Sitting in the spotless white Mercedes taxi, the driver tells me, “Singapore has three seasons. Hot, Hotter and Hottest. This is the middle season.”
You could have fooled me.
I wander along the waterfront, then into the financial district. Imagine a place populated by the spawn of a captive breeding program mating tax accountants and structural engineers.
A torpid cloud hangs over us, storm clouds threatening downpours and belching thunder. I’m soaked before the rain finds me. As dusk fell, the approaching storm clouds began to spit lightning. I balanced the camera on a guard rail, went for a long exposure and hoped for the best.
The worshipers burned incense, a few tourists milled about. The afternoon sun glinted through a window, casting a beam of light through the temple. Large incense coils hang from the red ceiling, sending blessing heavenward and clouds of smoke into the air and spots of ash onto my shirt.
Down at the Star Ferry terminal, monks in yellow robes joked and posed for snapshots of each other with girls in miniskirts.
The mysterious smells of cooking, diesel smoke, morning coffee and faulty plumbing all mix in the cool, humid morning air.
The impossible Hong Kong skyline across from Tsim Sha Tsui has only grown more...more since I was here ten years ago. It’s amazing what you can accomplish with bamboo scaffolding and non-union labor. There’s a knock-off of Shanghai’s Jin Mao Tower over in the financial district now, but it’s decorated with some crazy white fangs at the summit. Post-modernist, predatory architecture.
Overhead on the Star Ferry ride across Hong Kong Harbour...
“Does anybody know where the life jackets are? On these ferries...? They’re not safe....They should tell you where they are...Are you listening to me?....”
I drift up from sleep in darkness. I’m a little hazy about where I am, but I guess it’s home, and I’ll open my eyes to white cotton sheets, my down comforter, sun filtering through the red cedar outside my window.
Silly man.
I pry one, sticky lid open to find myself crammed into a window seat, with someone reclined into my lap, his wife sprawled beside me and some jackass movie continuously looped on the video screen.
It’s only ten more hours to Hong Kong. I groan and try to go back to sleep.
It’s been nearly 20 years since I first set foot in Hong Kong. It was exciting and mysterious and I researched it for weeks. I made long shoot lists, packed all the glass I owned and a hundred rolls of film and worked like a dog, exploring every nook and cranny of the place.
When I land this time, I go to the Starbucks and mope.
Sitting in the spotless white Mercedes taxi, the driver tells me, “Singapore has three seasons. Hot, Hotter and Hottest. This is the middle season.”
