We are once again on a plane, this time to China. Kunming, a new hotel for Holiday Inns was opening, and there was strong pressure for me to go as the Chef, but both Marg and I did not want to go for the full contract. So, as our hotel was quiet, it was decided that I should go to open the Hotel for two months, come back to Bali at the start of February for a large conference, and then go back to Kunming if needed. The trip to Kunming went OK, if you consider lugging 50 kg of excess luggage around no problem. A couple more days spent in Hong Kong for the Visa and then into Kunming. Cloud cover most of the way, a quick drop in altitude and a detour before we hit the mountains, it was probably just as well I had forgotten in what location the airport was placed! I had been here before just quickly when I did a trip with a friend of mine to the Stone Forest plus to a couple of other places in China while I was working at the Great Wall Sheraton, but it was for a matter of overnight.

The Hotel turned out to have been in the process of being built for eight years, we were there one month before the planned opening, and the Hotel was a shambles. It required at least another six months to try and get things finished, but the owners (which was the Government) still wanted the Hotel opened on January 1st! A crazy situation! We stayed in a local Hotel, no heating, carpets etc., portable heaters not allowed, floor supervisors opened your door for you each time, and only a Chinese Restaurant to eat in. On top of that, we worked in the basement of the new Hotel, only bare concrete floors, dust everywhere, cold as all hell, as we were 6,000 ft up and it snowed occasionally, and power cuts every Friday and Saturday to put up with. Nearly all our expatriate staff came down with bronchitis, pneumonia, flu’s and a host of other ailments plus hospital stays and it was just as well I was a New Zealander, as I only came down with a two-day cold at that stage! It cannot really be described at this stage the problems for the hotel, and if we thought it was going to get easier, we were wrong. Come opening day and we have two Restaurants open, 13 floors of unfinished Hotel, all our kitchen equipment is “live”, all our drains are blocked and nearly every tap, pipe, drain, ceiling, wall, light fitting and fire hose is leaking! My good friend Domenico was the F&B here and he is still a friend I keep in touch with, and we learnt which local place had a reasonable hamburger, another one had a spaghetti bolognaise and a third had some decent Chinese food, so we spaced about and learnt how to get at least one good meal a day before the hotel finally opened and we cooked for ourselves! It was here that the night before opening I had a great pain in my leg as I was running between three floors, from the kitchens to the restaurants and back. I had some Chinese treatment the next day but it did not help and finally the pain subsided enough for me to carry on. But the opening night of 36 hours straight, was a matter of working until the pain became too bad, stop and rest with the leg up for 30 minutes or so and then go again. So, I actually opened the Kunming Holiday Inn with what was later diagnosed as a stress fractured leg! Once back in Singapore, every time I played squash or went for a run the pain came back and finally I had a MRI that revealed I had indeed stress fractured my leg, so nothing else for it but to stop completely any exercise! It seems every time I played squash etc, the cracks came back so I just had to stop for about four months for the healing process.

In the meanwhile, the sprinklers were not turned on because of fear that the whole place would flood, and they weren’t wrong because when the first fire hose was tested it burst after a minute of use! We finally got the equipment working so it didn’t electrocute us, most of the leaks fixed, and a fairly good product served. We had the normal trouble with the local Chinese deputy side, and for once we were able to fire him! Luckily, he couldn’t cook and the Chairman of the company ended up eating in the western coffee shop most times! Anyway, we got things working pretty well and the leaving date of February 1st came and went, then I was leaving in the middle of February, then 1st March with Bali on the 3rd. Then came a quick trip to Singapore on my way back to Bali for a job interview, and finally I was back with Marg on March 5th. Marg had stayed in Bali for all this time, apart from a trip to Hong Kong, along with Seiko the parrot which I though might be good company for her, but apparently Seiko had second thoughts on that! It seems I coped okay with the trip expenses this time as even my credit card had some money left on it!

But I cannot leave this page without mentioning Sophie, my saviour in Kunming and a lady who I got tied up with and was the closest I came to leaving my marriage for. Marg and I were struggling at this stage and I was very tempted to stay in China and stay with Sophie.In the end I decided to head back to Bali and my life with Marg. I met Sophie also a couple of years later in Hainan Island after Marg died, and she always stated that she did not want to be the second wife, the omens were not very good for that scenario according to the Chinese Zodiac! We were together in Kunming eating fried chicken feet at night, being given bad remarks by local Chinese because she was out walking with me and keeping me company once the hotel opened up a bit. We danced in the nightclub, ate in the local Chinese shops and generally had some she was excellent company to help with what turned out to be the hell hole of Kunming in those days. We first met at the night club there and I was open to a loving relationship that Sophie gave, even though there was a bit of a language barrier between us. Once back in Singapore we kept in touch and then Marg intercepted some phone calls and so it came to an end for that part. But later I went to Hainan Island and met her there and we had a great couple of weeks together, so some photos are here from there. It did not proceed further and I always have a soft spot for Sophie, wondering if we could have ever made a try of it together.