Andy Carvin's Waste of Bandwidth

Lamma Island and Lan Kwai Fong

After the conference wrapped up, I briefly returned to my room to pack my belongings before rejoining the group for a dinner e excursion on Lamma Island. Now that my ticket had been changed, I didn’t have to stress about leaving dinner early and arranging a boat ride back to the hotel; instead I could enjoy this final gathering of colleagues from around the world.

Louise van Rooyen on the boat to Lamma Island

We set off for the boat landing at 6:30, walking a few blocks to the shore, next to an ornate sculptured garden that was to be a private park used by Cyberport’s most exclusive business residents. The group climbed aboard the boat, going upstairs to its upper deck to enjoy the salt spray and the wind on our faces. The boat ride offered us a beautiful view of Hong Kong’s Aberdeen skyline, as well as the greenery of Lamma and the surrounding outlying islands. After a 20-minute ride we arrived at a harbor that was dotted with a series of open-air seafood restaurants, most of which were packed with diners. We had part of a restaurant reserved for us, with everyone gathered around two enormous tables. For the next couple of hours we enjoyed an eight-course seafood meal, a sumptuous selection of fried octopus, boiled shrimp, steamed langostinos, abalone on the halfshell, and crispy grouper for the main course. For people who came from countries with a limited amount of fresh seafood, it was an exciting experience; for the rest of us it was merely delicious.

Following dinner I went on a walk with Marcelo, Suzanne and Waheed down the lengh of the harbor. As we got further away from the restaurants the path turned very green and very hilly. Further down the path we reached a spot with a marvelous view of Hong Kong’s city lights, but we couldn’t linger for long since we had to make the last boat or we could be stranded at Lamma for the night.

Returning to the pier, we found out that the boat would continue to Tsim Sha Tsui and Central after stopping at Cyberport. Most of the group returned to the hotel, but around eight of us decided to enjoy a night on the town one last time. The boat ride was tremendous; the seas were chopping so we found ourselves getting tossed about as we marveled at the Hong Kong Skyline while traveling clockwise around the island. We exited the boat at Central and hiked uphill to Soho and Lang Kwai Fong, Hong Kong’s famous pub district. The streets of Lang Kwai Fong were jammed with people from all over the world, drinking beer and cocktails while listening to a cacophony of music. We strolled the neighborhood, soaking it all in while trying to decide where to stop for a drink. Eventually, we bumped into Sam, the director of labor relations for Hong Kong, had attended the conference earlier in the week. Sam and his wife kindly offered to have us join him for a drink. They were a fascinating couple, each speaking many languages (Sam speaks 10 in fact). As the bar got ready to close down its outdoor seating for the night, Sam invited us for a night cap at the exclusive Jockey Club in Happy Valley, where he and his family were members. We split into to groups to take taxis to the club, but didn’t stay for long. As we had suspected might be the case, the fact that I was wearing shorts and some of the others were wearing t-shirts made us well below the usual dress code. Sam then suggested we have a drink down the road at the bar of the Conrad Hotel.

We stayed at the Conrad until after 2am, splitting a large bottle of Cabernet, telling stories from home, talking politics. We finally wrapped things up as the cleaning crew came in to vacuum the floors. I shared a taxi back to the hotel with Louise, Suzanne and Rodrigo, where we all marveled at Sam’s kindness and generosity. We’d only just met him briefly at the conference, but he and his wife insisted on buying all our drinks; she even gave Louise a colorful purse she’d just purchased at a night market. It was really nice to enjoy the company of new friends that night, particularly in the heart of the city.

Posted by acarvin at May 17, 2004 06:10 PM | TrackBack