I can hardly fathom it, but yesterday marked a full decade of life in the Pearl of the Orient for yours truly. And you better believe I celebrated the occasion in true Paul style! In fact, I followed the precedent I set for my five year anniversary, hosting a brunch for some of my best friends at Hay Market at Sha Tin Racetrack. And what a day it was!
Thanks, guys, for coming out to celebrate with me!
I'm fresh off yet another visit to my firm's Bangkok office. And normally, I'd have extended it to include a free weekend in the Big Mango. But, as great as this mini-trip was, there was no way I wasn't heading back to Hong Kong to commemorate the big day!
Always a pleasure to go back to Bangkok
Still, I made the most of those three days. From breakfast at the Mandarin Oriental and dinner at the Blue Elephant, from great lunches with office friends to my favorite mango sticky rice... If it seems like my Bangkok interludes mostly revolve around food, then I guess I'm doing a fairly accurate job of summarizing the best parts of the trip.
Breakfast at the Mandarin Oriental
But the biggest highlight of all just might have been the venom extraction at the Snake Farm at the Queen Saovabha Memorial Institute, part of the Thai Red Cross Society. Only conducted on weekdays, the demonstration is something I've been keen to see since my first Saturday visit to the Snake Farm back in 2016. So I made a point to return during the week this time to finally witness the intriguing spectacle.
Queen Saovabha Memorial Institute
I snagged the best seat in the house, and stared in rapt amazement as a team of four—an expert announcer and three fearless handlers—extracted venom from five poisonous kraits, from behind a glass window in an auditorium that conjures up images of an old operating theater.
At long last, I got to witness the venom extraction demonstration!
Over the course of about twenty minutes, snake after deadly snake sank its fangs through paraffin wax, its venom dripping down the sides of a glass funnel, ultimately collecting in a small cup slightly larger than a shot glass. Scientists, we were told, then use this to create anti-venom, which is sent all over the country and can prove vital in saving the lives of those bit by such snakes in the wild.
The venom of five kraits
I really hope that my next visit to Bangkok is equally as sweet while not quite as short as this trip had to be. But not long after the extraction, I was in a taxi to Suvarnabhumi Airport to head home to Hong Kong, just on the cusp of my milestone anniversary a few days later.
Ten years is truly a long time, and, in many ways, it's tough to wrap my mind around it. I was twenty-two that day I stepped off the plane at Hong Kong International Airport back in 2009. I had a mere five months of post-college life under my belt. Now I am thirty-two, with thirty-three coming in a matter of weeks. And I've had a full ten years of work experience. But while I know I've grown and changed in many ways in the interim, there's still a big part of me that feels pretty much the same as I did on day one.
Yes, as I've observed often on the pages of this blog, my choice to move halfway around the world and build a new life for myself in Asia easily ranks up there with my best decisions. From all the international travel I've gotten to do, to the innumerable and eclectic collection of friends I've assembled from every corner of the globe, to the incredibly fulfilling professional opportunities that have come my way, I owe pretty much everything that's happened in the past ten years to Hong Kong.
So, to mark the occasion, I decided long ago that I wanted to do something extravagant. Come on, I've celebrated every anniversary from one to nine in some manner, so there was no way I wasn't taking this true watershed moment to the next level.
Beautiful (but relatively empty) day at Sha Tin
I was absolutely elated when I received my new season's racing calendar back on 1 September and realized that one of the few Saturday race meetings of the young season happened to coincide with the anniversary. As soon as the date was opened for booking, I snagged two of the best tables at Hay Market and slowly filled in the guest list, ultimately having a nice group of ten people to celebrate ten years!
Hay Market
We all gathered yesterday: Kevin, Hana, Julien, Jay, Dave, Ana, Liz, Omar, Sarah and myself. Mix in the free flow bubbles and all the good food, and I'm pretty sure you can guess how much fun it was. It was probably the thinnest crowd I've ever seen at Sha Tin, but inside Hay Market, the atmosphere was electric. And early on in the meal, I decided that, no matter his odds, I'd be placing a ten dollar bet on the tenth horse in the tenth race. Ten. Ten. Ten. As fate would have it, he even went off at ten to one, further strengthening my convictions. Ten. Ten. Ten. Ten.
Ten, ten, ten!
As post time drew near and we all made our way to the small terrace overlooking the track, I just had a feeling Lakeshore Eagle was going to deliver the goods. When the bell rang and the Thoroughbreds began circling the track, he took his position in the middle of the fourteen horse field, slowly edging his way forward as the race progressed. Sure enough, as they rounded the last turn, he went neck-and-neck against another horse and just managed to squeak out a victory. It was one of the most exciting races I've ever witnessed, and I was sure screaming my head off as they thundered across the finish line! I'll never forget it!
The payout!
Post-racing, we took the party back to Wan Chai on Hong Kong Island, where some of my friends who couldn't join us at the track even showed up! And the night just faded in a hazy blur of great people and good times. I couldn't have asked for a better anniversary!
I guess my blogging frequency has remained relatively constant over the past decade, because I've also realized that my tally now sits at an even two hundred, similar to my five year anniversary post marking my one hundredth entry! If you had told me back in 2009 that I'd still be faithfully uploading photos and stories from my life a decade in the future, I'd have probably called you crazy. But, as it happens, I haven't missed a month since December 2009! And I love having this log of my adventures to look back on.
And it wouldn't be an anniversary post without a description of my Halloween antics, which have featured in just about every one of them. Well, with all that's been happening on the streets of Hong Kong of late, plus the loving attention I put into embellishing my apartment with ghoulish enhancements each October and my pride in showing them off, it seemed fitting to invite friends over here for the big day.
Happy Halloween!
Calvados and salted caramel mini-cupcakes!
So, the tenth anniversary of my arrival in Hong Kong has come and gone. It was a day that I long anticipated and a day that will long linger in my memory, just like the one that is now so far in the past. As I posted on Facebook after the last race on Saturday, "much has changed in my life, in this city and in our world since that fateful day in 2009, but what hasn't changed is friendship's ability to add so much value to all life's adventures, big and small! Thanks, guys, for coming out to celebrate with me!"
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