Kit Villiers living it up in Hong Kong and Taiwan!

Mid-May seemed the perfect time to have a little break from teaching at OISE. I thought the weather in Taiwan and Hong Kong would be nice and warm, and I would be back in Oxford well before the summer rush.

I found a good deal at the Park Lane Hotel in HK and as usual I had great service from Cathay Pacific, thrashing their in flight computer at chess innumerable times. The Captain announced it would be 26c when we landed, which sounded perfect, and I decided to ignore the expensive quick train into town in favour of the scenic bus trip over the mountains and an hour's ferry ride instead. This would have been perfect, but I'd forgotten how humid both HK and Taiwan already are at this time of year, and I was a wet rag when I finally entered the hotel. Suffice it to say that the rest of the holiday was spent largely in shorts and flip-flops!

I had hoped to get some good runs in, but 2 hour runs were out of the question in the conditions, and I had to throttle back on that idea in favour of shorter, hillier efforts. I did try a 6 hour hike 1 day, taking gallons to drink: amazingly I saw only one other person in all that time (he must have been Swiss - he seemed very at home in the mountains). Hong Kong is a place of great variety: 100 metres from my hotel is what is purported to be world's busiest pedestrian crossing (across Hennessey Road at Jardine's Bazaar)  contrasting with the solitude of the hike.

Naturally I ate lots of excellent Chinese (mostly Cantonese) food, but I also renewed my membership of the Royal HK Yacht Club and enjoyed their buffet breakfasts overlooking the incredibly busy harbour with its constant movement from giant cruise ships to ferries and sampans.

Taiwan was a return to old stamping grounds too, as I worked in the capital Taipei many years ago; this time I decided as an antidote to the pace of HK to go south to Kenting National Park, and see how what had been a quiet backwater had changed. In short, a lot! The road south is now a dual carrageway instead of a lane. My hotel though was a real contrast to the modern skysraper Park Lane, and in fact I was the only guest after the weekend. I had a balcony overlooking the sea, and really relaxed in the holiday atmosphere. I saw virtually no other Westerners. Everyone was Chinese, but what surprised me was how many Mainlanders there were amongst the locals and HongKongers. I soon found that I had to dredge up my very rusty Mandarin to get around, but as opposed to the business rush of HK people had time to be friendly and chat.

I had one strange experience at the end: I suddenly realised I had no sure way of knowing the date apart from my somewhat ancient stopwatch. There was no English paper or TV, and very few English speakers around, so I had my heart in my mouth on my return to Kaohsiung Airport wondering whether I had the right day! Luckily I had, and here I am to tell the tale....

Kit Villiers is OISE Oxford's legal English specialist.