Biggest Sport in Hong Kong

The track

Box Seats

the track from above

us getting there

Horse Racing! The British tradition of horse racing left it's mark as one of the most important entertainment and gambling institutions in Hong Kong. Last night Davis and I experience not only our first horse race ever, but our first time gambling. There is quite a funny story behind our betting as always! Somehow we always manage to have a story. We arrive at the track after an extremely long taxi ride because of traffic and we find the betting cards (going good so far). We figure out how the card works but we have no idea which number to bet on because we don't know anything about any of the horses. So we ask and we get the sheet that has the horses names and win statistics. Being the mathematically genuises that we are, we bet on the horse with the best name and semi-lucky number, so we bid the Ming's Hero (horse's name), number 3 was going to win RACE 7! The RACE 7 is the important factor in our great story! We know that there are 8 races and that we showed up right after race 1 took place, so Davis chooses race 7 to gamble. Sounds good, we have everything filled out and we turn in our card.

Right after we turn in our card, we watch Race 2......after race 2 is completed we notice Race 3 isn't going to start for another 30 MINUTES! That means RACE 7, OUR RACE, is 2 HOURS AWAY and we havn't eaten dinner. BAD MISTAKE! We decide that we will watch Race 3, leave, grab dinner, and return to watch our race because after race 5 begins it is free admission. Great plan! We leave the track thinking we know which way we are going because we have the restaurant picked out already (Modern Toilet, a story for a later time). We can't tell by the map if we are going the right way because the map doesn't cover the entire track so we ask. He points us the direction we were going, we walk about 2 blocks and it doesn't seem quite right so we ask again, she points us in the same direction, still not quite right so 1 block later we ask again. This couple tells us we are going the wrong direction and the restuarant is too far of a walk from where we are so.......we decide we cannot make it to eat and back to the track to see our race so we head back to the track. We get to the track and Race 5 hasn't started so we can't get back in without paying so we wait outside of the track for 30 mins.

We did manage to get in for free after Race 5 started, but this meant that we still had an hour before our race, RACE #7! It eventually rolled around and Ming's Hero came in a solid 5th place. We were proud! We didn't win and we didn't eat because it was 10:30 and we were pooped! So to the hotel and bed we went!

All in all a great experience. We know now to bet for the next race, not the next to last one!

Speaking of Horse racing being the biggest sport here, it is very similar to Football games in the states. Everyone gets dressed up to go drink beer and gamble their life away! It was crazy how similar the 2 events were although they were very different sports! There were a lot of Americans or English speaking people there!

to show how tiny the jockeys are, they weigh around 120lbs

Ming's Hero, our horse

stats sheet

a race shot, I couldn't figure out a good mode for action pictures, sorry

these guys patched the holes in between every race