The Wizard of Aus

The journey truly begins in Hong Kong International Airport. Eleven and a half hours from Amsterdam and close to eighteen hours after I left Dublin. Imagine, if you will, the largest indoor space that you've ever seen. Now, multiply it by about infinity. This is the kind of scale we're talking about here. It's big. Really, really big. I arrived in at just after seven in the morning, having not slept for more than an hour of the previous twenty, and this is what I had to deal with!

Just before the plane landed the pilot announced "the temperature's going to be a bit cool for Hong Kong," (aww) "at just 26 degrees, but is likely to pick up and reach a high of 30," (woo). My bags arrived, as usual (!!), on time and fully intact. Immigration was easy to deal with (the immigration officers all wore darth-vaderesque black gloves) and I was through and out in no time. My first issue was finding my way out of the airport. I learned later that the arrivals area is, in fact, three levels below ground and the signage is based on the assumption that you know exactly where you're going!

I trudged all the way up to the top level (with nothing so handy as an escalator to help me, oh no, it's all angled skywalks and stairs) found an information point and found out that the buses to the city were all the way down on the bottom level and that I'd obviously passed them on the way from baggage reclaim. Duh!

From the airport I passed onto Lantau Island (home to the world's tallest outdoor seated bronze Buddha. The Tian Tan Buddha or Giant Buddha is 34 metres high, weighs 250 tons and can leap tall buildings in a single bound. Lantau island is also home to Hong Kong's Disneyland resort. These two opposing forces can often be seen slugging it out in back alleys, behind bars, at night.) we took the Lantau Link (which incorporates the Tsing Ma bridge, which, at 1,377 meters is the sixth largest suspension bridge in the world and the largest in the world that carries road and rail traffic) passed through Kowloon (where I'd actually recommend people to stay) and then onto Hong Kong Island and Causeway Bay, where I was staying in the Wang Fat Hostel.

To get an idea of the size of the Causeway Bay area take the largest building you've ever seen and multiply it by... well, you get the point. The buildings here were big. Really, really big. When the place you're staying comes in as a little tiddler at only sixteen floors you know you've come somewhere special! Walking around the city is like walking around Grafton Street on Christmas Eve... 24 hours a day. It's just full of small stylish people with phones permanently glued to their faces. And there are more McDonald's in Hong Kong than people. Fact!

The first place I ate was, obviously, in a little Vietnamese restaurant on Hennessey road. Firstly, I didn't know this was Vietnamese, being not very good at reading Chinese (even simplified Chinese) and, secondly, they had pictures on the menu! I was handed a cup of tea and a menu when I sat down and when I picked something I wanted to eat the waitress came over to me and started talking to me in Chinese and shaking her head when I pointed out my choice. She then pointed to something else on the menu and taking this for a game I pointed out a third dish. The manager broke us up after a while and began talking in Chinese to the waitress and then pointed out another meal. I took this one, I wasn't even sure what the first one was but this seemed good enough. Eventually a plate full of fried noodles combined with vegetables and mystery meat came out looking completely different to any of the dishes previously pointed to on the menu. The manager stayed hovering around my table and I looked at her and smiled like this was the finest food known to man. Then I unwrapped my chopsticks and in a moment of epiphany realised, "ah balls, I don't really know how to use these!" After a couple of lame attempts the manager grabbed the chopsticks from me and showed me how they worked and said something in Chinese, much to the amusement of the hot girls on the next table.

As is generally the custom of our people the first person I met was my roomie for the first night and the first words that came out of his mouth were "How'r'ya boy?" You travel 9,000 km and the first person you meet is some langer. As is also the custom of our people the first thing we did was go out and get hammered! Taking the subway to Central Hong Kong we ended up in a bar called The Cavern where there was some guy doing covers of the likes of Rod Stewart and Mick Jagger. Dressing up the part as well. Wandering around the place we stopped a local and asked if there were any good bars around; "You want women? You know... whores?" What a nice guy!! We turned down this offer and took his second choice of a place called Insomnia, where there was some more cover bands. Let me just tell you, you haven't heard gangsta' rap until you've heard it performed by a little Chinese guy with attitude in a Chinese accent.

As has been previously stated I was quite tired and very jet lagged and the two-for-one offer on Beck's wasn't helping me very much at all. Not even a little! I basically set myself up for a game of Brian-a-roo which, thankfully, hasn't caught on there. So I went home and slept for the largest period of time since.

The second day I was very much about the walking. Not much happened. I just walked and walked and walked. And walked.

The night of the second day was awesome, when I was invited to a session, and not of the kind where one consumes alcoholic beverages, (let's just say that someone had ordered the Chicken Gang Bang Fo with fried rice) in the dorm across the hall by some Irish lads (five of them) who had brought some ladies-of-negotiable-effections home (two of them). "I'm going to give her such a rogering!" was one very memorable comment, which will stay with me for years to come. I declined politely, slipped off to my bed and never saw those guys again. Still, it was nice to have the offer!

That brings me up to day three, which was painful and tiring and hardly worth talking about. I did get a couple of pics of Hong Kong, but not very many. The best thing about the third day was that in the airport, a few hours before I left was the first time I had any actual Chinese food. And let me tell you, it's exactly the same as at home except you can get dishes with boiled cow's stomach and fried duck's neck. Nice!

I had a really good time in Hong Kong and I'd advise anyone to go. It's not as cheap as most other east Asian countries, particularly when buying clothes, but is a great, great place. I think I'll try to change my flights so I can stay a week on the way home. I'd like more time and less jet lag the next time and buy a guide book too so I can actually go and see some stuff. (please note: don't go to Hong Kong without a guide book)

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This is it then kids. I'm typing this a few days before I leave. Until I get this blog started up properly, on the other side of the world, I'd like to leave you with some background, scene-setting, information, much of which is a highly speculative distortion of reality. So, without further ado, my journey begins thus...

The city of Perth, the capital city of the state of Western Australia, is located at 31° 57' 11" South by 115° 51' 22" East. This puts me a) on the wrong side of the equator and b) very, very, very far from home. I'm going to be 14,894 kilometres (9,255 miles) from my doorstep in Malahide, but due to the route I'm taking: Dublin - Amsterdam - Hong Kong - Perth, I'll have to travel 16,085 km (9,994 Miles), which is going to take me three days, eighteen hours and five minutes (not including the two hours I'll spend in Dublin airport).

Let me put that in perspective:

• If you strapped me to the broadcast of the Ray Darcy Show, going out at 9am, I'd arrive in Perth at 9am and 0.05 seconds (but eight hours in the future) you can't do that, of course, because the earth is round.
• If you flew on Concord you could do it in six hours. You can't do that because Concord doesn't fly any more and even when it did it never went to Aus.
• If you walked it would take just under four months. As long as you didn't need to eat or sleep. But that's impractical because of all that water and mountains and stuff in the way.
• If you drove Fahey's Jeep it would take eleven months (half that if Griff is driving); but of course you can't, 'cause there ain't enough spit and chewing-gum in the world to hold it together for that long.
• If you sailed with Captain Cook it would take about twenty months. You could do it in seven weeks less if you don't make the mistake of crashing into the 2000-km-long Great Barrier Reef! Cook himself was killed, and possibly eaten, by the natives in Hawaii on his way home and, to be fair, set a record at the time because not one of the crew got scurvy on his voyages... prior to being wiped out by malaria on the way home.

The only way to get to Australia in anything approaching a live state is to fly with Qantas Airlines. This Australian airline holds the record of having never lost a jet airliner in it's entire history. But there's always a first time!

Now you know, you have a one in six chance of getting to Australia alive. Anyway, it doesn't matter how you get here because once you are, it's unlikely that you'll survive very long.

One of the little known facts about Monster Island, and why it so rightly deserves it's title, is that everything, and I mean everything, here is out to bite, poison, strangle, eat, drown, poke, sting, prod, punch, nip and lay-eggs-in-your-throat. For some unknown reason the little critters in Australia have evolved to be the deadliest animals known to man.

Of the top six deadliest animals in the world, four of them live in Australia; the Mosquito (#1), the Australian Box Jellyfish (#3), the Great White Shark (#4) and the Australian Saltwater Crocodile (#6). Fully 70% (by volume) of the worlds nastiest insects call it home. If ever there was a place where you're going to be killed by something small, hairy and lacking a backbone (or even large, toothy and aquatic), this is it.

Now, supposing you get to Australia alive and manage not to be bitten by something with poison fangs then there is one more problem. It's unlikely that you'll ever meet anyone! Australia has a population of just over twenty-million (20,180,878) but can only manage two people per square kilometre. Imagine that, two people per square kilometre. Ireland has 58, Britain has 250 and the Netherlands has 484 (even the United States can manage a hearty 32). So, every Australian you meet is worth 396 northern Europeans and this is why Aussies seem like so much fun if you happen to bump into them!

Australia is so mind-bendingly far away that people have to stop over on the way so that the plane can refuel. My second, last and longest stop is Hong Kong (or Honkers to the Aussies), which is only 5,931 km (3,685 miles) and seven and a half hours from Perth. Hong Kong, which is not to be confused with it's brothers King Kong and Donkey Kong, has a whopping and Australia-spanking population density of 6,620 people per square kilometre. The fact that Chinese people are, on average, 10 cm smaller than Aussies means that 3,310 Honkers can be crammed into the same space as one Aussie (but please don't try this for obvious reasons).

Among Hong Kong's many highlights are it's brand-spanking-new airport, a Disneyland, the fact that Britain once had a ninety-nine year lease on the island that ended in 1997, a language that's harder to pronounce than "wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube man" and the fact that I can maybe get a hand-made suite for less than 100 Hong Kong dollars. The Honkers have traditionally been extremely successful drug dealers; running opium for the European traders in the nineteenth century; effecting China's economy by turning them into a nation of junkies. Of course now they're all evil red commies, and tourists are subject to brainwashing before travelling on.

It'll be interesting to see how much of the above is true or whether I get brainwashed, lonely and attacked by vicious animals. *shrugs*... I'm not worried.

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Coming Soon... October 18th