Red Lantern: Hong Kong part 4

You spend the late evening in your cosy hotel room watching Hong Kong gangster films and get into a weird and mystic mood. It is amazing how those films can draw you in, grab your attention and take you away from the real world. Suddenly you feel like you are part of the film, you believe that you live in a place of murder, robbery, drugs, prostitutes, martial arts fighters, etc. You feel that you live in a dark place where the sun never shines, never rises, where it is always night and where terrible, illegal things happen. A place where it is best to stay indoors, rather than to put a foot outside the front door and risk to get killed, robbed or attacked. Everybody could be a murderer, a trafficker, a drug dealer or an innocent victim.

Suddenly you hear noises around you and every noise you hear, whether real or unreal, sound very suspicious and you believe that someone is after you, wants to harm you or that something is going on and you're about to discover something illegal. The cleaner in the corridor is actually not a cleaner, but a serial killer and carries well hidden guns inside the trolley. The gentleman in front of the door opposite your room is a drug dealer, the waitresses at the bar and the restaurant are prostitutes and are held hostage and made to work against their will and the hotel is not an actual hotel, but a different kind of business as you will soon discover.

Those images and thoughts hunt you in your dreams so that you can't sleep. The film continues in your brain until a noise wakes you. You raise your upper body from the mattress and open your eyes, but everything around you is pitch black. The thick curtains don't let any light fall inside. You don't know what woke you. Was that noise real or was it just in your dream? If it was real, what was it and where did it come from? Because you feel tired after only a few hours of sleep and all that walking you did the previous day, you decide that it is best to go back to sleep. That is a good idea but it doesn't work that way. Your mind is running wild, you imagine many things at the same time and can't put your thoughts in order. You have visions, you hear sounds, people speaking. You turn around in bed a few times trying to find a comfortable position and finally sleep. You need and want to be fit for the following day in order to walk for hours and hours and see many things of this unknown place.

Some time later you manage to calm yourself down, free your mind from all the thoughts that didn't let you sleep, count some sheep and finally drift off into the realms of Morpheus. But there it is, there is this noise again. It sounds like a scratch, a scrape at the door. You open your eyes, but remain in bed, you don't move and wait to hear it again. Nothing happens and the seconds pass very slowly. You think to yourself that it was in your imagination and try to fall asleep again. Your eyes are heavy and as soon as they close, the noise at the door reappears. You open your eyes again, try to locate the noise, put the blanket slowly away and move silently out of bed. You walk to the end of the bed from where you have a view over the small corridor and the door of your hotel room. You can see some light falling into your room from the gap under the door and while you're walking towards the door, you hear the noise again. You walk slowly and silently like the Kung Fu fighters in the films and when you reach the door you first look through the spy hole and then place your ear on the cold door. Nothing happens. As you feel wide awake now and think that it is impossible to go back to sleep, you get dressed in the dark, grab the room key card, slowly unlock and open the door, peep outside and make sure that nobody is in the corridor, you open the door a little more, step outside, close it behind you as silently as you can and walk towards the lifts. Just before you are about to turn right to the lifts, you hear the noise of a closing door. You turn right and see how the door to the stairs closes. You don't think twice about what you're going to do now, you don't listen to your gut feeling and you run for the door, open it with force and run to the stairs and look down. There you see a piece of a jacket moving downstairs and you decide to follow that person and find out who it is. You run, run, run and jump the stairs, but the person ahead of you is faster and you hear a door slam. When you reach the ground floor, or the first floor as they say in China, you open the emergency exit door and step outside into the cool night. You look left to the main road and right to the stairs that lead to First Street, but there is nobody. You take a few steps towards Queen's Road West and continue to look around you, but there's still nobody. A look at your wrist watch reveals that it is almost 4am. You abandon the pavement and walk in the middle of the street to have a better overview of the surrounding area and because you think it is safer to walk in the middle of the road.

You walk until the end of the street and turn right and follow the route you took a few times that leads you to SoHo. This way you won't get lost, as the route is familiar. However, you feel that someone is following you, but you turn around and see nobody. You feel somebody's eyes on you but you don't know what to do. Then you have an idea. You pass a building site and decide to climb up the bamboo scaffolding and wait there for a while. This you do. You climb up two levels and hide in a corner from where you have a great overview of the crossroad and the four streets. Ten or so minutes later the only thing that passed is the waste collection truck. So you give up and climb down again.

You continue your walk to SoHo and hope to find a bar that is still open to drink a cold beer. To your disappointment SoHo is quite dead at this time, but you manage to find a bar to sit in for a bit and enjoy your cold western beer. The owner kicks you out after a quarter of an hour because he wants to close and go home. You step outside into the cool night, close your eyes, breath in, breath out and take the route back to your hotel. A few yards down the road, light falls from a side alley onto the main road and arises your interest. You walk closer and see a foot massage sign on top of the alley. "Are they still open?" you wonder and walk closer. You go to the door of the building, push it open and it makes a creeping noise, you step inside and go up a flight to the foot massage place. To your surprise, the business is still open and there are a few customers. You try your luck with your basic Mandarin, but the person at the front desk replies in Cantonese, which you don't understand. You manage to negotiate and are asked to follow that person into a room. There you are asked to take off your shoes and lie down on a bed. A minute later a lady appears, washes your feet and starts massaging them. Oh, this is good! Exactly what you need after those long walks. It has a soothing effect and it calms you down. The kneading, the scents, the low lights and the soft humming of the lady who massages your feet make you sleepy. You close your eyes and fall sound asleep.

Sometime later you feel something cold on your nose that irritates you and brings you back from the realms of Morpheus. You open your eyes slowly but a second later you're wide awake. Why? You look directly into a barrel of a gun....

Building belonging to St John's Cathedral

St. John's Cathedral

Services have been held at this Anglican cathedral since it opened in 1849, with the exception of 1944, when the Japanese army used it as a social club. It suffered heavy damage during WWII, and the front doors were subsequently remade using timber salvaged from HMS Tamar, a British warship that guarded Victoria Harbour. You walk on sacred ground in more ways than one here: it is the only piece of freehold land in Hong Kong.
Source: Lonely Planet, China.

No idea what this lovely building is. It can be found diagonally opposite St John's Cathedral.

This church is also nearby.

Hong Kong Park

Hong Kong was host of the equestrian competitions at the Summer Olympics 2008

These statues are outside a 5 star hotel.

A masterpiece of engineering.

Scary looking church (Scientology, if I'm not mistaken)

Walking through Wan Chai and Causeway Bay

Kwun Yum Temple

Built in 1840, Sheung Wan’s oldest temple honours Kwun Yum, the goddess of mercy. It’s a quaint-looking structure, with a magnificent and intricate brass carving just above the doorway. The temple has been renovated with funky structural additions – orange iron railings and a yellow awning printed with Buddhist swastika symbols.