Hong Kong's Best Kept Secret... Ssshh..

Love it or hate it, Hong Kong is an impressive city I have never visited or lived anywhere quite like it. For most people a visit will be either a stop over en route to Europe or Australia/NZ or a business trip which means meetings all day and wining, dining and partying by night. I'm sure I have heard the saying - " you never really know a place until you live there " and having now lived in 4 different countries I think its very true. Hong Kong took me completely by surprise. I agreed to move there with my partner without even visiting once and will never forget the taxi ride from Hong Kong station. I spent the entire journey face squished up against the window with my mouth open wide in shock, partly from the jet lag and lack of sleep but mostly from the towering buildings and the sheer number of people all busy going about their day racing around the streets of central Hong Kong. If you have never visited then its almost difficult to comprehend and on the first day as we walked down from our tiny apartment into the wet markets I really struggled to get my head around the contrast of flash multi million $$ office blocks and fleets of Mercedes limousines, then on the opposite side of the road local Chinese are struggling to scrape a living from what smelt like rotting meat and vegetable stalls.

I spent the next couple of weeks acclimatising to the Hong Kong way of life, a combination of exploring the streets and spending time hiding in the tiny apartment for some relative peace and quiet! I say relative peace and quiet because even inside you can never escape the constant rumble of traffic and people, taxi drivers must wear their horns out before tyres!

After a few months of living in Hong Kong and exploring most of what appeared to be on offer I was starting to feel a little penned in. Whilst its very convenient having everything so accessible and having 100's of bars, shops and restaurants on your doorstep, I'm used to open spaces and clear skies. There are a few places around Hong Kong that you can get away from tower blocks and hustle and bustle but these tend to be tailored towards the rich bankers and pilots whom make up a large majority of the expat population. Being neither rich or a high flying exec this environment didn't appeal much and I was struggling to justify paying over the top for things in flashy bars and shops. I think I have my home town of Boston in Lincolnshire to thank for this attitude and as my Grandfather still reminds me " you don't want to waste your bloody money boy"!!

Just as I was losing hope of finding a value for money countryside oasis in Hong Kong, Lamma Island appeared! Well it didn't appear its been there for years but I thought it was fully of pot smoking hippie drop outs and that the huge power station would mean that if the drugs didn't kill you the pollution would. How wrong could I have been? Well as I found out very wrong! Getting off the ferry at Yung Shue Wan ( the main village ) pier the first thing that you notice is bicycles everywhere, the pier is covered in them like a bicycles graveyard. Its not until you find out that there are no cars on Lamma that you realise that the main form of transport on Lamma is your feet closely followed by the bicycle. As the procession of people march from the ferry into the village passing the "cool wall" as I like to call it, the place where most of Lamma's secondhand trading is done. Then past the Chinese seafood restaurants Lamma is famous for, a couple of bars and half a dozen small shops that sell everything from tools to tins of baked beans. Initially I couldn't figure it out - this busy little village full of local Chinese and expats right next door to the raging metropolis that is Hong Kong, yet it felt like walking through a old fishing village on the Mediterranean coast! Everyone was friendly and people had the time to stop and chat even, the restaurants were sensibly priced and the food had a home cooked quality to it but best of all the beer was cheap!! Really cheap!! Oh and 10 minutes walk from the village you have a choice of 2 beaches and the water is clean and warm for swimming. Wow what a find, we couldn't believe our luck we knew we had to live here.

OK so what's the catch?? There must be something wrong with Lamma otherwise everyone would live there and it would just be like the rest of Hong Kong? Lamma is a lifestyle choice by Hong Kong standards, there is the 30 minute ferry trip to get there and the ferries only run until 12.30am so no late night partying in central Hong Kong. The ferry for me though was like a mini adventure on the water and a great time to sit back and relax with a beer and read a book or listen to my iphone. Although it seems Hong Kongers don't want to live on Lamma, they do like to visit so it can get very busy on the weekends but you soon learn to avoid them and find the places they don't go. I can't honestly think of a lot else apart from one thing that annoyed me - VV's! So what's a VV? Its short for village vehicle, basically they are like mini trucks powered by lawnmower engines and they buzz around the place moving food supplies, building materials etc.. All I can say is watch out as they have a habit of treating the narrow streets as race tracks!

All of this is nothing compared to the superb range of places to eat and drink, beautiful walks in the countryside, decent beaches and friendly people. A typical Sunday would start with a great fry up at the Banyan Bay bar, after an hour or so of drinking coffee, reading the paper and watching the tourists down main street its off to the beach. Mid afternoon back home for a shower and a snooze then down to the Deli Lamma for a beer or two and a curry or sunday roast washed down with a jug of sangria!

Its not fake or pretentious and Lamma is great value for money in an overpriced city where if you don't have money you can find it hard to fit in.

Night Photography - Hong Kong The Peak

After spending quite few months in Hong Kong I thought it was about time to take a trip up the peak and shoot the city from above. You may wonder why I haven't done it before? Well its not as easy as it sounds! Due to Hong Kong being one of the most densely populated areas on the planet combined with heat, humidity and the hideous amount of pollution that drifts over the border from China, most days you can't even see the top of the tallest buildings. If you watch the weather very carefully every now there are gaps in the smog and Hong Kong presents itself in a way most visitors are only likely to see on postcards. Don't get me wrong Hong Kong is a pretty impressive sight. Even on a hazy day you can't help but be in awe of the mass of towering concrete, steel and glass, but on a clear day it is breath taking. One of the best view points on one of these special clear days is from the Peak. The Peak is literally that, its pretty much the highest point on Hong Kong Island and top of the list when most people visit the city. Historically the peak was used for signalling ships and then later was home exclusively to rich expats and is still one of the most exclusive and expensive areas of Hong Kong. The best way to get there is by the Peak Tram which is operated on a cable system which drags the tram cars up the hill at an incredibly steep angle. Incidentally the tram system has been operating for 120 years this year, luckily they have made a few updates to the original construction! After a trip up the steep incline you will really appreciate what it must have been like before the tram was built. The favoured way up by expats in the late 1800's was by sedan chair, this is basically a chair with two poles running in front and behind and is carried by two men!

Once at the top, in typical tourism style you are forced to walk through a gift shop full of overpriced goodies that you will never need and then into the Peak Tower. Its last renovation was completed in 2005 and its now a full blown shopping and tourist centre with restaurants and even a Madame Tussuad's. You can pay the extra and take the zig zagging escalators to the viewing platform at the top, but I would recommend the free option using your legs and taking the 2.6km walk which takes you all the way around the peak. On the day I was up there it was pretty quiet and the path takes you through some lovely nature and with a great sunset on one side and the spectacular view on the other I was spoilt for choice!

Hmm I wasn't meaning for this to turn into an excerpt from the Lonely Planet but I thought I may as well stick a bit of extra info in for anyone interested...

So to the picture side of things - I wanted to get some nice shots of a clear Hong Kong which as I mentioned before isn't easy. When I first arrived I snapped a couple in daylight and some nice ones as the light started to soften, but what I was really waiting for was dusk when everything comes alive like lights on a Christmas tree. Anyway I have posted a couple of shots and I hope you enjoy them.

Article for "The Real Deal"

Earlier in the year I took on an assignment from New York based magazine "The Real Deal" they wanted to run a small article based on the property boom in Macau.
It was a slightly rushed job as they needed the pictures within 2 days but I happily dropped everything and hopped on a ferry from Hong Kong to Macau. After a day of walking round in 30degree heat I ended up very happy with the images I took home and had a great time! In particular my favourites were the night shots I did on one of Macau's many bridges. Although balancing my tripod and camera gear on what appeared to be a footpath but was a fraction of the width of what you would expect while buses and cars zoomed past was probably quite dangerous in hindsight!

Click here to see a copy of the the article and here to see some of the images I took. I was surprised by their choice of shots but its always great to see your work in print.

Casino Madness - Macau

Take a tiny piece of China smaller than an average city, add decades of Portuguese rule, then make it the only legal place that a billion Chinese can go to gamble....
The result an explosion of mega casinos, hotels, resorts, expensive apartments and a money making freight train that is turning over more in a year than Vegas!

Macau or Macao ( whichever way you choose to spell it ) for years kept out the U.S. casino giants only allowing local operations. This all changed in 2002 and since then the likes of Sheldon Adelson have plowed billions of $$ into construction of mega casino resorts, the most notable of which to date is the Venetian. This particular casino has a couple of particularly impressive facts - its is now the worlds 3rd largest building since the new airport building in Beijing was opened and to compliment this it also has the worlds largest gaming floor. If you like facts and figures it also employs 12,000 staff and includes its own 15,000 seat stadium inside! This giant attracts thousands of visitors a day mostly from mainland china but also from neighbouring Hong Kong which can be reached by ferry in 60mins, ferries run every few minutes 24 hrs a day the demand is so high. The Venetian is part of a master plan to create a Vegas style strip called the Cotai Strip named after the scrub land area of Macau it has been built on.
As I write this the Four Seasons has just opened its doors making it the second on the "strip" although being joined to the side of the Venetian makes it more like an extension than a resort in its own right and it is certainly built to the same lavish extravagance as its neighbour. Opposite and all around are construction sites working 24/7, within a matter of months this area will in some ways mirror Vegas with maybe just one major difference. From a western perspective Vegas has a certain mystery about it, excitement and maybe even fantasy probably due to Hollywood's portrayal of gambling gangsters and card sharks. While from a financial point Macau has already proved it will out perform Vegas I don't think it will ever replace the historic adventures of the real thing.

Ok so I have a Blog...What now??

Welcome to my first ever post on my first ever blog!
I figured I must be the only person on the planet without one so I had better join in. So now I have a blog, what exactly do I do with it? As far as I understand the idea is to write about all the amazingly exciting things that happen in your life, then thousands of people subscribe and want to read all about you in a similar way to reality TV but I get to control the content?!?!
Anyway until I work out the exact reason for wanting complete strangers to know all about you I will try and post some interesting and informative ramblings mostly about my photography work and my life living in Hong Kong, China.