My 80-year-old dad called me
at four in the morning to let me know he’d booked flights for him and mum to
come and visit me in Hong Kong in six months time. Two weeks before they were due to arrive, mum
had a fall and needed a wheelchair. Did they cancel? No, they did not. Nothing
was going to stop them from making this trip.
I waited at Exit B in the Arrivals hall for
two hours before eventually finding them in the middle of the concourse like a
couple of Paddington Bears with their handwritten parcel labels on their
suitcases. How they got past me, I do not know and neither do they. They
weren’t in bad shape considering they’d left their sleepy Somerset village more
than 24 hours before, arriving via Dubai. Their main gripe was that it was too
cold on the airplane: “We asked them three times to turn off the
air-conditioning!”
Mum does not like the cold, or the hot for
that matter. She doesn’t like spicy food, or bland food. She is a big fan of
salt and Tetley tea.
“This is going to be interesting,” Mick
said a day before the visit as we went to collect a wheelchair from the Red
Cross at a hospital in Chai Wan.
Navigating Hong Kong with a wheelchair is
no easy task. This is a hilly city with a lot of steps. On the plus side, my
biceps and calves are looking pretty toned now, and I discovered a whole new
world of elevators. Also, I have to admit, I was loving the preferential
treatment that came with the wheelchair.
At Ocean Park, we were whisked to the front
of every line with the special ‘wheelchair plus three helpers’ Golden Ticket
they gave us. They even stopped the cable car while mum got on. Dad, Mick and I
cast our eyes to the floor in mortification as we trooped past hundreds of people
to the front of the line – but we weren’t so mortified that we didn’t take full
advantage of the situation at every opportunity.
Apparently my dad loves penguins, I never
knew that, so he was in his element in the South Pole Attraction. Obviously
the Antarctic conditions were not acceptable to mother who waited outside with
her little battery-operated fan. “Does it really need to be that cold in
there?” Mum, they’re penguins!
The wheelchair also came in pretty handy at
Disneyland; The Peninsula Lobby (no queuing for Afternoon Tea); the (sold-out-except-for-wheelchairs)
show at The Cultural Centre; Wong Tai Sin Temple and The Peak Tram. (However, I
have had to promise Mick that I will never make him visit Madame Tussaud’s ever
again. Ever.)
The highlight (of exasperation) of the tour
for me was partaking of Chinese tea at the Lock Cha teahouse in Hong Kong Park.
(Be careful not to accidentally order the Fuyuanchang pu-er tea at $38,000!)
Dad and I caught each other’s eye and looked at mum as she took her first slurp
of Lapsang Souchong… “Ewwwww! This tea tastes like smoky bacon!!” And
apparently the moon cake is like a ‘chocolate pork pie.’ You can take the girl
out of Somerset.
We went on the Big Bus, The Star Ferry, we
visited Stanley, the Ladies Market, The Flower Market, The Jade Market, Nan
Lian Gardens, Repulse Bay, Lamma and mum and dad saw panda bears at Ocean Park
and the real Mickey Mouse for the first time in their lives.
I think they had the holiday of a lifetime
and I know dad will be recounting his adventures to everybody down at his golf
club.
Mick and I took the wheelchair back to the
Red Cross on Saturday but the office was closed. He had to stand on my back and
pass the wheelchair through the one-foot gap above the door because we didn’t
want to have to come back and the hospital refused to take responsibility for
it ‘til Monday. I dread to think what we would have looked like on the CCTV. “Managing
Director of global research company breaks into Red Cross office,” I can almost
see the headlines now. As we walked away, we were both thinking the same thing
- after pushing it around for two weeks, we would miss the wheelchair… and its
occupant!
