Wanchai H3, Setting the Trail

Fei Ngo Shan.

If you are ever in Hong Kong, make your way over to the East side of Kowloon and have a look at a few places. One of those is Devil's Peak, see the previous post. The other is Fei Ngo Shan.

Tonight, I had the opportunity to set the trail for the Wanchai Hash House Harriers. Lost in Space, the hareraiser for this run, had recruited me for this particular mission, imploring me to pick out a good trail, find a nice restaurant for the On On and make all of the above somewhat interesting. So I had a fantastic spot in mind. On the East side of HK Island, there is a great area call Chai Wan. It's quite suburban, many mountains and trails, graveyards which are quite interesting in HK, pretty much the perfect place to set a trail. Perfect in every way...

Except that we ran there the week before. Two weeks ago, when Haggis said that he was setting next week's run in Chai Wan, I had a moment of panic, followed by the necessary feeling of wanting to explore somewhere new. So I got on google maps. Pretty much every run needs to be adjacent to an MTR (subway) Station. I found a station with an abnormal amount of green around it: Choi Hung. Choi Hung?

I woke up at 7:15 on Sunday A.M. and left the house to set this running trail. I momentarily thought about watching the Nets/Sixers game on at 8:30, but luckily gave it up (although VC with 24 off the bench would've been fun to see). I got out there, threw down the trail all along the way, through fences, up hills, around corners, over rises, up rivers, everywhere that I had previously planned out. The trail here consists of flour, plus red and green chalk. The day before, I had nearly stepped on some kind of 6ft black snake and reluctantly continued on.

So on this night, my job was to give the runners a brief explanation of the trail and set them off the the right direction. Also, I had to organize satisfactory alcohol drinking for 30 of my closest friends in Hong Kong. Hence the reason for early arrival; I was dutifully assisted by Twin Peaks, and we managed to carry 6 slabs of beer up the (236) stairs to the start. (1 slab = 24 beers).

As the pack returned to the start, I was relieved to hear retorts of 'Good trail' and 'Nice Rambos' and 'Well Done'. I'd managed to get it done, set an interesting trail through some unexplored (by the WH3) parts of Hong Kong. After a fantastic circle with quite a few awards handed out to yours truly, Caligula knew of a nice place to get some food and drink.

We walked to the grub and had a great feast for relatively cheap too. It is pretty nice when your hash works out and people are generally satisfied with the evening. It's even better when I hear the random hasher say, "Good trail, I'd never really seen any of those trails before." Truly a phrase rarely uttered in this corner of China.

On on to the next well done trail.