You know you're somewhere fancy when...

So, first off, apologies for the unforgivable and excessively prolonged absence. Apparently, reality got the better of me, and for a short while I was hurled into the abyss that is five hour revision sessions, parent society Burns nights, and, horror among horrors, not finding chocolate cereal in the canteen. I can now say however, that it is all over....for now. Currently I'm enjoying the summer, and discovering that speaking French isn't all that great an asset when trying to get a job in Hong Kong, who knew? So I'm teaching myself Japanese. Because why pick the right country's language when you have so many hundreds more to choose from?

The weather in Hong Kong at the moment, for those of you who are curious, is rainy. Yeah, you'd think that moving 6,600 miles to a country widely considered to fall into the 'tropical' category would guarantee a break from certain precipitations. Apparently not. Owing to this, I discovered flip flops are designed to double up as Extreme Sports kit when applied to wet pavement with pressure. But hey, I'm taking the good with the bad, and plan on signing up for the next high speed skating world cup.

Honestly actually, thanks to the vast, sparse, soul destroying sahara that is my search for jobs, I've not been doing a great deal. Started reading Camilla Lackberg's 'The Ice Princess', which is great, but hard to really get into when you're on an island in the South China Sea, and there is a distinct lack of arctic wasteland. So I moved on to Leo Tolstoy's 'Anna Karenina', set in nineteenth century Russia. You know, because I'm logical like that. I watched 'The Amazing Spiderman', which was great, I experimented with making smoothies...

At this point you're probably wondering, if I've done so very little, why on Earth am I bothering to sit down and blog about it?  Because I had done all but nothing, until last night.

Last night we visited the Asian Nirvana, nay, Olympus, nay, the Valhalla, that is Hutong Restaurant. Seriously, you know you're somewhere fancy when washing your hands is an artistic experience. I mean it! I am easily pleased, but in this case I could have been a dinosaur confronted with an artistic representation of a meteorite and I'd have been bowled over. I mean - this sink for example! The tap was a sort of bamboo tube coming from the bottom of a hanging basket. It took me about five minutes to figure out this gorgeous water feature was actually a tap. When I did I experimented for another five.

However, even this gorgeous little novelty could not keep me away from the main restaurant for long, and we'd not even ordered yet. Because apart from the interactive, sculptural vision that is the bathroom, one of Hutong's best features is the floor to ceiling, wrap around wall of windows, opening onto what is quite probably the best view in Hong Kong. Truly, it's enthralling to the point of being obsessively beautiful, you just can't take your eyes away. Before you, a black satin carpet ripples with silver and burns with the lights of the city above. Ships and ferries make their graceful way from one side of the harbor to the other. The buildings themselves bring to mind a 21st century vision of the Tower of Babel.

It's so easy, on visiting Hong Kong, to come away with the negatives. To come away with the pollution, and the crowding, and the excess and the ludicrous living conditions bestowed on the vast majority. But it truly is a beautiful place, and a very very human one. Hutong presented Hong Kong's best face on a silver platter, and it was as entrancing as it was impressive.

As for the food, it stood up to the view, which is a tall order. And it made my brother, affectionately nicknamed the Human Hoover, pause and allow his tastebuds to share in the experience normally sent straight to his gullet. Myself, I was lost for words.

I think that says it all really.

Till next time, all the best.