As an adolescent and still living at home I would often sit at the family breakfast table and stare at the giveaway calendar from the local Chinese Takeaway hanging on the wall. The mornings were usually a typical British blend of dark and cold looking skies outside with the constant tip-tapping of rain on the window as I would sit there eating my breakfast before having to venture out into the bleakness on my bicycle and cycle my mundane paper round.

The picture on the calendar showed a small red pagoda perched high on a mountainside with a spectacular view out over the most amazing cityscape imaginable, all crazily built higgledy-piggledy skyscrapers around a large strikingly blue harbour. The longer I looked and stared at that picture the more the image of Hong Kong ingrained itself on my memory banks. I did not know it back then but the seeds for discovering and exploring this exotic destination were already being sown in my young and youthful mind.

Fast forward some twenty seven odd years and here I was at Mumbai airport awaiting a connecting flight that would whisk me to Hong Kong. Later that very day I would possibly be standing looking out from that small red pagoda that I once stared so longingly at on that small wall calendar in my parents breakfast room. Continue reading “Chinese Takeaway!” →