The Star Ferry Of Hong Kong

The Star Ferry has traversed the harbor between Kowloon and Hong Kong for well over a hundred years. The owner took the name from Tennyson's CROSSING THE BAR, "Sunset and evening star, and one clear call for me!"

Two weeks I stood on the decks of the Celestial Star, the oldest ship in the fleet.

William Holden met Nancy Kwan on the Radiant Star in the 1960 film THE WORLD OF SUZIE WONG.

The ferry was exiled from service eleven years later.

I can't get Suzie Wong out of my head.

I known other Suzie.

Actually only one.

She loved opium.

The crossing was quick and cheap.

245 US cents.

Always Asia

The Myth of Monkey Brains - 2017

Sitting in a Hong Kong dim sum cafe, I reflected on the strange ‘delicacies’ eaten on my travels; snails in France, dog in Indonesia, fried rats and insects in Thailand, alligator in Florida, and sausage pies in the UK, but whenever the discussions comes around the table to the most revolting meal in the world the vote unanimously goes to the fabled Monkey brain feast in Hong Kong, where the skull of the live monkeys are sliced open and the diners scoop out the raw shaking simian cerebellum.

While the Chinese will eat almost anything, live monkey brains are not on the menu according to most international cuisine experts. Dead monkey brains are served in several locations throughout Asia. I’ve seen monkeys eaten in Central American and SE Asia, but never brought myself to dine on them, since the roasted bodies look like little babies.

There are accounts of people eating live brains from the 1940s such as this one.

“The monkey’s head was supported by its neck in a bracket, two pieces of wood with a semicircular hole on each side such that when you put them together, they form a complete circle around the animal’s neck, allowing the head to be exposed above the plank. The hair around the head is shone with a shaving razor. A small chisel and a hammer is used to quickly chisel a circle around the crown, and the top part of the skull is removed. A teaspoon is used to scoop up the brain, which is immediately eaten. This has to be done before the monkey dies.”

Of course this could be urban myth, but I’m not making any effort to find out if it’s true or not.

Above is a photo of chilled monkey brains.

Ain't for me.

The World Of Suzie Wong / Movie

In 1960 Nancy Kwan earned a Golden Globe nomination for her title performance in THE WORLD OF SUZIE WONG.

Once a month my Irish grandmother took my older brother and me to the Loew's Orpheum in Boston. I was eight. Nana was an indeterminate age, having claimed to have been born in the Year of the Crow. Her gravestone later marked her birth year as 1898, although it doesn't seem likely that a sixty-two year-old fervent Catholic would have taken a child to a movie about a Chinese whore.

"Don't tell your mother." Nana swore us to secrecy about this cinematic experience. She was a good Catholic woman from the West of Ireland. I doubted that she had ever confessed all her sins to the priests, because not all their sins were sins for her. My mother would have died to learn of our exposure to such a forbidden subject, however Nana liked good-looking leading men and William Holden filled that bill playing Robert Lomax, an American artist questioning his muse, until he moves to Hong Kong and falls in love with a beautiful prostitute living at his hotel.

Throughout my youth I dreamed about living at Wan Chai Hotel and Suzie Wong.

East meets West.

The Malaysia Hotel in Bangkok came close to the Wan Chan, although none of the go-go girls from Patpong held a candle to Nancy Kwan, except when the lights were out and then I remade the scenes never shown in the original film.

Cut to the love scene and fade to black.

Films such as THE WORLD OF SUZIE WONG fly straight in the face of American morality. Loving a working woman was never a fit subject for a nation consumed by religious righteousness. Any strays from the straight and narrow have been castigated as proteges of Satan.

Whenever I mentioned in the West, that I live in Thailand, women's eyes sparked fire with condemnation. I ignored their antipathy, because to them life in Thailand can be a mirror of THE WORLD OF SUZY WONG or a bad porno movie.

Being a pseudo-intellectual I opted for the first.

Because I still have dreams of Suzie Wong.

Only now they are about my loving Mam.

She is all the Suzie Wong I need in this life and the next.

Here's the trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnepiAcqb_g

Birkin Bag Hong Kong -2017

In 2017 I was commissioned by the Aide De Camp of an Arab prince to deliver a $100,000 Hermes Birkin bag to a Hong Kong banker. $2000 plus flights hotel and a trip to see my family in Thailand.

I flew from NYC to HK empty-handed and picked up the bag at an auction house in HK. After a swift examination I delivered the Birkin bag to its final destination three blocks away without ever meeting the banker. I received a signed receipt and walked to the Star Ferry and crossed the Perfumed Harbor to my hotel in Kowloon.

Crossing the Perfumed Harbor I looked at the distant hills.

China.

I knew Yunnan and Szechuan.

I had dumplings in Kowloon.

The next day I was on the Rayong Beach with my family.

A drifter's life.

Star Ferry - Hong Kong

A poem I wrote last evening on the subway home. Funny the things we remember

From Hong Kong to Bangkok to see my family. Had a great trip.

Crossing the Perfumed Harbor
By the Star Ferry
I looked to the north.
Hills rose to the north.
Tall hills.
Golden in the dawn light.
The June air hot humid.
Eyes closed
I erased the condos.
All the cars.
The modernity
Then a mirage of Hong Kong.
Long ago.

Two hundred years ago
The island
Trees
Fishing villages
To the north.
The glory of China
The Celestial Kinggom.
To the west.
I open my eyes
I see
Only one second
Of that eternity.
Then
Back to 2017 The Perfumed Harbor The Star Ferry Hong Kong.

Unsexy Cities 2017

Playboy recently listed Detroit as the nation's # 1 unsexy city.

Murder, rust factories, and overweight people are the LimpDs calling cards, nothing about Motor City says 'sexy' better than the MC5, Grand Funk Railroad, and Wendy Whitelaw.

But Detroit has competition from Asia, as indicated by the Global Sexual Wellbeing Survey released at the World Congress on Sexual Health in Sydney.

Three cities in Asia topped the list of places where people are having sex less than the global average of 106 times a year.

Singapore, Tokyo, and Bangkok.

Tokyo citizens are the most infrequent sexual practitioners at 48 couplings per annum. The Japanese are also the least satisfied with their sex lives. Limp T unrocks.

Small penises, no endurance, and too little of it as well. No wonder Japanese women shag brothers in New York city like they were racial engineering a new culture. Yo Nisei.

My ex-, Vee, worked at a Japanese karaoke bar in Pattaya. Sex was 3000 baht/session. The girls loved their job. The son of the Rising Sun shut their eyes and shuttered in less than a minute.

Sayonara teelak.

The most satisfied with the Nigerians at 79% who take 24 minutes to reach a happy ending.

Strangely the Chinese were seventh, which must be from eating friend alligator cock and bulls' balls.

Hong Kong (32 percent), Australia (40), Singapore (41), Thailand (42) and New Zealand (43) were all bottom feeders in the sea of sexual satisfaction.

"All work and no play."

Of course women don't orgasm as much as men, but that's because they spent so much energy trying to fake it.

But Bangkok as a non-erotic city?

You ride the Skytrain and see thousands of people in a zombie state of mass consumerism. Nana Plaza was a turn-off and Patpong even more of a buzzkill. Sitting at the Oriental Hotel I visual surveyed the guests and figured only 3 in a hundred were having sex having sex and I was one of them.

Most of the female staff were virgins.

Work is all important.

Same as New York.

Last week I attended a dinner party in Soho and asked, "When was the last time you had sex?"

Few wanted to answer.

Mostly because they were embarrassed and even worse they couldn't remember when.

The women thought my question was a crude come-on.

Then again the consumer class ony takes pleasure rom sopping.

To The East

Last week I flew fifteen hours to the Orient to deliver a very expensive handbag to a Hong Kong billionaire.

After checking into my reserved Kowloon hotel room a little before dawn I searched Moby Road for an open restaurant. Everything was closed, except for a 7/11. I bought a big can of beer and two rice cakes. The sun rose in the east. The air was sultry, sweat dripped from my face, and I sat by the waters of the Fragrant Harbor for the first in my life.

Old imperial Hong Kong had been the jewel of the British Empire.

Now THE WORLD OF SUZIE WONG was buried under concrete.

To the east lay China.

I cracked open my beer and ate the rice cake in two bites.

It was good to be back in Asia.