EAGLES

Last night I went to the Eagles concert, in the Hong Kong Coliseum. Never been there before. Never will again. The address is in Hung Hom, on the Kowloon side of the harbour.

We decide to get the ferry to Hung Hom. The Coliseum must be close by right?

Leave work, meet Mrs C, and get in a cab. “Star Ferry please”. Off we go. The wrong way. And straight into the biggest traffic jam I’ve seen in Hong Kong. 20 minutes later (it’s a 10 minute walk to the ferry from the office) we finally get out at the Mandarin and walk under the underpass to the Ferry ourselves.

The ferry has just left. 20 minutes to the next one. No problem. It’s 7 now, 7.20 ferry, 7.40 arrive, short walk. Concert due to start at 8pm. Lots of Gweilos have had the same bright idea as us so we feel someone must know what’s going on and we’ll be fine.

7.20 – the ferry arrives and on we hop.
7.35 – we arrive at Hung Hom pier. It is surrounded by the only empty and barren piece of land in the whole of Hong Kong. All it is missing are tumbleweeds blowing across the broken concrete.

“Where the fcuk are we?”
“Why have they built a pier miles from any signs of civilization?”
“Where’s the Coliseum?”
Noone knows.
“Where are the cabs?”
“There aren’t any but there’s a cab rank”
5 minutes later we’re at the rank, in the middle of a long queue of similarly lost Gweilos and there is no sign of a cab, so we decide to start walking

Just round the corner is a huge shopping centre (with what appears to be a large concrete ship-shaped thing in the middle of it for no obvious reason), and loads of cabs, so in we hop and off we go. Turns out the Coliseum is miles from the pier, but after 10 minutes driving and 10 minutes in a jam around the venue out we get and there we are at 8pm on the nose.

There’s a huge queue at the catering outlets outside for beers etc so I suggest we go in and get a beer inside.

The ticket has “Gate B” on it in big black letters.

So I go to Gate B, which has a big black letter B on a red background

“No no – you need to go to the Blue Gate – B stands for Blue”

Well Obviously.

B stands for Blue.

Not just B.

Or Brown.

Or Black.

Or Burnt Ochre.

Or Beaten to Death by an Enraged and Thirsty Expat

We find the “Blue” Gate. You can tell by the Blue background and the big, black letter G on it.

Knowing that Hong Kong’ers aren’t exactly au fait with Gweilo concert customs, in particular beer drinking, I thought I’d better check with the gate man that you can indeed buy beer inside.

“Can I buy beer inside the building?”

“Certainly no problem”

“You’re sure I can buy beer inside?”

“Yes yes”

So in we go.

We find our seats almost immediately and I ask the trying-to-be-very helpful venue staff where I can buy a beer.

“No beer inside. Not allowed”

“But I specifically asked and was specifically told that beer was available”

“No no. No beer allowed”

Bugger.

Can’t be bothered to fight my way out again so decide to watch the concert dry.

5 minutes later an Aussie couple come by clutching paper cups of beer.

“Excuse me. Where did you get those?”

“You have to go back outside, buy the beer in cans and then put it into paper cups and then you can bring it in”

“Excellent. Thanks.”

I stand up to get the beers in.

The lights promptly go down and The Eagles appear 30 minutes late.

Ah sod it. I’ll watch some and then go get a beer.

A few melodies later and they’re saying 1 more before the break. Right. That’s my cue. Beat the rush. Off I go.

I get to the bar. It is staffed by two women who have clearly never seen a Gweilo before, let alone tried to communicate with them. There is also one old dear at the back who is lifting cans of Carlsberg individually out of a 24 can pack and putting them on a table, from where the two saleswomen are individually picking them up, opening them (my one had long nails so had to use a fork to lever the top open), and then slowly pour them into paper cups.

Thank God I got out early because you could have died of thirst in the queue that formed 10 seconds after they finished that song.

Back in I go.

Second half is pretty good. The classics are played, the encore is Hotel California, the second encore is Desperado. Ok that’s enough and off we go.

15 minutes of wandering around the bowels of Kowloon later and we find a cab.

“The Peak please”

“Hong Kong?”
Yes. Hong Kong island”

Much sighing and sucking of teeth later…. “OK” and we’re away, homeward bound….

Several directions later (I think it was our drivers first time on the island) and we’re approaching home, which is on a narrow and windy road. It’s now midnight. We turn a corner and there in front of us is a huge fcuking great mobile crane being loaded onto the back of a lowloader in the middle of a residential area (they are building yet more flats at the top end of the road). Road totally blocked. 5 minutes we sit in the cab with a queue forming behind us.

"Sod this. Let’s walk. It’s only 10 minutes from here”

We pay the guy and off we go.

2 minutes later all the cars that were behind us drive past.

Bugger. They must have finally got that thing loaded and out of the way.

So we arrive home at about 12.15, to find that our front door is open and one of our dogs is running around outside being chased by a security guard.

Another average night out in Hong Kong….