An evening of horse racing at Happy Valley is a Hong Kong tradition and one that we, as 10th-rate gamblers, couldn’t resist.
On a Wednesday nights, the course is the place to be in town and tens of thousands of locals, ex-pats and tourists flock there for a flutter, a drink and to be seen. We had a day to fill first and began it by cutting out breakfast – part of an effort to reduce the huge amount of food we were consuming on our holiday. I was feeling bloated and lethargic with all the carbs and booze.
We decided to follow a Lonely Planet walk around the Central district, taking in some of the few remaining older buildings left in the heart of Hong Kong as well as some of the best of the modern ones. We started at the legislative council building, sadly shrouded in plastic and scaffolding as a result of building works, before cutting through Chater Garden to the giant (and modern) Bank of China building.
There, at floor 43, we found one of the poorest viewing platforms I’ve come across on my travels – nothing more than a window with a distinctly average view. Disappointed, we returned to ground level and walked to Hong Kong Park for a reviving encounter with nature. It’s a modern patch of green amid the towers but has plenty of trees and a lake stocked with plump koi carp. It’s clearly popular with the suited and booted workers from the surrounding glass and steel skyscrapers, taking a lunchtime stroll away from their desks.
St John’s Cathedral, a modest affair, is nearby but overshadowed by a cathedral to modern-day capitalism – the iconic 1980s HSBC Building. The work of British architect Norman Foster, it’s got all the familiar touches one associates with his buildings. The atrium, in particular, is a vast open space that encourages public interaction and we stood, necks craned, admiring it. Escalators climb into the guts of the structure and its many galleried floors.
We ended up around evening hot-spot Soho, getting a taste of the district during the day. Lively and colourful, traditional markets clutter the alleys just yards from glitzy office blocks and luxury designer shops, stalls bulging with produce familiar and unfamiliar, alive and dead. It’s this contrast of the old and the new, east and west rubbing up against each other that makes the city such a fascinating place.
Back at the Hotel Icon we relaxed with their wonderful afternoon tea before our night at the races. The trip was tedious, notable for the traffic that clogged the roads leading to the Happy Valley racecourse. We’d bought a tourist ticket, which gave us admission to the members’ enclosure, but as it turned out we needn’t have bothered because the facilities everywhere were pretty good.
Being used to the modest courses back home, I was taken aback by Happy Valley. It’s vast, like a giant amphitheatre bathed in floodlight, overlooked by a ring of apartment blocks that twinkled in the night sky. It’s where the wealth of the Hong Kong Jockey Club is obvious for all to see and we wondered how much the land would be worth if it was ever put on the open market.
The course was busy and the atmosphere electric. Holidaymakers and ex-pats downed booze and got just a little bit drunk. The locals, however, took it a lot more seriously, clutching their Chinese papers, studying the form. I rarely saw them with the sort of distracting drink that might cloud their judgement.
We were treated to eight races, interspersed with food and booze. I began well with my bets but soon fell into a losing streak from which I never recovered. Graham did rather better – continuing the trend from earlier in the holiday when he did so well at roulette in Macau.
The journey home was pretty simple, if something of a trek back to Causeway Bay MTR. And while I felt sore at losing so much money, I wouldn’t have missed the evening for the world.
It’s one of those things you just have to do in Hong Kong…