Well, not really a free lunch, more than that. Try a room, a hotel room, a harbor view hotel room looking straight across the water at the magical light show of Hong Kong island’s inimitable skyline. It all cost $329. Normally, to normal people. We paid only the tax on that: $30. Yes, less than backpackers were paying at nearby hostels and, we’re at the five star Intercontinental Grand Stanford, with it’s sweeping foyer, grand piano, hushed luxury and well heeled international clientele.
How are we here? How indeed? Hotels.com is how. With every ten nights booked through this fabulous online booking agency you get one night free. That’s one night with a price limit of $400. This is not a shabby freebie.
But that’s not the main event, although perhaps it should be. The main event was membership of the Grand Stanford’s hallowed Executive Club. This was included in the price of the room and I had no expectations. Sometimes this means nothing more than checking in somewhere private and eating an inanimate free breakfast in a windowless room with wireless and other stuffy executives hopefully not like you.
Not this time. This time we got whisked away from the reception desk and the milling commoners. A uniformed butler type person discretely inserted us into the next elevator going up to the first floor. From this entirely different altitude you could disdainfully gaze down upon the hapless rabble in the common area. I was getting the hang of this.
We were checked in at a private desk where no-one mentioned tasteless things like money or, for that matter, freebies. We were just in time for cocktail hour. Oh yes, you mean the small grubby glass of boxed wine hurriedly downed in some draughty corridor and the lonely plate of cheese cubes? No? That’s no, no and no!
This way please ma’am… Through the entry to the left and voila! The kind of décor you’d see at the French court. Well, almost. And windows, floor to ceiling with the whole of Hong Kong as backdrop.
We waded through the luxury carpet’s knee deep pile and found ourselves a table facing the glitter of water and light. Around us, small puddles of discretely happy people from Germany, France, Britain, Australia, The World.
The Germans looked the most to the manor born. Just disheveled enough to appear casually entitled they sat in groups drinking pearly long glasses of champagne and murmuring sophisticated things to each other in their native language. An occasional, peal of laughter disturbed the urbane surface.
I took out my notebook. I know I looked the opposite of entitled but who cared. This is one of the most compelling reasons to be a writer, to be able to heedlessly indulge my wonder and curiosity, snatch at the unusual and gaze at it unselfconsciously and from all angles. To stare, to watch, to observe.
I was visiting a land I don’t often frequent. Not Hong Kong, I’m fortunate enough to pop in there several times a year but this, the land of the rich. It was enchanting, in a Cinderella, sort of way, to listen to the sounds of the rich swell and recede around me.
Most of the women in the elegant, long room, wore versions of black, narrow skirts, pale nondescript blouses, dark expensive jackets and sharp, slim heels. The men wore polo necks and tassled loafers with no socks. I was in a baggy black smock top with traveled in jeans, boots and a limp, bedraggled scarf.
A party of three very non-executive looking Australian women from Adelaide, where the accent’s more buxom, could not hide their sense of good fortune.
“It’s the dishes. Not having to do them.” Nods all round.
“Not having to tidy up after the kids.’
“I can’t remember when last I was away from family and the chores.”
This trio was so delightfully out of place, a little rough at the edges, more amazed at it all, than I was.
I watched and listened as the evening wore on, as evenings do where drink flows and no-one gets a check.
My party of three Australians made several trips to the loo only to return to find their drinks refilled again and again. Everyone loosened up visibly and audibly. Confidences were exchanged ever more loudly and with heightened hilarity. It was a joy to watch.
To my left a man in his forties sporting the aforesaid loafers, black polo neck and a well preserved physique was attempting to chat up the Filipino waitress who looked 20 years younger than she is and turns out to have a husband and three grown children. She eventually extricated herself from the awkwardly protracted question and answer session and he returned to fiddling dolefully with his cell phone dreaming of contacts he wished he had and the ones he does.
The snacks were exotic, spicy and warm. A far cry from their impoverished relative, the dried out cheese cube. The night wore on and when it finally ended we were in no condition to mourn it’s demise. It had hardly been sudden and was, on the contrary, painlessly blurred. We decided to cancel our dinner reservations at The Press Room on the island. We’ve had way too much good stuff and were content to repair to our glorious, and almost free, bed. All that for $30. And who says there’s no such thing as a free lunch?
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