Jason Bourne eat you heart out and the Chung King Mansions - Gateway to Hell

March 2nd

Well as it happened i was a bit worried about the timing of the flight as it did not land until half ten and then i had to get to the "hotel", so i got super fed up when it got delayed by 2 hrs.

I emailed the "hotel" to tell them, and that i would not be there til well after midnight.

"Our reception is open 24 hrs. we wait for you. Do Not talk to any foreign men on way in as they will try to con you"
was the email back, which was a bit unnerving but at the same time reassuring.

Landed at 11pm which was fine as the buses ran til midnight.........would have been fine if my bag had not taken an hour to come out.

So like the scene from the Bourne Identity, like Jason Bourne i ran over to the timetable to the buses with seconds to spare, checked my watch, analysed all the data regarding buses and times.................and then ran off in the wrong direction.

So a 20 quid taxi ride later i turn up at the gateway to hell. Even the taxi driver pulled up a bit further down the road as he said i would get swamped if he pulled up outside.

All i could see was loads of proper dodgy asians and african looking blokes (being politically correct of course) lining the entrance to what looked like a shopping mall that was all locked up.

then they saw the rucksack...

"you want room you want room" and they all pounced on me.

Trying to look cool i walked inside but did not know what the hell was going on as it was an indoor market that looked like it had shut down and i was looking for a hotel.

Luckily i saw some lifts.

what they don't tell you is the one on the left stops only on even floors, and the one on the right the odd ones.

Luckily purely by chance i took the right one and as i got out on the 15th floor all there was was 4 locked doors.
It was worse than the crystal maze.

Great, what do i do now?

Turned out they had sold my room and cleared off for the night.

Luckily the security man downstairs let me use his phone, but now all the touts could smell blood seeing me reappear again. so in between telling them to get lost i managed to get some sense from the number i had and was told to go back upstairs.

ten minutes later this guy comes up kicking off why i woke him up?

wo wo wo (peter kay voice) what happened to 24 hr reception??

next minute this bloke turns up from downstairs who i had been really nasty to and says come with me.

This was not looking good, especially as we start going down the worst fire escape ever.

Here we go again i thought. Luckily he was ok but the only room he had was about a foot square with the single bed in between 2 walls.

it was late and i was tired so managed to sleep like a ball in a pin ball machine hitting my head on alternate walls. 8 am i am awoken to pneumatic drills and the smell of cooking oil.

welcome to Chung King Mansions, Hong Kong.

Next Installament.....don't worry mother