After hiking MacLehose Stage 1, part of Stage 2 and then the Luk Wu Country Trail on Thursday, we decided to try something different from Grande, which had been our regular place for the post-hike late lunch in Sai Kung. And after about 21km (yes, I know, nothing compared to the whole trail that the serious people were doing the next day, but plenty for someone as unfit as me) we were in the mood for some meat, so decided to try Anthony’s Ranch. And it turned out to be a good call.

We were the only customers when we arrived at about 4:30pm for late lunch, and the server got off to a bit of a shaky start, being a bit unsure about the soup of the day and what was in some of the dishes, but it got better. Sam Adams Boston Lager was the beer we both went for – $38 but with 30% off for happy hour so not a bad price; Grande’s happy hour is 2 for 1 at the same $38, but Sam Adams is much more to my taste than their generic lagers. They came with complimentary peanuts while we were choosing our food.

We decided to share a Ranch Salad with prawns as a starter; $95 for a big bowl, dressing on the side, was reasonable, but not exceptional value. The prawns tasted good, the leaves were very crisp, and we were happy with the choice. I decided to splash out and have the 10oz filet mignon ($325), and my friend had the bowl of beef stew ($88). The steak was pretty good – cooked medium-rare, exactly as ordered, and quite flavourful. It was served with a corn-on-the-cob (with a little butter), a small bowl of coleslaw, and mashed potato (which also, unusually, contained a couple of pieces of something crunchy – perhaps cauliflower). A pepper and mushroom sauce was served on the side. The steak wasn’t quite up there at Morton’s standard, but it was pretty much on a par with Wooloomooloo, which is my preferred steakhouse in town. My friend was very happy with his beef stew, which came with fries and coleslaw.

The manageress is from Boston and happy to see us drinking Sam Adams, but we were both a bit knackered and not really on for a big session, so we called it a day before we got too heavily into the beer.

Overall this is definitely a place I would recommend in Sai Kung (as I would also Grande, which we enjoy too). There is quite a good range of food on the menu, at different price points so you don’t have to break the bank having large expensive steaks (they go up to 14oz prime striploins for $355). We seem to be doing about 50% of our weekly hikes around Sai Kung at the moment, so I’m sure we’ll be back soon.

Hemlock, in an excellent post yesterday, highlighted that the people cosying up to and riding on the coat tails of the property cartel tycoons include a fair few gweilos, one such being Mr Rory O’Grady, on whose toadying and self-interested letter to the SCMP Hemlock commented.
It seems that Mr O’Grady is a bit miffed at this – he’s certainly been ferreting around my blog looking for evidence of who Hemlock is.

All I can say is that it isn’t me, and it isn’t David Wilson (or Alvin Siddow).
And do wipe that brown stuff off your nose Rory – it smells rather.

It is a great shame that so few people in Hong Kong seem to appreciate good beer. Mrs smog and I had an excellent evening yesterday with a couple of friends at Trafalgar where the ladies enjoyed Green Goblin cider and the guys had a thoroughly enjoyable ale tasting, but only managed to sample about half of the list. Green Goblin is real cider – not the artificially sweetened crap like Blackthorn or Strongbow, and without the nasty aftertaste as well; the ladies enjoyed it very much, although Mrs smog does have a bit of a sore head this morning!

But the ales are the great attraction at Trafalgar – nowhere else in Hong Kong that I know of has such a great selection of English (bottled) ales (with a couple of Scottish and Belgian ones as well); The Globe has a few, but nothing like this range. Couple that with the nice environment on the 5th floor outdoors terrace and it’s hard to beat. The food is OK “pub grub” – nothing special, but just what you need for soaking up a few ales. The ales are nearly all $40 during Happy Hour (until 9pm), and about $58 thereafter, for 500ml or pint bottles, so very competitive with other beers around.

Between the two of us we managed to sample ten different ales last night, and that was less than half the list. We started with Old Thumper (a particular favourite of mine from the Ringwood brewery, not far from where I grew up), went through some organic ales: Whitstable Bay, Duchy, and Brakspear (of which His Royal Highness’s brew got the highest marks), enjoyed some Fiddler’s Elbow with a couple of burgers, then the Black Sheep. Getting towards the end of the evening we moved to some heavier and darker ales: Fuller’s ESB, Jennings Snecklifter, Shepherd Neame’s Christmas Ale (from 2008), and rounded the evening off with a Fuller’s London Porter.

The really sad thing is that as far as we could see, amongst the full terrace of drinkers there almost no-one else drinking anything except generic boring lager, with the odd-Hoegaarden. A fine exception were the couple of (I think) local ladies who obviously had a taste for Leffe Brun!

We had quite a chat to Sam, the Director it says on his card, about the difficulties of getting real ale in Hong Kong, particularly on draught, and gave him as much encouragement as we could! Those of you who appreciate real ale, and haven’t discovered Trafalgar yet – get down there! It’s in the building between the White Stag and Heat on Lockhart Road, on the 5th floor. They also have sports on projectors out on the terrace, so it’s a great place for major sports events too.

Just one word of warning – with so many beers available it pays to double check that the staff understand your order correctly – going to the bar to do so also allows you to perform the vital “legs still working?” check for pacing oneself. Enjoy!

One of the banes of one’s life as an expat is the frequent calls from often very persistent “Financial Advisers” who claim to be able to offer all sorts of ways of enhancing one’s wealth. Unfortunately, bitter experience has taught me that the only people’s wealth they tend to enhance is their own – and the best example of this for me is the “Meyado Private Wealth Management Group“, a UK-based group who were active in Hong Kong in 2001 to 2003 and succeeded in extracting quite a bit of wealth from me before they were run out of town by the Securities and Futures Commission. It is clear that I was far from alone in this, and there are various sites on the internet where others have expressed their displeasure over the years with Meyado (there were more, but apparently Meyado has resorted to legal action to get some taken down). The latest such attempt to get a critical mass of people together to go after Martin Young (the CEO and owner of Meyado) and his cronies has now appeared at http://www.forespoke.com and I wish it every success.

Even if there is not much hope of getting any money back, at least such sites should help to dissuade other gullible expats from parting with any of their hard-earned wealth to these people in future. I find it quite amazing that they currently have a base in Singapore and appear to be tolerated by the authorities there, despite the fact that they were run out of Hong Kong by the SFC (generally far more tolerant than the Singaporeans). I have seen recently that the UK arm of Meyado is licensed only subject to the constraint that it may not hold client money, which gives some indication of what the UK authorities think about them. Moreover, I noticed that they were recently the subject of a winding up (bankruptcy) petition by the UK Revenue & Customs, presumably for non-payment of taxes due – hardly something that would happen to a reputable company – although the petition was apparently dismissed. And this is despite the fact that Martin Young has bought his way into the “posh” segment of society by sponsoring a fairly major polo competition (a big thing amongst the posh set apparently). It seems that if you have enough money, regardless of how disreputable its source, one can overcome an alleged local secondary school, army other rank, second hand car salesman background).

The various mechanisms that Martin Young has used to extract money from investors have apparently included the Velocity Fund, the Catalyst Fund (both of these before my time so I didn’t get caught), commissions on various less than stellar investment vehicles (e.g Newstar Hedge Fund), and, most egregiously, the whole sorry saga of MITL / Meretec. This did actually appear to be an investment in a genuine business based round a proprietary technology for extracting the zinc from scrap galvanised steel, but somehow the vehicle which owned the technology was sold to an Australian company (CMA Corp) in return for a load of CMA shares which are worth nothing like the investment that gullible people like me put into the company through convertible bonds and later shares.

Of course in the meantime Martin Young extracted huge amounts of money from the company to cover his “expenses” leaving it as an empty shell which went into administration (the halfway house to winding up as bankrupt) in 2008 with liabilities which more or less match the residual value of the CMA shares. Hence there is nothing left for the shareholders. So, in effect, the whole Meretec/MITL history has been an extremely efficient vehicle for transferring the wealth (and we’re talking tens of millions of US dollars here) of gullible investors into the pockets of Martin Young and his cronies. It seems to me that at the very least this man is incompetent to be the director of any company, and quite possibly he is an out and out fraudster. It is good to see that the administrators (SF Plant) do at least have their forensics people looking at the situation, which I might hope will lead to some criminal action against Young, but I suspect this is more hope than expectation, even in the current climate where there is some general support for going after the most blatant of the fraudsters (Madoff, Stamford, etc). Let’s see what happens.

If anyone has any comments to add on this whole sorry episode feel free to do so here. Also if you were one of the people duped then please do contact the group at http://www.forespoke.com to get involved in their action, and update them with any useful information you have beyond the documents which they have already published on their website.

Edit – I notice from the London Gazette that there will be further proceedings on 29th November regarding the liquidation of Meretec. I am in the process of finding out what this is about and will update here accordingly.

It’s been a bit quiet here on the blog, not least because life has been like that too. Apart from the odd bit of hiking (with crappy visibility, so no pictures) I’ve been trying to make inroads in to the pile of books beside the bed, so here are a few quick reviews.

The Catholic Orangemen of Togo and Other Wars I Have Known
This is the prequel to Craig Murray’s excellent and thought provoking Murder in Samarkand (which I reviewed here), and it had the the same gripping effect on me – once I’d picked up my personally signed copy (thanks Craig!) I couldn’t put it down until I’d finished it. It is hugely informative about African history, politics and society, and yet also works for entertainment value – Mr Murray doesn’t allow political correctness to restrain his comments, nor does he hold back on the sometimes less than palatable aspects of his own life. I feel this should be obligatory reading for people with an interest in the recent history of West Africa, but it can also simply be viewed as a most entertaining read even for people with only a passing interest in or knowledge of the area. Highly recommended!

A Fortunate Life – Paddy Ashdown’s Autobiography
This is quite a weighty tome, but then for someone who’s packed as much into his life as Paddy Ashdown that’s no surprise. Written simply in chronological style it actually struggles to fit everything in to the 400 pages. In many areas tantalising glimpses left me thinking I wanted to know more, and there are some episodes, particularly his employment by what I take to be MI6 that are just completely blanked. Mr Ashdown is obviously still very much an establishment man so there are none of the diatribes that give Mr Murray’s books their edge. And that’s the problem with this book – although you can but admire someone who has fitted so much in to his life (Royal Marine Special Boat Service, Diplomat/Spy, Member of Parliament and then leader of his party, High Representative (essentially, Governor) for Bosnia) the whole thing comes across as rather too smooth. Real life isn’t really that easy is it? Apart from a brief admission of the affair with his secretary that led to him being branded “Paddy Pantsdown” in the British tabloid press there’s nothing much here that lets one really get inside his head. So it’s an interesting and entertaining read, particularly for those with a British background, but it’s not really a thought-provoking book.

Diamond Hill Memories of growing up in a Hong Kong squatter village
This was written by an acquaintance of mine from the FCC, and there are very few books written about Hong Kong in English by local Hong Kong people, so I was keen to get a copy when it was published recently. The structure of the rather slim book isn’t really what I expected – it isn’t written as a chronological autobiography, but rather is organized by topic, with chapters on “Schools”, “Fires”, “The food we ate”, “The games we played”, “Thugs & Gangsters”, and so on. It covers the period when the author was between nine and nineteen years old, i.e. 1956-66, which was a period where Hong Kong saw many changes (although obviously it misses the 1968 riots and events around them).

Once I’d got used to the fact that was I was reading was essentially a series of vignettes primarily about the place and the other people rather than an autobiographical tale then I found them quite fascinating. But the nature of this book is that it gives you a series of tantalising glimpses into the area and the lifestyle of the people living there but, frankly, doesn’t provide much deep insight into causes, consequences and so on. Occasionally also the author seems to forget that he’s writing a series of vignettes and not an autobiography, and strange out of place glimpses into his much more recent life appear from nowhere, immediately to disappear again. If I had to summarise the experience of reading the book I would say that it is actually the written equivalent of watching old silent newsreel footage – you think you can see what’s happening, and it’s fascinating, but you find yourself deluged with questions about what it all really means. And then occasionally you get those few frames of his recent life spliced in from an altogether different movie.

So if you’re at all interested in old Hong Kong and want to realise how different this place was even within the last 50 years then this is a must read (and it won’t take more than a few hours at under 200 pages). But expect it to whet the appetite rather than sate it.

I had a great trip yesterday to the island of Po Toi, which for some reason had never really occurred to me as a place to go in my 10 years here. Which is a shame because it’s a beautiful place and somewhere to which I’ll definitely be going back. Apparently it’s very busy at weekends, and during the week there is only one kaito each way on Tuesdays and Thursdays (leaving Aberdeen at 10am and Po Toi at 2pm), but the main restaurant was open, and while we were there they had two other parties of gweilos as well – one from a yacht and one from a junk.

The journey by kaito is part of the attraction. These little ferries are part of the wonderful thing that is Hong Kong’s public transport system.

Kaito in Aberdeen harbour

(Click on any of the images to open a bigger version in a new window/tab.)

On the way to Po Toi there is plenty to see:

Fishing Boats, and Jumbo's grubby rear

A sea cave below Ocean Park, a stream running down to the sea and Stanley earth station

After about 50 minutes the kaito pulls into the little bay, Tai Wan, where all the remaining inhabitants of Po Toi live, and we’re off to explore the island (or at least the relatively small part of it that is accessible without going seriously “off trail”).

Tai Wan, and the Po Toi map at the pier

The storm that passed through last Monday night had put quite a lot of debris in the form of bits of trees and so on on the paths, but we quickly found our way out to the main track towards the rocky headland at Nam Kok Tsui (via one of Hong Kong’s declared monumental rock carvings, which we found rather underwhelming).

Nam Kok Tsui

My companion and I found the scenery here quite beautiful.

Vertical slabs of rock, sea cliffs, and hikers

Stanley in the far distance

From the headland we proceeded up over the “warm up” hill to the small lighthouse and past Monk Rock.

The lighthouse, and Monk Rock

The second hill is 1000 steps up to a pavilion at 188m (600′). There aren’t any photos because it was 34 degrees and I was too knackered! Then it was downhill all the way back into the village. We considered the “Rugged Trail” which swings around to the north, but decided that with limited time and no more ferries for two days we would leave that for another time. Instead we took the path straight down towards the village.

Tai Wan from above

Again this was strewn with natural debris from the recent storm, but unusually for Hong Kong, the path has been allowed to go simply across the rock in places without some bureaucrat feeling the need to add concrete! On the way down we came across a graveyard (in fact we saw a number around the island) which was unusual in that one of the graves appeared to have been very recently dug open, and there was the top of a wooden coffin lying exposed. I managed to persuade my companion, who has something of a fascination with death, not to climb into the hole for a closer look!

An exposed wooden coffin

The population of Po Toi is a fraction of what it was years ago, so there are quite a few derelict buildings around. Amongst them one with a very bright eagle on the door.

Derelict but still shiny

We walked through the village to the far end to have a look at the Tin Hau temple, which is very well maintained, and then back to Ming Kee Seafood Restaurant, which is the only one open mid-week. There was another table of foreigners who had arrived by yacht just finishing lunch, and a third group arrived from a junk shortly after us.

Tin Hau temple, Ming Kee Restaurant, and private & public transport

Unfortunately, we had a ferry to catch so only had time for a couple of Tsing Taos, but the food looked excellent, so we’re definitely trying to make plans to get back there for that. All in all this was an excellent short day out, and I thoroughly recommend Po Toi, particularly if you have access to your own transport and can go midweek.

This is utterly ridiculous… I just noticed that iTunes, in its wisdom, has replaced the cover artwork of The Pros and Cons of Hitch-hiking (Roger Waters) with a version where the woman has a black block across her bum, thus:

How ludicrous can political correctness get?

(The next bit is NSFW if you have the misfortune to work somewhere like iTunes)

A bum looks like this (for the benefit of Apple’s censors, who clearly have trouble with this concept):

And while we’re at it, they don’t even offer me artwork for Indelibly Stamped (Supertramp). Guys, it looks like this, with tits:

Occasionally I pick up a book that holds my attention so well that it just gets read cover to cover in one sitting (fortunately my semi-retiredness means that staying awake all night isn’t a big deal). The latest such work is Craig Murray’s Murder in Samarkand (known in its American edition as “Dirty Diplomacy“) which I thoroughly recommend to anyone with an interest in the “War on Terror”, British diplomacy and politics, or Uzbekistan. (Apparently the US version names a few more names directly since it doesn’t have to deal with the UK’s over-protective libel laws.)

Some may recall that Murray was the UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan in the period 2002 to 2004 who attracted a certain amount of media attention at the time over his forthright views on the Uzbeki regime and on the UK’s use of intelligence from people tortured by them (some after being “renditioned” there by US agencies). It was the incompatibility of these views with the UK’s policies and actions which eventually forced Murray to resign from a very promising career that had led to him being the UK’s youngest Ambassador at the time. This book is his account of those times; it is what you would expect from his reputation: direct, frank, and rather amusing in parts. It also, with brutal honesty, shows a character who, whilst forthright, persistent and brave, also suffers from what many might regard as significant shortcomings, particularly with regard to nightlife and women. Others (men at least) living the expat lifestyle may well find these very easy to relate to – I know I do: Murray and I are amongst the many who are fortunate to have ended up with gorgeous “foreign” wives significantly younger than us, although, unlike Murray, I didn’t have to break up with a previous wife & kids in order to do so.

I’ve been dipping in to Murray’s blog for a while, but the thing that triggered me to buy the book recently was his candidacy in a recent UK by-election. Regrettably, being blocked from much of the media (unable to take part in televised debates and so on), he was unable to make much of an impact, but I do hope that he finds some role in public life which enables him to keep on highlighting the situation in Central Asia and the UK & US governments’ shocking disregard of human rights there. It is a message which needs to be heard, and this book deserves a very wide audience as the basis for that.

Having got bored with finishing our Lantau hikes at the China Bear in Mui Wo, my hiking buddy and I decided to check out the new(-ish) Eddie’s restaurant in Tong Fuk yesterday. South Lantau Road is between it and the beach, so its “beach bistro” tag is a little bit of marketing licence, but this is a very welcome option indeed for quality food at reasonable prices on Lantau.

eddie's restaurant in Tong Fuk, Lantau Island

We arrived only a few minutes after the 6pm opening time, and were greeted by the very friendly and competent waiter. After quick trips to the gents to change our very sweaty hiking shirts we sat in comfortable easy chairs at one end of the restaurant (which essentially feels like a conservatory tacked on the front of the main building) and perused the menu and drinks list. The drinks list was exactly as on the website, but the food menu has evolved a little. 6-8pm is happy hour so draught beer and house wines by the glass are 2-for-1. The house wines are the drinkable (but nothing flash) Oxford Landing Sauvignon Blanc and CabSauv/Shiraz blend from Australia, but I was very pleasantly surprised to find that the house pour appears to be 175ml, which means that before 8pm you get a whole bottle of house wine for $90; frankly this is the best deal I know in town (even cheaper than the house wine at the FCC). Unlike some other places, they were very happy to supply large complimentary glasses of chilled water.

I was feeling hungrier than my companion, so I ordered a “lemony lentil & salmon salad ($68)” to start, followed by the “chicken breast stuffed with fontina cheese and wrapped in parma ham, served with potato and carrot mash ($98)”. He decided just to order the “Club Salad ($78)” and maybe save room for dessert.

We moved to one of the simple dark wood tables adorned with wicker place mats and linen napkins, with a view out over the road (but not really the beach). When my salad arrived my companion immediately regretted his reticence, accepted the waiter’s offer of a plate, and grabbed a large portion of it. It was exactly as advertised, the quality of the ingredients was apparent (the restaurant attempts to use organic and sustainable supplies), and the flavours of the salmon (which was lightly poached), lentils and lemony dressing were perfectly balanced. For a “starter size” salad it was quite large so no problem for two to share.

One thing that did surprise me slightly about the meal was that no bread was offered at any point, which seemed a bit unusual for this standard of place. Anyway, we then moved on to the main courses. My companion was also very enthusiastic about his Club Salad (again the size of a large starter or moderate main course), enjoying the flavours of the ingredients, which were lightly dressed but not so much that they were drowned out. My chicken was quite simple but very nicely done – the cheese helping to keep the chicken moist and the ham just slightly crispy around it. The potato and carrot mashes again had all the characteristics of home-grown, rather than industrial, vegetables, as did the perfectly steamed asparagus.

We decided we weren’t ready to finish there. My companion has a sweet tooth so he ordered the “tart of the day ($48)”, which was plum and lemon, having been advised that it was still baking in the oven (we were there quite early in the evening) and that it would take 20 minutes. This was fine as we were in no rush. Still having some house red to drink I felt more in the mood for cheese, and despite the fact that it wasn’t on the menu, the chef was happy to rustle up a very nicely presented plate containing four different cheeses (cheddar, emmental, a blue, and one that I didn’t recognise) with some strawberry segments and blueberries dotted around, and some biscuits ($78).

The tart when it arrived was absolutely superb – a proper fresh, homemade fruit tart served (on request) with a small pot of cream (and, of course, that means proper single cream, not something out of an aerosol can). I was sorely tempted to order a portion for myself even after 3 courses already, but I just managed to resist.

We decided to finish with tea (for my companion) and an espresso for me, accompanied in my case by a whisky digestif. The spirits list here is very short (basically one whisky – a 5 year old scotch – one VSOP brandy, amaretto, vodka, gin, rum) but I enjoyed the scotch with just a dash of water.

As well as the excellent waiter, the owner/chef (who isn’t called Eddie – that’s his dog!) came out at various points to check that everything was OK and to chat, and to give advice on transport home.

All in all we had a very enjoyable meal and the bill for the entire thing (two salads, one main course, one dessert, a cheese plate, an orange juice, a bottle of wine (2 * 2 175ml glasses on happy hour), a coffee, a tea and a scotch came to $560. On Hong Kong Island it would have been at least double, and probably treble that for food of this quality. No service charge is added to the menu prices, so that is entirely at diners’ discretion. The only thing I would say is that the drinks selection is quite limited, and I forgot to check their attitude / corkage for BYO, but I suspect it would be very reasonable, and the house wines are very drinkable (and superb value in happy hour).

(A side note that currently credit cards are not accepted (“coming soon”) – so make sure you have enough cash – the nearest ATM is quite some distance away!) EDIT 26/8/09: Visa, Mastercard & JCB are now accepted

All my Lantau hikes for the foreseeable future are going to finish here, and I would almost say it is worth a special trip (maybe combined with the beach) even if you don’t enjoy roaming the hills of Lantau. Eddie’s is very highly recommended!

… you’ll find something quite fascinating, if you happen to be on Section 3 of the Wilson Trail (at distance post 026, grid reference KK163701, just above Ma Yau Tong), as I was yesterday.

There is a large collection of brightly coloured sculptures featuring people (apparently of various races) and animals, many of them labelled in English, as well as a shrine with some sort of deity in it. The sculptures are getting a little dilapidated, but the shrine itself is still clearly maintained on a regular basis. Here are some examples:

A very big tortoise!

Slippery road - Be careful

Does a monkey on a tiger's back mean something in Chinese?

That's a real (old - mid-90s) mobile phone in its hand

The nearest character appears to be a gweilo

Three kids, only two breasts! The third has a real bottle.

This is the deity of the shrine it seems.

This is the big sign at the entrance to the shrine.

I can find lots of other similar pictures online, but no-one seems to be able to offer an explanation of what all this is about. Do any of my readers have any idea? In particular, what do the Chinese characters in that last picture say?

And in addition to this surprise in the woods, the views out on the hills yesterday were well worth putting up with the 34 degree heat.

The view from Black Hill toward's Devil's Peak