You don’t know what it’s like to be a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes. Or in other words, done his commute.

Working in an office in Hong Kong for a month gave me an insight into the things most travellers don’t get to see.

They’re not always the most thrilling sights and sounds. Waking in one of Kowloon’s battered old high-rises, to the sounds of pans clanking and rapid Cantonese yakking. Standing shoulder to shoulder with an army of sleepy suits heading down into the efficient anonymity of the Central business district. The endless health and safety announcements on the MTR, repeated until the Chinese words are stripped of all meaning, the singsong sound of them forever framed in your brain.

Living like a local isn’t about the food that you eat, or where you sleep, it’s those moments when the exotic becomes familiar, even to the point of boredom. When someone else’s routine becomes your own.

Like any rituals, the morning moments in HK tell you a lot about how the people live now. They queue for steamed buns and croissants at bakery chains, grab orange juice at Seven Eleven, coffee at Starbucks.

It might not be sailing on a junk, eating dim sum, or a pretty picture of a ‘typical’, ‘traditional’ Hong Kong, but my abiding memories of the city are of my way to work: intrigued by the local culture of the morning, awed by the everyday bustle of a global powerhouse.

This blog has been entered for the Grantourismo HomeAway Holiday-Rentals “Living Like Locals” travel blogging competition (www.homeaway.co.uk, http://grantourismotravels.com/2010/11/10/grantourismo-travel-blogging-competition-november)

So, it didn’t work out. I’m sorry. We’ve all been there and it sucks: break-ups sting worse than paper cuts and take longer to heal than broken legs.

Feeling like an emotional wreck for months at a time is normal. So is losing weight from weeping. The worst part of it is the loneliness – why isn’t everyone else feeling like this?

The answer is that they are, just not all at the same time. Whitney Houston once asked: “Where do broken hearts go? Do they find their way home?” Nope. These days they head for the net and offload, sorry download, their feelings onto a message board.

Derived from the Ancient Greek for ‘cleansing’, the word ‘catharsis’ – the purging of pity and fear through sharing – isn’t a new concept. What’s new is that now – like everything else – it’s online.

The latest rage is for sites like The Experience Project (www.experienceproject.com), which encourages outpourings of grief in such cheerful categories as ‘Don’t know why I was dumped’ or ‘I feel empty inside’.

On shoulder2cryon.net (“Share. Connect. Feel Better”) you can chat live to others who share your experiences; wet their shoulders rather than those of your nearest and dearest.

But is this a good thing? Or is it merely encouraging cyber-exhibitionism and a need for listening that can’t be fulfilled in a person’s offline life? Should a line be drawn before a person’s pain becomes a competition?

Oh, but it already has. Check out ’50 Ways To…’ (www.50waysto.net), which publishes the 49 most current, interesting or pathetic tales, allegedly as help for fellow break-upees (but I suspect also a great laugh for others, depending on their level of sadism). There’s always a spot open – is your pain interesting enough?

The leaving of Hong Kong was fun, with drinks on Friday night. I put in a request for the next job that comes up at Ink Hong Kong so perhaps I will be back there one day.

It’s strange being back in KL. In one way it’s comforting because there’s something so easy about southeast Asia – the sunshine, the prices, the fantastically interesting culture – but I’m writing this in the hostel we first stayed when we got to KL in May – the place I wrote my first blog almost nine months ago – and I do feel sad about the way things have turned out, and that my trip is almost over.

Still, I have a little while left and I’m going to make the most of it. Working on a piece on KL today, and then tomorrow off to Malacca for Chinese New Year and to hit the beach. And wherever God closes a door somewhere he opens a window, blah blah blah.

Chocolate: the edible euphemism

In newsagents in Hong Kong condoms are sold in front of the counter in bright Durex packets of every colour, flavour and variety – a cornucopia of contraception, if you will.

This baffles me as I come from the UK, where that shelf space is usually reserved for chocolate bars; prophylactics (ahem), if they are sold at all, are shunted into some dusty corner with other embarrassing items like Tampax and Preparation H.

I wondered: is Seven 11 is a one-size-fits-all advert for these by-the-checkout goodies? And why do they display their johnnies right by the counter?

This upfront attitude to sex – even if it’s just up front of the cash register – is quite refreshing for a buttoned up Brit. There’s something in most of us Brits that makes us want to titter when we see a box of Pei Dang Vi (in Hong Kong – literally ‘Bulletproof Vest’), many of us remembering all too well those days we used to blow them up to make spermicidally-greasy balloons.

It’s quite fitting that in Hong Kong rubbers fill the role that chocolate bars do for us at home – that of the impulse counter buy. After all, of course, sex does fulfill some of the same roles as a bar of chocolate. Literally, in the famous case of Marianne Faithful and the Mars Bar.

Advertising agencies in the UK would have us believe that chocolate is an acceptable replacement for sex. Those models in chocolate ads are constantly copulating with confectionary: dribbling over Flakes, undressing – sorry, unwrapping – silky bars of Galaxy Caramel, or runinng their lips and teeth over the shell of a chocolate coated Magnum. Not to mention the fairly sinister man breaking into a woman’s flat ‘All because the lady loves…’ (a rape fantasy).

Chocolate is an edible euphemism for us Brits. We get embarrassed if sex is too in your face, while Hong Kongers don’t seem to have that problem – ‘top shelf’ mags are on the middle shelf, and our behind-the -counter goodies are right up front (confining those poor Twirls and Time Outs to the back of the shop).

I do wonder if Hong Kongers’ upfront attitude to product placement translates to real life situations. Where in the UK you might get office workers offering to buy their crush a little something extra on the chocolate run, do they here pick up love gloves instead of maltesers and head to the loo for a different kind of sugar rush? It certainly brings a new meaning to the slogan ‘Twix Fits’.

But maybe I’ve got the wrong end of the chocolate-or-latex-covered stick here? It’s easy to forget sometimes that Hong Kong is a part of China; this eye-catching display of French letters might be a ploy to promote the Chinese one-child policy? The chocolate-bar-placement in British shops is famously good at attracting the kids (good old ‘pester power’), so perhaps these displays are a bit of sex education for one and all, getting the little ‘uns used to the idea
of wearing a raincoat?

Or perhaps it’s moving the chocolate away from eye level that’s important? A way of stopping child obesity, perhaps? Good thinking Hong Kong…Maybe if the UK swapped the chocolate for condoms we’d have less fat children? And less fat children having children of their own.

So it was the end of my second week in Hong Kong and time was starting to fly past. My job was taking me to new and wonderful places: out for slap up feeds, my first fashion show and now this – a Feng Shui class.

But the Feng Shui wasn’t just free for me. Part of a tourist board initiative, the class is offered as a free introduction for visitors into traditional activities. In addition to Feng Shui, Discover Hong Kong offers Chinese cake baking, contemporary medicine, Cantonese Opera and martial arts. I went to take some snaps of the class for a feature and found myself joining a class of American college students all born in the year of the sheep (1991).

This was my first taste of Feng Shui, unless you count an ill-fated episode during my teenage years when, during exam week, I rearranged all the furniture in my room as the ultimate act of procrastination.

Feng Shui (pronounced ‘Fong Shway’ in Mandarin) saw a huge boost in the west during the early 90s and gift shops stocked up on wind chimes and tiny fountains; on Changing Rooms Laurence Llewellyn Bowen talked endlessly of Chi. I thought – like most people – that it was a load of hokkum. But the Hong Kong Chinese are a very pragmatic lot and not liable to leave anything as important as luck to chance; people here have their homes, offices and lives thoroughly ‘Feng Shuied’ by Geomancers.

The class was great fun and it was interesting learning about technique, although at one point one of the girls asked the teacher why there was an object in the spot where it would bring the exact worst energy to his Chi and the guy had no comeback – so much for 20 years as a FS Master.

That evening – thanks to wheedling myself a free week’s trial at Fitness First – I also got to try that other great art of flowing energies: Tai Chi. This was much more interesting and I could feel the benefits in concentration after just one class. We learned a few postures and then partnered up for some ‘Pushing Hand’, where you learn to grapple with another person. As usual at this stuff I was a total malco but my partner was calm and patient (as you would expect from a follower of this most gentle of martial arts) and I mastered some of the technique.

So there you have it – two totally free ways to enjoy some traditional Chinese culture and help exercise your Chi.

The bus gives an alarming lurch as we swing round another corner, the driver seemingly with one foot hard onto the accelerator, the other just a forcefully applied to the brake. My hand, trying in vain to scribble in my notebook, swerves off the page again, providing another useful line of blue biro to add to my recent collection.

I’m taking the express bus from Causeway Bay down to the south of Hong Kong island for shopping, lunch and a bit of a wander, but I’m petrified that I might not make it. The bus is obviously called an Express for a reason: the bat-out-of-hell thundercat at the wheel. Every time we hit a corner on this very windy cross-island highway she accelerates – hard – and I debate whether I will reach my destination in one piece.

I think about asking her to slow down but the supremely English need never to make a fuss has me by the metaphorical balls so I just put my notebook down and hold on for dear life, trying to concentrate instead on the scenery.

Despite the hazy mist of a Hong Kong winter’s day, I can see why the south of the island is often regarded as its most beautiful landscape. Even in the midst of the ‘Bitter Moon’ (the coldest time of year) the sea is a delicious turquoise and the land rises steeply from the beach-lined coastline into pretty hump-backed hills.

Despite the winter haze, Stanley's bay is very blue-tiful

Unlike skyscraper-filled Central, the scenery has changed so little in the south over the last 150 years that you could recognize it from early colonial paintings: the same calm bays and hill forts (although these tend to be museums or hotels now). As the bus lurches through Deep Water Bay and on into Stanley, I half close my eyes (which I am doing intermittently anyway out of terror) and I can imagine those bay-moored yachts are a flotilla of galleons, full of spices from the East Indies.

We screech to a halt in the southern town of Stanley, the brakes making a ‘Kerrrchunk’ noise that makes me throw myself off with gratitude. I trot down the hill for a browse around the market, which is Stanley’s main attraction and one of the best places to pick up all kind of Chinesey crap for your mantelpiece. I manage to curb my spending madness for the most part (for once), although I have to confess to getting sucked into buying some Mao Tse Tung communist drinks coasters (just right for annoying Tory friends).

After an hour or so browsing the pretty knick-knacks of the market, I’m a bit cold and very hungry so decide it’s time for some lunch. Hitting an LP-recommended cheapo, Toby’s Inn, I order my first real dim sum (or as they call it here ‘Yum Cha’ – to take tea), asking the bemused waiter to just bring me a few ‘bits of whatever’s good’.

Looking around, the reason for his bemusement becomes clearer. I’m the only non-Chinese face in the whole restaurant and was getting some curious looks. The place is heaving. All kinds of people are out ‘taking tea’ for Sunday lunch – it’s a very typical Hongkongese activity. There are a number of big family groups (one with the typical screaming baby), singles, couples, friends. A boy of about five sits next to his scolding mother stuffing rice into his mouth as fast as it will fit, mastering his chopsticks in a way that puts this fork-loving pretender to shame.

The ‘bits of something good’, when they come after about 2 minutes, were just that. Exactly as I had imagined real Chinese dim sum to be – hot, comforting and just fatty enough, like a meaty bowl of chicken soup – there are three wicker bowls straight from the steamer. A wrapped leaf with rice that turns out to contain chunks of marinated pork, three dumplings – surprisingly light and lemony, and some steamed rolls, each contained an unbelievably moist chicken wing, the meat tumbling out of the wrapper and almost into my tea cup. I drink tiny cup after tiny cup of the tea to wash all of this down, feeling gradually warmed from the core out.

Yum Cha: what the Cantonese call Dim Sum. And 'Yum' is right!

Afterwards I roll out of the restaurant in a cloud of warm chicken-infused air. Disgusted with my piggery, I direct all my powers into a desperate attempt at digestion. (By this point I’m not surprised it’s considered good manners in China to burp after a meal, just slightly surprised that it’s not also polite to fart, belch or vomit a little on the floor (a la the Romans), just out of sheer necessity.) I suggest to myself a bracing walk along the promenade, sucking down lungfuls of cold air as a digestif.

The harbour front provides a glimpse into another world. While in Toby’s Inn I was the only European, here I could be strolling along the Riviera, with dozens of families sitting out in the winter sunshine at posh pubs and bistros, with hardly a Chinese face among them. I do see a couple of Chinese taitais (ladies who lunch) doing what they do best, complete with tiny handbag-dogs, both sporting fashionable outfits. And yes I do mean the dogs, not just the women.

Surprisingly, rather than the Pekinese or Shih Tzus or other Asian dog breeds, most Hong Kong dogs I have seen here are decidedly British: labs and retrievers, Scotties, Yorkies…even a Corgi or two. But then Stanley seems rather a British place, with the exception of the Chinese-style tat in the market. It was the British ruler’s first administrative centre straight after the First Opium Wars, named after Lord Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby, Secretary of State for War and the Colonies and the town’s landmarks include Murray House, a 19th century building with elaborate colonnades that couldn’t look more colonial if it had a Union Jack paint job and a man in a three-cornered hat doing a little dance on the roof, and – just out of town – the Stanley Military Cemetery, where hundreds of British colonials were buried during the second world war.

It seems to be my fate, having once been a geneournalist (my soon-to-be-patented term for a family history journalist), to end up in a huge number of cemeteries. While I was editor at FHM I took pictures in graveyards as far-flung as Edinburgh, Belfast, St Albans, The Gambia, Thailand. And here I found myself in Hong Kong doing it again. OK, this was for a freelance piece so I will be paid for them, but God, did it feel like a Busman’s Holiday.

The overwhelming majority of the deaths remembered here were from fighting or internment during WWII (the topic of a piece I’m writing), and just reading names and dates tells a gruesome story. At the entrance to the cemetery starts a long line of young soldiers – British and Canadian – all of whom died in just a few days of December 1941, in an ultimately cursed attempt to stop the Japanese invasion.

Hong Kong's fallen volunteers at the Stanley Military Cemetery

Towards the back of the cemetery there are a number of rough-hewn lumps of stone with wobbly black engravings – these all date from 1942-5, and belong to civilians who died in the infamous internment camps at Stanley Prison and Stanley Fort. A small circle of these belong to babies who died at just a couple of weeks or months old. And then there’s a mass grave with the names of 30 people who died in an air raid in 1945, not 2 months before the war’s end. An air raid by the British on their countrymen in the camps – friendly fire, at its most pathetic.

After snapping enough pics to keep the good readers of FHM happy for months, I turn and walk back into town, taking in the bay, the dog walkers, the last few stragglers on the beach as the sun started to set. I like the old-fashioned feel of the place, understand why this has been a popular settlement since the Brits first landed back in the 1840s.

Stanley would be a great place to live, I think – good food, good beaches, lots to do. And it’s easy to get here from Central. I’d definitely come back again. But next time I’ll be taking the slow bus.

Every girl loves her first fashion show, don't they?

My life in Hong Kong has turned out so far to be more glamorous than one might expect of a homeless magazine intern with a pocket full of moths and exactly two contacts. The free flat, free lunches, the free drinks in cool Soho bars, the free gym membership…I was in freebie heaven even before I was invited to Hong Kong Fashion Week to check out Vivienne Westwood’s Anglomania show.

The Convention and Exhibition Centre in Wanchai, where it was held, is so huge that it took me 23 minutes to get to the Grand Hall from the entrance. I knew I’d come to the right place as everyone was wearing black – the women with 3-inch spiked heels, the men with 3-inch spiked hair. Luckily I also looked the part, having chosen my corporate Barbie look that morning.

I shuffled up to the press desk and had a mild altercation with the stupid bimbo on the desk, who attempted to justify a policy of no-pre-registration, seemingly unaware that she was talking to someone who had bothered to pre-register and so had a fair idea that she just meant ‘I’ve left the press list in my office’. I wasn’t the only person talking very slowly through gritted teeth, but still (massive moment of snobbery, sorry!) what kind of intellect do you expect from a fashion PR?

Inner rant over, I snuck through the ropes, past the press pit, where the paps and the papes were lingering for the celebrity arrivals, and into the arena. The runway wasn’t as tall as I’d expected – more like a wide step down the centre of the room, painted a dark chalky red. Giant cardboard letters specifying which pen people had been allocated backed banks of covered chairs up both sides. As I was directed to my seat in ‘D’ by someone who could only be an art student (glasses with plain glass, some kind of Nuevo spiked mullet), I felt a frisson of excitement to be at my first ever fashion show.

It wasn’t really my thing of course: the loudspeakers were pumping out some typically arty whale-sex music, like a 25th century cover of Holst’s Planets, while the girl next to me kept making cooey noises and fluttering her fingers at people who were undoubtedly someone in the bank of chairs across from us. I couldn’t help a smattering of schadenfreude when she was totally ignored.

Still, when the lights went down and the music started rocking out, I sat bolt up and was hooked throughout. It’s a lot faster than I thought it would be. Models practically sprint down the catwalk (catrun?), looking like a stop-motion video of wild horses.

They exude sex – this also surprised me, as they’ve got such boyish, boobless figures – they smoulder, they strut, they could kill you with a look. It helps that they walk from their hips – when your groin enters a room full of people before you do it does send a bit of a message – but this sex appeal screams confidence and sophistication. Needless to say I have been practising my model walk ever since.

The clothes were great too, for the most part – and it wasn’t too mental, considering the rep Viv has in the press (aside from a wicker hat shaped like a wedding cake that did the impossible and made a male model look like a homeless troll).

Strutting their stuff

It was all over way too quickly. I only had time as each passed to make a quick note and to wow, or frown, at what they had on. But I had a great time, especially when I got my aftershow goody bag (more freebies for the freebie queen!)

And I learnt a little something, I think. For anyone who cares to know what we’ll be wearing next winter: skirts and dresses with big prints and lots of volume, capes (lots of capes), hats (sailors’, baker boys’, aforementioned wicker cakes), patterned leggings, high-waisted trews (for men) and high high heels for the girls (natch).

Well, some people will be wearing that. Most of us will be wearing whatever they’re selling in Warehouse or Top Shop or Primark, sadly. Unless someone wants to give me some designer freebies? …Viv?

Homeless, jobless...suddenly glamorous. Who knew?

Po lin's Big Buddha. Worshipping the idols of capitalism

If there was an award for the most cynical place of worship ever then Po Lin monastery would win hands down. Situated on the Ngong Ping Plateau of Lantau island, Hong Kong, it is home to one of the world’s biggest Buddha statues (over 24 metres tall and weighing more than 2 tonnes). It’s also home to a ‘village’ of faux Chinese hostelries, including a ‘zen noodle’ and a Starbucks (for Christ’s sake), fronted by Carlsberg umbrellas and signs inviting you to enjoy the ‘fabulous shopping and dining’.

It’s no longer a place of worship but a ‘must-see attraction’. The place should be called ‘Buddhaland’, and probably will be one day. It rivals Disneyland for the sugar coating and fakeness of it all. There are even monkey mascots who – a la Disney – you can have your picture taken with.

Not only does the cable car up to the plateau have the option of standard or crystal cars (yes that’s right, the world’s first cable cars with crystal decor) but the ‘experience’ includes the option to visit the world’s first multimedia presentation of the Buddha’s life: Walk with Buddha(tm).

Outside the temple itself (just in front of the temple restaurant and the tenple cafe) there’s the temple souvenir shop where folks can buy all manner of Buddhist-inspired tat. Most people were paying up for varying size bundles of incense. The biggest sticks were $688HKD dollars each (about £55). There were 12 of these mofos burning when I was there. And I thought that Buddhists were against worldly posessions.

Hong Kong officials are obsessed with public health and safety. Every conceivable risk has been identified and then warned against. Every activity seems fraught with danger, if you take the time to read all the millions of signs dotting every public (and many private) walls.

It occurred to me today when I was on the Hong Kong MTR (Mass Transport Railway, like the tube), listening to the ridiculously frequent Health and Safety announcements [Hold on to the handrail at all times, Hold on to the handrail...keep holding it, don't stop holding it...Keep holding the bloody handrail] that I realised I had forgotten to post my blog about health and safety in South East Asia.

Well, actually, if it was about health and safety then it would be a pretty short blog as the south east Asians don’t have any concept of what this means.

Coming from the UK, where you have to wear a hard hat to bring a builder his lunchtime sandwiches, or wear full high-vis day-glo body armour to cross a site road, I was delighted and amused by this at first.

“Oooh…look at that bloke on the Laotian building site wearing a straw hat, rather than a hard hat. And above him, look at that bloke standing under that wobbly pile of bricks. Oh and – ha, ha, ha – look at that guy 50ms up a scaffold with no rail and no harness painting the roof on his tiptoes.”

After a while I realised when people would point these sanity contraventions out that it had ceased to be strange. Even some seriously odd things. “What? Oh, yeah I see it, a wheelbarrow full of bricks being winched 12 stories up a building.

“Wait, are those BRICKS falling out? Yes, it appears they are.”

Seriously, some of the things that you see in South East Asia are so that’s-not-ok, what-are-you-doing, don’t-be-a-fucking-idiot unsafe that a 2-year-old would point at the person doing whatever it is and say: ‘moron’. Not that I’m some kind of – god forbid – health and safety inspector but there are a few that make me want to get my virtual clipboard out and start tutting with the best of them.

These include:

1. In many places petrol is sold at roadside shacks in plastic litre-size soft drink bottles. Soft drinks are also sold, often at the same places, in plastic litre-size soft drink bottles.

2. Scaffolding seems to be made out of balsa wood/kindling.

3. Dogs (I know they’re not capable of knowing what they’re doing but still) lying in packs in the middle of the road asleep. So much so that bikes have to swerve to avoid them and cars often have to wake them up so they can drive.

4. Motorbikes being ridden by four or five people, their kids, their dogs, a couple of chairs, a table, wardrobes, livestock, trees, goldfish in bags, full-size mirrors etc.

5. Temples open to the public often have massive holes in the ground. At Angkor Wat there are ditches cleverly overgrown with long grass; at Ayutthaya after sunset one evening I managed to fall into an open manhole.

I could go on but if you’ve been to SE Asia you’ll know what I’m talking about. Life is cheap here and people do what they can to get by. If necessity is the mother of invention, poverty is the mother of necessity.

And yet, despite the nuttiness of it all, I do like the way people are allowed to think for themselves, expected to look out for themselves, rather than in England or Hong Kong where the nanny states assume you have a mental age of 6 and the self-preservation instincts of a pissed lemming.

Choreographed to a modern jazz symphony and completely in time across a dozen buildings, it really is amazing – especially when lights run up and down with notes on a scale. With beats measured out on buildings over a kilometre apart, the coordination and synchrony of the show is testament to the brilliance of modern electrical engineering. And it looks pretty.

But – and it’s a big but – there’s something a bit tired about the whole concept. The music is the kind of jazz-opera that was popular with loveys all through the 80s and it’s the soundtrack to parts of my childhood being dragged round the Barbican. Anyone who remembers Variations will know what I mean.

'Symphony of Light': possibly outdated, sadly blurry...

The whole concept is essentially a bit naff, and out of synch with modern attitudes. China is making much of its new proto-eco credentials in the press these days. So how can it justify what is essentially wasted electricity? The time for wowing over electricity is over. It’s the 21st century. Why not save the displays for special occasions and set an example to the rest of the world?