?

At buffet breakfast, two ship officers sit together. Crew cut and in standard issue crisp white shirts, dark ties, pressed black trousers, they look like upper middle class British mormons, echoes of their colonial past. One looks like the lost brother of Piers Morgan, made of ham, and with bigger hair. An elderly chinese millionaire businessman enters with a glamorous much younger woman and they sit to my left. He is shorter than,her, crisply dressed, old fashioned, a pair of large weakly tinted bifocals on his motionless deeply pockmarked face. His hair is thin, black, shiny with hair gel. His face too, shines in the reflected light from the harbour in front of us. It's almost like he used a single procedure to gel his hair and wax his face in a simple front to back motion. His face doesn't move, they don't speak. The lady collects her healthy meal, the man sits, waits, for what? Finally he puts down his awful cup of tea and gets himself an orange juice.

Sound like kissing from the table to my right. Strange, only a moment before the man there was bellowing in chinese into his mobile. Glance across and the noise is the gentleman slurping vigorously on an unidentified purple food. The foods doesn't entirely clear his lips and ends up back on his plate. The man clears the (evidently quite large) frog from his throat with a loud phlegmy cough. Ends with a spit.

Ah, good. Millionaire businessman has finally got some breakfast. His wife (?) must be quite relieved.

Outside the hotel front a groom party (12 in total) is having their photos taken. Uniform: white shirt, black tie, black trousers, manga hair and converse blue star shoes. The chubby kid in the group wears a pink shirt. The bride waits inside watching through the glass wall, occasionally nervously tapping on her iphone. I go back inside and Rear Admiral Piers Morgan leaves the hotel with his ship mates, teenage son and numerous blonde floozies.

New room, high up, harbour view. I rest my hands on the window frame and look out into the falling dusk. Any view that might have been apparent is obscured by a red cloud of pollutants. Beneath me in the water bobs a Watsons Water bottle. It's neon green cap visible from this distance? Fat men jog along the seafront, no top on, shining sweaty boob blobs. Admiration though, how people can run in this environment, a miracle. What an oppressive, sweaty, horrible stinking hole of a place.

I feel something wrong in my guts. Joints ache, head fuzzy. Illness creeps into my bed with me and I am laid low. What a fucking shithole. A modern day heart of darkness, all commerce, aggression, capitalism. No compassion, no humour, no humanity.