Hong Kong heavens
Philip Nolan suits up for a fun-filled trip to Hong Kong, and gets a taste of the high life in between rugby matches
It’s 26 degrees at 7pm and I’m swimming in an infinity pool on the 76th floor of the W Hotel in Kowloon, nose pressed up against the glass watching darkness fall over Hong Kong. At least it’s billed as the 76th floor, but you have to be careful in China. The Chinese for ‘four’ sounds very like the word for death, and is considered unlucky – so, just as many Western hotels don’t have a 13th floor, most in China or its special administrative regions Hong Kong and Macau, don’t have a four, 14, 24, and so on. Add in the fact that they often appreciate our sensibilities, and also leave out 13, my brain was fried trying to figure it all out.
What I do know is that while I was very high indeed, the hotel was dwarfed by the neighbouring building, the International Commerce Centre. When completed in 2010, it was the fourth tallest in the world at 484metres (that’s almost seven times higher than Ireland’s reigning champ, the Elysian in Cork), but now has dropped to 11th.
That’s the thing about Hong Kong. It makes you obsessed with statistics, and all of them are mind-blowing. At just 1,104 square kilometres, it is almost exactly the size of Co. Longford – but with 7.4million inhabitants versus Longford’s 41,000! That makes it the fourth most densely populated region in the world, trailing only Macau, Monaco and Singapore.
So where do they all live and work? In high rises, of course, and that’s what makes the territory so unique. A skyscraper is defined as a building over 150metres tall, and Hong Kong has 317 of them, compared with the 257 of second-place New York City, and what it makes for is the most extraordinary urban landscape on the planet, a vast Lego set that changes with the light and, after darkness falls, cloaks itself in neon that reflects in the harbour on the Pearl River Delta. It is absolutely extraordinary in every respect.
I’ve come to Hong Kong to watch the Sevens, the rugby tournament that has been running for 43 years now. The premise is a simple one. Teams of seven players face each other for seven minutes a side, and this quarter-hour of game play is mesmerisingly fast and skillful, with attack rather than defence the key objective. Often described as the Olympic Games of rugby, the Hong Kong Sevens is as much a carnival and party as it is a tournament, with global anthems such as Happy, I Gotta Feeling, Sweet Caroline and Sky Full Of Stars belting out between matches, and live music too. During one interval, MAGNIFICENT SEVENS: Philip enjoying the rugby as an Elvis impersonator sang I Can’t Help Falling In Love With You, a man proposed to his girlfriend on stage and she said yes to a roar of approval from the crowd in the 40,000-seater stadium.
The audience camera also highlights individuals during intervals and the crowd went wild when a woman who spotted herself on the big screen started twerking, then collapsed in laughter as it cut to a male fan dressed as Borat who proceeded to twerk too.
The most coveted seats in the Hong Kong Stadium in Happy Valley, just up the road from the worldfamous racecourse, are in the open-air South Stand, where everyone wears fancy dress and drinks all day. You have to be over 18 to get in there, and the queue was an hour long, but when you do, you’ll find everyone from Fred Flintstone to Barbie, Ronald McDonald to the Statue of Liberty. One group of English lads rather bravely wore only Speedos and kimonos, which left them only one option for storing their cigarettes. Not a good look.
I was travelling with a group (we
SEVENS RUGBY IS THE MOST FUN THAT I’VE HAD IN YEARS
stayed at the more formal and elegant five-star Shangri-La Hotel (www.shangri-la.com) in Kowloon, all sparkling chandeliers and cossetted luxury, with exceptional service) and, despite initial reservations because I’m the retiring type, we all dressed in shamrock suits because Ireland were in the qualifying round for the first time in over a decade. I’m glad we laid down a little marker for the national team and I can’t tell you how many people approached me for a chat when they spotted the suit, because this maybe is the friendliest sporting event you’ll ever attend, with not a hint of aggression or trouble.
Brian O’Driscoll and Shane Horgan were there to watch, and the fact Ireland made it through the
qualifiers means that maybe some of the bigger name players will take part next year.
I can’t recommend the Sevens highly enough, because it’s the most fun I’ve had in years, and a display of pace and dexterity on the pitch that produced moments of sublime rugby.
Outside of Sevens weekend, though, Hong Kong has so much to offer. On the Friday, I met an old friend who worked for this newspaper in the Noughties, and who now edits for the South China Morning Post. We haven’t seen each other for almost ten years and had lots to catch up on, so after meeting outside the underground station in Causeway Bay, a dazzling retail and entertainment area, we went for lunch to Sedap Gurih Indonesian restaurant. Small and unpretentious, it served the best nasi goreng I’ve eaten, and three main courses, desserts, water and two 660ml bottle of Chinese beer came to less than €30. The choice of food is vast, and if you have a favourite national cuisine, you’ll find it in Hong Kong – the following night, I ate bangers and mash in Gordon Ramsay’s London House pub and restaurant on Kowloon waterfront, because I had already been in Taiwan for a few days (of which more next week) and needed a little familiar comfort food.
The best view of the city is from the Peak in Kowloon, but you have to pick your day, because Hong Kong is frequently hazy, and it wasn’t kind during my visit. I also had plans to ride the rollercoasters in Ocean Park, a mountain-top amusement park with spectacular views, but the one available day was a public holiday and the thought of long queues put me off. Other friends who coincidentally were on holiday while I was there told me they had a great day in Hong Kong Disneyland, and their story is an interesting one. John is Irish and he and his wife live in Surrey; their son and his family live in New Zealand, so they met half way, a great idea for families here whose children have emigrated to the Antipodes.
Cathay Pacific starts direct flights from Dublin to Hong Kong on June 2, four days a week, and for anyone bored of transiting through the Gulf, it’s an exciting new option for a stopover.
As for me, my favourite memory will be of the W. It’s the most I’ve ever paid for a hotel room, €329 for one night, but it’s hard to put a price on being in a rooftop pool in 26-degree evening heat, a cold beer at hand, looking out as night falls on the most spectacular city view in the world.