Page 166 - Michael Frost-Voyages to Maturity-23531.indd

In Manila I did my usual walk ashore, for while it was a chaotic city and
ridiculously full of people, cars and jeepneys, it possessed a vitality that only
Hong Kong, at least in my experience, exhibited. Again, ridiculously hot in mid-
summer, but just the sort of walk that prepared one adequately upon one’s return
for a beer by the ship’s pool. However, I did receive a letter from Louise. Though
not a particularly good literary effort (patently, this was not her strength),
I was glad to receive it and know that the boy-friend was probably by now a
broken reed. And it also permitted me to press ahead, in Hong Kong, with one
of the numerous traders that boarded the ship to sell anything that could be
manufactured in a couple of days. And the cheongsam that she had requested
required only a couple of hours, so it was ordered … and arrived only hours later!
One of the main pleasures of Hong Kong arose because it is, at bottom, so small.
One can walk around its central part very easily, a type of funicular railway takes
one rapidly to the peak, and the view from there at night was, even then, quite
spectacular. On the other side of the island was Repulse Bay, a fine sandy beach in
what for a good portion of the year could have held itself out to be a semi-tropical
resort. In short, I was beginning to see why Hong Kong was a favoured port of
so many experienced old tars. (All was not necessarily as splendid as it seemed,
however, for there were, it could easily be noted, a good number of typhoon
shelters around the harbour. And in such crowded waters – there were few berths
alongside solid piers or jetties – even a modest typhoon or tropical storm could
wreak frightful damage to vessels and homes alike.)
Singapore greeted me with a telephone call from one of Gog’s nephews,
who had for some years been a local harbour pilot. He had been told by her
that I was on my way and suggested that we go ashore for the afternoon. Bob
Hammond was a bluff sort of fellow with whom it would be difficult not to get
along, and he picked me up for the ride to the local Swimming Club. Before
arriving there, however, he took me for a bit of a drive around the island, and I
had to confess that it was a far nicer place than I had anticipated. Not large, but
by the same token not over-populated (as, even then, Hong Kong, with only 3
million people, appeared to be), it looked to be a very pleasing city to live. Of
course, the ‘Malaysia Problem’ remained unresolved, but Lee Kuan Yew (with a
double-first in law from Cambridge - and possessed of an iron will) had become
Prime Minister in 1965, a position that he held until 1990. After this he remained
the nation’s éminence grise until his death in 2015. During lunch (over a superb
T-bone steak, albeit an odd choice in a nation with an overwhelmingly Chinese
population) we touched upon all of the local political, economic and shipping
issues, but my overall impression was that being a servant of the British Empire,
provided one had the right sort of education or standing, was a rather desirable
destiny; the weather was lovely, the beer was good, and the ambiance suited me
very well. We parted at sundown, vowing to get together again in three months’
time (the next voyage, I was glad to note, encompassed Japan).

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