>>64477082
This. The best is the one that leads to Kowloon.
>I walked out into the night, across Salisbury Road, to the wide neon boulevard of Nathan Road, whose countless winding side streets and intertwining alleys were the places where all could be had for a price, be it sex or murder, a drink of rarest snake blood or a shot of purest dope, gambling or guns, gold or embroidery or jade, amulets to ward off demons or to court their favor.
>My friend, a gentleman more advanced in years and in dignity than myself, is a man of respect who has lived here all his life and knows its labyrinthine streets and alleys like the veins on the back of his hand. He takes me where I want to go, to restaurants where no English is spoken and where white men are not welcome, the restaurants where, in his presence and with his benison, I eat like an emperor, or at least like someone who knows what he’s doing.
>Later, amid the crowded stalls of the night market, we watch as an elderly man hands over a fortune in cash to another elderly man, a snake seller much esteemed for the rarity and richness of poison of his stock. The snake man pockets the money, narrows his eyes, and with a studied suddenness withdraws a long, writhing serpent from a cage of bamboo. Holding it high, his grasp directly below its inflated venom glands, its mouth open, its fangs extended, he slashes it with a razor-sharp knife from gullet to midsection, the movement of the blade in his hand following with precise rapidity the velocity of the creature’s powerful whiplashings, which send its gushing blood splattering wildly. Laying down the blade, the snake man reaches his blood-drenched hand with medical exactitude into the open serpent, withdraws its still-living bladder, drops it into the eager hands of his customer, who, with gore dripping from between his fingers onto his shirt, raises the pulsing bloody organ to his open mouth, gulps it down, and wipes and licks away the blood that runs down his chin.