Under cover for the rose-tinted bus tour of Hong Kong island
DID you ever wonder what some of the six million tourists who visit our fair city are told by their trusted tour guides? Neither did I. But I decided to see anyway.
Going undercover, I decked myself out in a baseball hat, a pair of abominably checked Bermuda shorts and an appalling Hawaiian shirt. Then with my camera ready, lens cap firmly secured by string, I booked a standard half-day Gray Line bus tour of Hong Kong Island.
Our group was an assortment of Italians, Australians and Americans, a family of expatriate Indians living in the US, an elderly Hong Kong Chinese couple returning from decades overseas and, sitting behind me, a nattering New Zealander who hoped to impress his pleasantly pretty Kiwi girlfriend with his intimate knowledge of our city, virtually none of which was remotely correct.
The problem with most guided tours is the guides themselves, who, having literally seen it all before a hundred times, are bored to tears with the itinerary and their own soliloquy.
But this tour suffered the curse in reverse. Yvonne was pleasant and attractive, as well as charming and chatty. More importantly, she could issue an eloquent barrage of facts that would impress even an encyclopedia salesman.
As we chugged through a traffic-choked Central en route to the Aberdeen Tunnel, she chatted knowingly about the passing sights, revealing everything from the height of the Bank of China to the age of the Supreme Court Building.
Our group, by contrast, lived up to the sheep-like image tourists are traditionally tainted with; they rarely asked questions and seldom showed any excitement, except for the New Zealander who, when passing St George's Building uttered to his girlfriend:''Look there's Christian Die-or!'' as if it were Ronnie Yip in the nude.
Whipping through the tunnel we arrived at Aberdeen looking lovely in the amber light of afternoon. Our first stop was a 25-minute tour of a jewellery factory to see the process of setting precious stones.
Following a 60-second speech on the art of jewellery-making by a motormouth salesman jammed on fast-forward, we were ushered to our actual destination, the factory's gleaming showroom.
As we entered, the assembled sales staff rose as one to greet us, with the type of smiles you'd expect to see on a brace of bishops in a brothel.
A timid lot, we were all obediently back on the bus within our allotted time. Our next adventure: a sampan ride on the garbage-strewn green soup slime of Aberdeen, which, with a charming twinkle in her eye that perhaps only I noticed, Yvonne referred to as our ''gondola tour.'' Try as I did throughout the afternoon, I could never catch Yvonne uttering a single mistake or even an exaggeration in any of the information she pleasantly imparted.
En route to Stanley Market, she regaled us with an interesting running social commentary touching on everything from local religions and rock stars to rental prices for 20-room Peak mansions.
She also noted, perhaps correctly and indelicately, that most golfers in Hong Kong were elderly because the waiting time to gain membership in local clubs can take decades.
Exiting the bus at our final stop, a now appalling and chaotic construction heap on the Peak, I peppered poor Yvonne with a few final questions, each of them answered with professional polish and good humour.
Snake soup, she appropriately told me, was rarely available except in winter, though I might try Kowloon's Kweilin Street if I was really keen. And dog meat? At this, her eyes went big as moon cakes.
''It's illegal in Hong Kong!'' she stammered, adding that it's now virtually impossible to find anywhere. Asked if she had ever sampled any - surely a rude and tactless question only a tourist would ask - she simply giggled good-naturedly and swore thatwhile she enjoyed beef, chicken, pork and fish, she had no culinary inclination for canines.
Asked if foreigners and Chinese get along here, she said that relations were generally very good and that I could verify this myself with a visit to a lively place called Lan Kwai Fong on any weekend.
A six year veteran of the tour-guide grind, Yvonne found Americans the most friendly and Indians the most curious. ''Sometimes they even ask the same questions three times!'' Commenting on the corpse-like passiveness of our group, she diplomatically agreed that today's tour was unusually quiet.
For a tourist's point of view the Hong Kong island tour ($165 for nearly four hours, plus $50 for the optional sampan voyage) seemed to be one of the city's legendary bargains; it was also Yvonne's clear favourite as a guide.
The last I heard of my tour mates, as I left the Peak Tram lookout point, was the voice of the long-winded New Zealander. ''Look!'' he declared, pointing at the Hong Kong Museum of Tea Ware. ''There's the Governor's House!''