| Bangkok docks December 18, 1955 . . .  On the M.V. "Heemskerk" - with Jan Hempenius and Captain Bonne - to say goodbye to Jurre Kuipers who is transferred to Hongkong. |
HONGKONG interludeDecember, 1955 |
 After we took Jurre to the boat to Hongkong, I got sick and spent some days in the Bangkok Nursing Home. The doctor prescribed a week rehab in a cool climate, and I was torn between choosing Chiengmai or Hongkong. Since our Manager strictly forbade me the latter, I immediately booked a flight, just to surprise Jurre. Indeed, he was baffled that I was the last one he saw in Bangkok and the first in Hongkong! |
This is the glorious view of Hongkong Harbor from the windows of the "Dutch Bank" Mess.
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I had gone to our Hongkong branch office, put on some dark sunglasses - even though I shivered of the cold - and asked the counter clerk to pass a note to Mr. Frank Goldberg, an old friend from Holland. The note told him to be very secretive, that I was here incognito and should be referred to as a Dutch Naval Officer passing through on his way from New Guinea back to Holland. Could I perhaps stay with them at the bankmess for a couple of days? |
Frank played right along with the charade and gracefully hosted me. Of course, if word ever got back to my manager in Bangkok that I was in Hongkong, I would have been fired on the spot. But nothing happened, except on the arrival of Wim Fleurbaai[bottom left] a few weeks into 1956. He had worked in Bangkok for six years, then gone on leave to Holland for six months, and now took up his new function here in Hongkong. Wim found a Thai matchbox marked "Club 85" in the bank mess and asked Frank who had left that. Frank claimed it had been lying there for years. "Yes", Wim agreed,"It must be very old, indeed, because that Club wasn't there anymore when I was in Bangkok." |
In fact, the Club had been opened a couple of weeks after Wim had left Bangkok ! (I told Wim so when I looked him up at the Mercantile Bank of Canada in Vancouver a few year later .... at that time, it did not matter anymore.) BLO fecit 200010307 Hongkong links |
