Mark Murphy's Blog: Travel Unscripted with me - Posts Tagged "hong-kong"

The day started out quite nicely at the Mandarin Oriental Singapore, with room service delivering my breakfast at exactly 6:10am, as requested. The waiter poured my French pressed coffee into my cup and I caught up on the morning news via CNN.

Alert from my coffee and with a full belly I finalized my packing, grabbed a taxi and headed to the airport for my long day ahead. Indeed, my day will ultimately end twenty eight hours later, if all runs smoothly, I’ll walk through my front door to two sleepy Labradors that I haven’t seen in almost two weeks.

The Singapore airport is less than twenty minutes by taxi so before I knew it I was at the curb and grabbing one of those luggage carts for my bags. In the five seconds it took to pull the cart free and turn back to the taxi it happened; the car was gone. I mean it was literally one hundred yards away and getting further away by the seconds.

A full on panic set in as I thought, “are you f#@king kidding me? NO WAY this is happening right now.” Well, indeed it was happening much to my chagrin. Shouting was useless so I turned and ran up to the nearest counter inside. The British Airways agent pointed me towards the Information Desk in the center and I was off to the races.

I breathlessly explained, in rapid fire English, what happened. The representative understood the general idea and snapped into action when I handed her the receipt. Luckily, the receipt includes the drivers taxi number and the name fo the company he drives for. After the longest ten minutes of my life she made contact and told me the drive was on his way back.

It turns out that Mr. Chan, the driver, is a bit like the absent-minded professor. He has been known to drive off to places unknown in the past, but seemingly comes to his senses and ultimately returns. Lucky for me that the time lapse was limited to a total of thirty minutes and my return to the States wasn’t sidetracked hunting down my bags.

I’m not sure what the mandatory retirement age for taxi drivers are in Singapore, but Mr. Chan should think about taking up golf. First, he only has to take care of his own bag. Second, if the bag is attached to his cart he probably won’t risk losing it. That will save others and me the potential of a heart attack on their next visit to Singapore and beyond.

Although I can’t sing, I was really feeling it earlier this month. I was in Hong Kong and hanging out with some locals who I had met at a wedding in Mexico a year and a half earlier. We had initially met and partied at a great property, Barcelo Palace, in Los Cabos, Mexico.

When in Mexico at an all inclusive resort you can certainly over imbibe. Since we were celebrating the wedding of Nick (my producer and a guy prominently featured in my book, Travel Unscripted) and his wife Michelle we were even more revved up than usual….and the drinks flowed.

It was a great time and I was able to enjoy developing some new friendships with friends of the family who came from all over the world, including Hong Kong, to celebrate. There was no singing at this affair, but at one point I found myself with a microphone in my hand. I became emotional as I spoke to the small group and described how I felt about Nick and Michelle. I guess you could say I got pretty choked up.

Fast-forward to this July and you could say I got choked off during my visit to Hong Kong. I met up with two familiar faces from the wedding and one new one, grabbed a couple of cocktails, and ultimately found myself in a private karaoke room at a place where you will only find locals. The song choices were consistently Chinese ballads that lamented the loss of love, putting me completely out of my element. I had no idea what words were being sung, but I could understand the meaning in the melody and the mood of those around me.

I decided something needed to change and offered to mix it up by offering to sing one of the limited English songs on the menu; Billy Idol’s White Wedding. As the whiskey flowed the music revved up and I started to belt out the tune. It didn’t take long for those around me in the small room to glance between me singing and the words on the screen.

Suddenly, one of the girls said “What is this?” I replied during a gap in the lyrics “it’s Billy Idol!”. She responded, “Who is Billy Idol?” A few seconds later she followed up with “White Wedding? What the heck is that about?”

In an almost slow motion move her eyes shifted between me and the console, or what is basically the command center that controlled everything music in our room, and then it happened. Her hand extended, the music stopped, and we were back to the sad Chinese ballads. My friends in Hong Kong had enough and effectively ended my very brief karaoke career.

As the music stopped momentarily there was a brief awkward silence as I looked around and shrugged sheepishly. The microphone made it to another reveler who immediately began singing the next song up. I was effectively removed from the singing lineup and decided my talents were best served in helping the rest of my new friends make a dent in the open bottles of whiskey that littered the table.

Am I willing to sing again? You bet. Will they let me? I’ll let you know in September when I make it back to Hong Kong!