Hong Kong restaurant offers 'End of the World' meal for December 21

With the end of the Mayan calendar - and, according to some, the end of the world - looming next week, a Tsim Sha Tsui restaurant is cashing in by offering a doomsday dinner.

Aqua Restaurant Group's flagship in Peking Road will serve a six-course "End of the World" meal on December 21 for HK$2,112.12 per person.

But guests will pay the ominous price only if the world is not going to end - if the planet looks like it is heading for perdition, the restaurant will pick up the tab. The "last dessert" will be chocolate mousse garnished with 24-carat gold.

The doomsday claim is linked to an interpretation of the end of a five-millennia cycle in the ancient Mayan calendar that began in 3,114BC. Sceptics, many jaded by a recent spate of "end of the world" predictions, say it merely signifies the end of an era and the start of another.

Numerologist Peter Craggs, who studies the mystical relationship between numbers and events, said there had been "a lot of unnecessary fear and trepidation". He studied the doomsday date and reduced it to 11 - a master number according to mathematician Pythagoras.

As the number 11 is "highly charged", mankind could "awaken to their sixth sense" on the day and obtain an intuitive side of human existence, Craggs said.