November 2 2006 - Happy Valley Horse Races

Here I don’t post for weeks and now all of a sudden I’m posting twice in the same week! Well there’s no help for it; I went to the races last night….

I’ve never gone to watch horses racing anywhere, even though there are places in Texas near Austin where races are held. But here in Hong Kong it’s a big deal. There are two race tracks. One is in town, at Happy Valley. Races there are held every Wednesday during the season. The other track is out in the New Territories at Sha Tin. Races there are held on I think Sundays. That’s where the 2008 Equestrian Olympic events will be held.

We were invited to the American Club box, so this was the fancy side of horse-racing. Jan and Fred said they like it better when they are down where you can actually see the horses. For my first time though, this was pretty neat, since we had a panoramic view of the races. The way it worked was this. We got there around 6:30 PM, the first race started at 7:00 PM. There was lots of food and drink available, so we ate dinner and drank wine while watching the first couple of races. When the time came close for the first race, we looked at the racing forms and the odds for the various horses and placed our bets. Since this was my first time, and I didn’t really feel like losing a bunch of money, I kept it simple. Each time I chose one horse and placed a $20HK bet on the horse to place. Sometimes I chose one of the favorites; a few times I picked one that drew longer odds but would pay nicely if they did well. I didn’t do too badly. There were 8 races last night, and I managed to only lose $20HK over all. If I hadn’t bet on the last race I would have come out $5HK ahead for the night, but what fun would that have been?

Some people in our group were placing complex bets and spending quite a lot of money. There were some pretty wealthy people with us last night, but everyone was very friendly and I didn’t feel that odd discrepancy for a change. Honestly I think it was because they were REALLY wealthy so they felt no need to surreptitiously brag about their status. We sat at a table with Jan, Fred, Bob (Jan’s brother who is visiting from the UK), Jan’s friend Deidre and her husband, and their sil and daughter. They were all British, which was kind of fun. I just love their accents, and after a couple of hours I feel like I’m starting to talk with a British accent too! Ha.

Bob’s trousers were leaking dye and it was getting on his hands. I said “what’s wrong with your pants” and he started laughing at me because I called his “trousers” “pants”. “So”, he said, “What do you call your underwear?” “Well”, I said laughing, “PANTIES!!” I got the giggles and couldn’t stop. Sometimes I just love my own stupid jokes.

It was fun watching the horses sweep around the track. Sometimes I got quite excited and yelled for my horse to win, but nothing like Mizzou basketball! I had one horse, a long shot that if they had placed would have been a nice profit. They came in 4^th, one out of the money. OH WELL! Deidre had read her Chinese horoscope and her numbers were 1 and 6, so all night she bet on those horses. Half the time it seemed like she had the numbers reversed – if she bet 1, then 6 won; if she bet 6, then 1 won. I felt bad for her. It was like she got the message, but transposed it or something!