The Half Century has arrived

Today is my fiftieth birthday. I am not sure how I should feel; I know I am happy it is my birthday because I love celebrations of any kind. I don’t feel fifty; I don’t know how that is supposed to feel. If I was honest I am worried that I won’t be able to do all the things in life I want to do, but I know I am going to have a hell of a good time trying.



Big Buddha


Fifty First Timer No. 21
Climb a Hong Kong munro

I know I am becoming a bit predictable with all these munros and hills, but it has to be done.

Hong Kong region has vast ranges of forests and hill trails. On our initial approach to the airport on Lantau Island I was astounded by the superb ridges that reached out over the territory. The fact that I could see trails on the crest of one outstanding ridge urged me to explore the area I later learned was the New Territories.

We were staying on Lantau Island the first week of our visit, so it made sense to start with the Lantau trail and its highest point, Lantau Peak (934m)
To say I climbed a munro is a bit of a cheat because we caught a bus from Mui Wo to a high point at Ngong Ping, a popular tourist destination because of the giant Buddha statue and the Po Lin monastery situated in the same spot as the start point of the Lantau Peak. Funny, but it didn’t take long for us to loose the crowds and find we had the path to ourselves.

Although this is a well marked trail, the path was steep with a couple of sections where I felt a tad exposed. It was also raining which made the rock slick.

Climbing a hill in Scotland is hard enough work but the added tropical heat meant that the leg up we were given by the bus ride did little to ease the pain of the ascent. The summit was reached in good time for lunch, but the flies and mosquitoes on top had the same idea, so we beat a hasty retreat along the Lantau Trail to find ourselves spewed out of the forest onto a busy highway ripped up by major road works. The workies were helpful in guiding us through the traffic cones to the nearest bus stop and like all our transport in Hong Kong, it wasn’t long before a bus stopped to accept our Octopus card swipe and we were soon home in Mui Wo drinking beer.

If we had left this trip to the end of our holiday we would have failed because a week after our climb Ngong Ping and its neighbouring villages were cut of by a major landslide which left the area without electricity and fresh water for days.

In the last week of our holiday we climbed Tai Mo Shan (957m), Hong Kong’s tallest mountain.

If I look shattered it is because I am.

Money makes me mad

If only we could blow Grand Lisboa Casino into the South China Sea

Fifty First Timer No.20
Gamble in a casino

One ambition I have held for years has been to visit a casino and place a bet. Where better to achieve this ambition than in that world famous gambling paradise Macau. This former Portuguese trading port is an hour’s ferry trip from Hong Kong and was high on my lists of ‘must visits’.

We caught the ferry from the exotically named China Ferry Terminal in Kowloon. This Sunday morning the streets of Kowloon were almost deserted, but for a few stragglers all heading in the same direction as we were. The terminal lives up to its name; it is possible to travel from there to over fifteen different destinations in mainland China. The Macau ferry has frequent sailings but the cheap seats on the next ferry that Sunday morning were taken, so we couldn’t leave for another hour. Starbucks is quite a good place for breakfast though!

Macau was hot, hotter than Hong Kong and because the ferry disembarks a good half hour walk from the main thoroughfare, our tempers were beginning to fray by the time we reached town. This wasn’t helped by the walk through Fisherman’s Warf, a tourist amusement park, the epicentre of which boasts a fake mountain which looks more Utah than Pearl River.

The walk took us past vast concrete and glass creations; the hotels and casino of this Chinese Special Administrative Region. Our guide book led us on a walking tour mobbed with tourists, so we ditched the tour and wandered the quite side streets. I marvelled at the incense burning in almost every doorway, if shrines could not be bought a drain pipe would suffice as a suitable alter. Throughout my journeys in this area I was struck by the arrogance of past colonialism and their suppression of individuals’ rites to worship as they please. I am glad that Bhudda is still strong in the Macauan’s hearts and is pushing forth among the cathedrals and churches and casinos of those other religions.

The heat was intensive and a beer was soon required, but not forthcoming. Even back among the Starbucks, McDonald's and Haagen Dazs, we found no Carlsberg. Then I spotted a young man in an upstairs window that over looked the square supping a beer. There!

We found the door way to café E.S. KIMO round the corner in a crowded market street. Beers taste so much better when you have been deprived. We also ate a Korean Egg sandwich (an omelette on white bread) and a fresh fruit salad which we were appalled to notice was drizzled with Heinz Salad Cream but it tasted rather good.

The biggest and most vulgar casino in Macau is Grand Lisboa Casino. This gold monstrosity rises up like an Imperial standard at the edge of cowering colonial streets and hails the start of the casino studded highway back to the ferry terminal.

Before we could enter the casino we were subjected to a bag search and a pass through an airport security screen. We were then thrown into a hall crammed with tables of baccarat and poker and roulette. The back of the hall beckoned, with flaunting bauble and bells, the fruit machines sang.

Shiny escalators floated us to higher floors where the stakes rose with the altitude. I could see on the seventh floor a high stakes area, cordoned off, admittance by invitation only. Most of the gamblers were middle age, Chinese men, although a high proportion were haggles of young women. Smoke and expensive perfume choked the air and made me gag or maybe that was caused by my disgust at the indiscriminate waste.

I gaped as one man threw a thick bundle of Yuan onto the table and then shrug as it was scraped into the sealed cache of the croupier. Why had I felt so guilty in China, languishing in my expensive hotel in Guangzhou? At least I was giving something back in terms of tourist revenue. This debauchery was indecent.

I had lost my taste for gambling but I was there, so with my grubby twenty Hong Kong dollar note in hand, I perched at a fruit machine and did what I had to do; loose it in three presses of a button.

I would now like to visit a Glasgow casino for comparison, but I can be certain I will never be in danger of becoming an addict; I am too canny for that.


Just Read
Chinua Achebe, Home and Exile

I have only recently discovered Chinua Achebe and am now a fan. A couple of months ago I read the excellent Arrows of God a novel based around the nineteen twenties. Home and Exile is a non fiction essay originating from a series of the lectures given at Harvard University. I bought the book thinking it was an autobiography. It isn’t, although there are a number of pleasing autobiographical anecdotes.

I was delighted to find that Home and Exile examines African literature and argues that African literature should only be written by Africans. He cites the African writing of the past, written by Europeans, as distorting the perception of the continent and portraying the African as primitive, heathen and stupid.

It was quite a shock to read his comments because I am currently writing a novel with an African character and although I do not presume to describe her homeland or her upbringing, Achebe’s comments have made me rethink my approach.

Here, there and everywhere

Liz on the summit of Sgor na h-Ulaidh


Poor wee soul

This is going to be a short post because I have a chest infection and am splattering my screen with pea green mucus every few minutes. It’s enough to make even me sick.

The McPartlin Munroists

On Saturday I struggled up Sgor na h-Ulaidh (scoor na hooly) a rocky munro in Glen Coe. I wouldn’t normally leave my bed when ill but it was my sister’s munro compleation. The weather was perfect; high cloud, slight breeze in the valley, just a few drops of rain. A well deserved cheese burger was gobbled down in the legendary and hoatching Clachaig Inn followed by a stagger of about a mile to stay over night in a caravan my brother John had booked. The caravan, next to the Glencoe Bunkhouse, had great views towards the hills we had just climbed. It is a shame I kept everyone awake all night with my coughing. Well done Liz!



That makes three McPartlin Munrosits.



Fifty First Timer No.19
Fast Train to China

On the first full day in Hong Kong we booked a trip into China, it takes about a week for the visas to come through so we left the following Wednesday. Mr Lee picked us up at the hotel and deposited us at the railway station with grave instruction on what to do on arrival in China; hang onto your bag, do not get separated, do not declare anything, look out for the guide, if she is not there phone this number.

Our destination was Guangzhou and our guide, Eve, was waiting at the station along with her driver Mr Jang. Together they made our stay an enjoyable, entertaining and informative one. We were templed out, three day later, when Eve dropped us back at the station.

The highlight for me was getting up at seven the first morning to wander the river side streets and find them filled to the banks with people exercising. Tai Chi groups graced every inch of park, make do badminton nets were strung from handy trees, there was even a group of old men swimming in the mighty Pearl River. To say I was impressed would be an injustice, I was inspired. The Chinese, as a race, are temperate, hard working, and thin. What must they think of the arrogant blobs and lager louts who stagger and swagger in the West (and in some parts of Hong Kong)?




This is one of the markets Eve took us to see.



And Talking of Blonde Birds and Bikes

In my last post I mentioned Lucy’s John O ‘Groats to Lands End attempt. Well she has done it. Well done Lucy!

I am now off to bed with a hot toddy, antibiotics, Lemsip and Strepsils - I'll be better tomorrow.

Hong Kong V Scotland

Carbisdale Castle


I had planned to update this blog with stories from Hong Kong, but it is proving difficult because life back home has been as hectic and exciting as the holiday. However I still have to report all my Firsts, so I will start with another Hong Kong First and slot in some of the Scottish ones.

Fifty First Timer No.15
Eat Shark’s Fin Soup

I know some of you will be throwing up your hands in horror or even just throwing up at the thought of this, but when my principles started to niggle, I remembered the words of my Muslim friend when I once offered her Stornoway black pudding (made from pigs blood) for breakfast and she replied ‘Lovely, I never let religion get between me and my stomach’.

I now apologise and promise never to do it again.

I have tasted Shark’s Fin soup before but it was made from synthetic shark fin. The soup I ordered in Hong Kong was the real thing. The venue was the American Restaurant in Wanchai. The restaurant has been around for xx years. When Hong Kong was a popular R&R destination for the US troops during the Vietnam War the restaurant’s owners, hoping to attract the GIs, renamed their restaurant thinking it would sound welcoming. The name and the restaurant proved popular, so when the war ended they retained the same.

The waiter helped us to decide on the size of portions we needed and advised me that the soup was expensive, was I sure I still wanted it. ‘Yes sir’, falling into an American twang. Like most Chinese meals the food came at different times, what we would consider the second course was delivered first followed by the soup. Sharks fin soup is thick and gluttonous with fibrous strands of fin laced through. The taste is light and eggy which I found delicious, almost like eating noodles in potato soup. The meal was washed down with Tsing Tsao beers and buckets of green tea. Despite his advice, we ordered too much food which gave the waiter a good laugh at our expense.


Weekend wedding and more Firsts

Fifty First Timer No.16
Stay in a haunted castle

The weekend saw a few Firsts, most I will do again because it was such fun.

We attended a wedding party at Carbisdale Castle. The castle is perched on a hill just outside Bonar Bridge in Sutherland and is the Scottish Youth Hostel Association’s flag ship. I have passed it many times on the road to the far north and looked longingly at its towering ramparts and cosy welcoming lights twinkling through the trees, but this is my first stay there.

The castle was built in 1917 by the widow of the Duke of Sutherland. It was gifted to the Youth Hostel Association in 1945. The castle is reputed to be haunted but there was no evidence of ghosts this weekend, they were probably all quivering in a corner to avoid the noise of the ceilidh band, disco, general revelry and my musical abominations.

John and Kate, the happy couple, wanted a party and they certainly bagged their wish. The hostel can sleep over 180 visitors and we almost filled the whole place from Friday night through to a bleary eyed Sunday lunchtime.

Colin and I were attending the evening part of the wedding so we were lucky to spend Saturday in the surrounding area. We went for a wander round Dornoch, had scrummy home made Cornish pasties at the Dornoch Patisserie then walked along the four mile pristine beach to Embo trying to spot minkie whale in the Dornoch Firth. A pass remarkable supper was picked at in a pub before we tarted ourselves up for the party.

The ceilidh band played their ‘Gay Gordon’s’ ‘Dashing White Sergeants’ and ‘Strip the Willow’ for the group, the majority of who were hill walkers who skirled and whirled until the buffet was served. We then switch to the gyrating disco beats of the ‘70s and ‘80s.

When the official music stopped the party moved to one of the many lounges and this is where my other Firsts came in.

Fifty First Timer No.17
Learn to play a bodhrán

Fergus, one of the two Best Men is married to an Irish lady and came to the wedding complete with bodhrán, a traditional Irish instrument, under his arm. I begged for a lesson which he was quite happy to provide, he explained how to hold the single drumming stick and demonstrated the beat then said ‘right practice, I’ll be back in five minutes.’ Being a tenacious learner I did what I was told, but the others in the company moaned in horror, ‘you’re not really going to do that for five minute?’

The stick was as slippery as noodles in chopsticks, and kept falling from my hand. When Fergus came back he told me to relax and steer through the wrist. I did for a little while until my hand grew tired then I handed the bodhrán back to its rightful owner. I think I will add a bodhrán to my birthday list.

Fifty First Timer No.18
Play an electric guitar

Ranald, the other best man, took his electric guitar and amplifier to the wedding. I couldn’t resist a go. I strummed some chords and tried to pick out a couple of tunes, but the combination of previously drunk glasses of wine and the fact the shiny red and white guitar continued to slide over my chiffon dress and off my lap, did not make for a pleasant experience for the other hard core party goers, in the end I reluctantly handed the guitar back and looked out at the dawning day. It was time for bed.

I now apologise but can't promise never to do it again



Blonde Bird on a Bike

Someone who did not partake of too much wedding wine and was probably getting out of bed when dawn was breaking was Lucy. Lucy attended the wedding but rose early to arrive on time for her nine o’clock, Sunday morning start of her John o’Groats to Lands End Bike ride. You can follow her progress on her blog

http://lucymcnee.blogspot.com/

I have also added Lucy's Blog to my top favourite blogs.

Where have I been?

HONG KONG – that’s where.



It all began with a smooth transfer through the infamous Terminal Five


Hong Kong is a Special Administrative Region consisting of many islands, the biggest and busiest of which is Hong Kong Island, but it also takes in Kowloon and the New Territories on the mainland which stretch from the coast up to the China border.

And what a fabulous place it is. We spent three weeks sampling everything this diverse area has to offer. The town of Mui Wo on the island of Lantau was our perfect first week base. It is tranquil and unique despite being on the other side of a mountain from Hong Kong’s massive International airport, and only a half hour ferry ride from the city.

Second week we moved to Hong Kong Island for a couple of days before heading up into China for a short and fascinating three day trip. On our return we kipped up at the YMCA in Kowloon which gave us a head start in the mornings to explore the New Territories. But more of that later.

There were many things I loved about this holiday. I managed many Fifty First Timers. I also developed a habit of eating with chopsticks. When one night I was presented with a knife and fork I felt weird. But the best bit was the transport. I fell in love with my Octopus Card

The transport system is a model which should be replicated all over the world. An Octopus card is like a credit card you can top up with cash at stations and ferry terminals. With this card you can travel on any form of transport in the region; small island buses, trains, ferries, trams. You can even use it to buy groceries if you run short of cash. Most of the fares are a set fare whether you travel one stop or ten but it doesn’t matter because the fares are pennies. The only exception I found was on the MTR (Mass Transit Railway). Swipe the card to enter the paid area and swipe it again to leave, the card is only reduced by the number of stops travelled. It’s easy.


On Mui Wo everyone travelled by bike to the ferry terminal then hopped over the water to work.

As well as being cheap all the transport runs on time and even the MTR at rush hour was never as crowded as the London Under ground is. And no one rushes, everyone walks because they know that if they miss one train another one will come along in a minute.


The Trams were a treat to ride on

The other thing I noticed was how health and safety conscious everything is. In the MTR stations the train lines are held behind glass panels that only slide open to board passengers, something that only occurred to me when I read in the local paper about a boy in Tokyo who pushed a stranger onto a train track only because he ‘wanted to kill someone’.

Because of the geography of the area the Hong Kong people have been plagued with landslides. Because of this they civil engineering group have a continuous programme of making slopes safe. Their slogan is ‘Safe Slopes Saves Lives’. Each slope is registered and has its own number. Unfortunately we discovered while we were there that not all slopes have made the grade. More later.