Neiho peeps!
So not strictly a travel adventure but indulge with me just this once faithful readers, it’s for a good cause and potentially so exciting that you might want to travel or make sure you are in Hong Kong for the next one! A few months ago a very good friend of mine came up with the idea of a new race, a race that when you begin you have no idea of the final destination. Intriguing. He roped a few of us in to help and the mighty Dragon Dash was hatched….so I want to tell you a bit more about what it is, how it went, how much we raised for charideee and more importantly where it ended up…….
What is it?
Dragon Dash is a race that aims to provide its participants with an experience that they won’t expect; tons of fun, a prize for the best fancy dressed team, a party at the end, raising some money for charity along the way and the winning team's prize was a helicopter ride of Hong Kong for their whole team. Plus there are dragons involved, nuff said.
How did it work?
At 12 noon we kicked off. Teams met in central wearing their uber cool dragon dash t-shirts and logged onto our website from a smart phone at www.dragondash.org to be met with a set of 6 challenges. The challenges ranged from finding the tramp hidden in Glenealy and discovering what beer he was drinking (actually one of our Scottish organizer’s dressed up like a mangy Scottish vagabond), to discovering the riddle of Colin Firth’s erection in the Botanical Gardens oooeerrrrr to drinking a shot at Varga Lounge and trying to decipher the special ingredient. Once teams had got their sweat on (and believe me there was a lot of it!) and raced around Hong Kong fulfilling all challenges they then inputted all the answers into the website via their smart phone to reveal the final location which was……. Middle Bay.
Not a lot of people know Middle Bay which was why it was perfect as a final location. Dashers raced down to the South side of the island and descended down the steps onto the beach in pursuit of that elusive dragon…where could he be? Well, the sneaky thing had an added surprise in store for our dashers and had managed to swim out to the pontoon about 50 meters from the beach. The first team arrived and without hesitation took their kit of and swam out to claim the dragon head that was very rightfully theirs. Well Done Abi’s puff we definitely didn’t expect you to finish in just 55 minutes – absolutely outstanding effort, well deserved to you! Here they are claiming that elusive Dragon Head;
From this point onwards teams arrived swiftly all suspecting they might be the first to arrive only to have their desires dashed (see what I did there hehe) once they saw the other red shirts sitting around having a beer. Kudos must go to the other teams that also swam out to the pontoon to claim their rightful place as 2nd, 3rd and 4th place to officially complete the race. Thanks for being good sports.
Once completed dashers were rewarded for their efforts with a nice cold beer or ‘dragon dash’ cocktail and an awesome burger or pizza slices provided for by the excellent Bahuina Bar on Middle Bay Beach. The rest of the afternoon the happily slipped past us all in a haze of dragon dash stories, cooling off in the sparkling South China Sea and dancing to the awesome tunes being pumped out by our dj’s. Before I knew it, it was 7,30pm and I was exhausted, slightly sunburnt and more than a little merry – damn dragon dash lash! But what better to do on your day off I ask you?
Best bits
A personal highlight of mine came from a phone call from our team that bought tickets from us as we tried to sell tickets to drunken revelers in LKF. This team were called the 'dildo jalopies' which deserves a special mention in itself however once they found the final location they found it impossible to find. I had 3 phone calls begging me for the location including the promise of bribes…..but true to form the dildo jalopies didn’t disappoint they found Middle Beach in the end. On arrival I found out one member hadn’t had any sleep due to the partying efforts of LKF but then proceeded to ‘get back on it’ – true dragon dash spirit!
I also took part in one of the challenges, dashers were told to race up to the Hong Kong observatory tower (a tall tower so you marvel at our marvelous city, oh yes I like!) as a whole team and have their photo taken by me with a puppet dragon. Dashers were told that they funniest photo won a prize…..some of the poses dashes got themselves and my little Derrick the dragon into are too rude to mention, you naughty things, but there was one team that decided to simultaneously moon me which I definitely did not expect and took me quite by surprise. I haven’t seen so many naked bottoms since I went to ladyboy show in Bangkok! So thank you for that, your touches were all lovely. Here is one of my favourite pics from the tower......
Malky, who was our Scottish hobo also had a particularly interesting time during his post under the Glenealy intersection. Whilst waiting for the dashers to arrive probably looking fairly conspicuous two gay guys who had clearly been on a big wanchai night on and not yet seen their beds saw this lone ranger and decided to scope him out....I recieved a flurry of startled text messages from Malky on how to explain to this two amourous dudes why exactly he was dressed as a tramp sitting on his own and how he wouldnt be interested in 'what they had to offer'.....
Soundtrack
Special mention must go to our 3 dj’s Ed Bosher, Redman and Vishal at the final destination that kept us going for the afternoon right through until the evening and to Jen Gordon Smith who organised them all to be there - great work! Also 'Destination Unknown' was a perfect fit for the day; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6B0F6edMy8 which might remind those of you that were there of that beautiful sunny drunken afternoon on Middle Bay.
Tips
So a few tips to bear in mind for the next dash;
· If you are in it to win it choose your team wisely. The winning team won due to supreme organization and a ruthless tenacity to win. Organization and planning is the key here (note to one team who were still in bed at 12.15!)
· Make sure your fancy dress is not only awesome (well done dragon bashers your caveman/cavelady outfits were amazing see pic below) but also versatile enough to run around it…..too many accessories could hamper you enroute
· If you try and run round Hong Kong whilst carrying cans of beer you are likely to lose them – hip flasks were invented for this sort of thing. Oh yes sir.
When is the next one?
We are looking at April for the next dash….keep your eyes peeled on the website or the dragon dash facebook page for more info or email the dragon master at dragonmaster@dragondash.org
All in all the day went better than we could have hoped, so many things could have gone wrong (thank you ed for being a website genius) however I think we had luck on our side as even the weather changed from being slightly dreary to absolutely glorious. Big thanks to all involved, you all made it awesome. Plus we also managed to raise HK$ 21, 535 for the Hong Kong Children's Cancer Foudation in the process.
And so we begin planning the next one which you can be assured will be bigger and better…..where will the next dragon be hiding I wonder? Come along and find out.
Vxx
Looks awesome fun Vix!
ReplyDelete