The “Maitre’d” Visits The Peninsula

By David Wood

From first learning of foreign lands and the possibilities to perhaps one day visit them, I yearned to visit Hong Kong, especially The Peninsula –which was said to be the finest hotel in the world. Upon meeting someone who had visited The Peninsula, I’d corner them and insist they tell me every glorious detail. What was the lobby like? The rooms? Did you eat there as well? I’m sure I scared them a bit with my interrogation like a murder detective trying to get to the bottom of a homicide.

The Peninsula first entered my consciousness in a newspaper travel article. I was a fifteen-year-old teenager working after school in a hotel coffee shop. As a host and cashier, I killed time before the dinner crowd arrived by reading every word in the newspaper in the quiet afternoons. Though technically a host, I preferred to call myself the maitre’d, but that was stretching it. You can’t call yourself a true maitre’d when you have “Pigs in a Blanket” on the menu.

That travel article on Hong Kong captivated me as it told the story of the fabled hotel with its luxurious amenities, lavish suites for “Heads of State,” and fleet of chauffered Rolls Royces’ to drive their clientele about. The rooms were said to be decorated daily with fresh-cut flowers costing the hotel thousands a day in florist bills. All the coinage the hotel gathered in transactions was said to be hand-washed before put back into circulation. Wow, they even wash the money!

To a naive fifteen-year-old in Rochester, Minnesota it sounded like the grandest spot in the world. To top it off, I knew from my love of James Bond novels that author Ian Fleming had had James Bond visit The Peninsula in one his thrillers. If James Bond himself had stayed there that clinched it for me! I had to visit it someday.

My dream was finally realized midway during a yearlong around-the-world trip as I traveled to mysterious Hong Kong en route to China’s mainland. My second day there, I went off in search of The Peninsula. The hotel resides across Victoria Bay from Hong Kong Island on Kowloon – a neck of land that juts out from the Chinese mainland and teems like an ant colony. Neighborhoods in Kowloon are among the densest population bases on earth. The nearby Mong Kok district has 100,000 people per square mile! And you think your neighborhood seems crowded.

After crossing the harbor on the workhorse Star Ferry, I found the Hotel Peninsula (quite accurately named) standing regally not far from the bay with a splendid view of the long span of highrises of Hong Kong Island across the swarming waterway. It’s funny, but I was nervous to actually enter the hotel. I didn’t want my dream to be a disappointment. Traveling light with a limited wardrobe, I had gussied up by putting on my one nice black sweater, which was saved for social occasions. My travel-worn khaki cargo pants were cleaned and pressed. While hardly a fashion-plate, it was the best I could do. Taking a final deep breath, I walked in like I owned the place as the doorman tipped his red top hat while opening the door for me.

A friend of mine from Hong Kong had told me that having “High Tea” in the ornate lobby is what one does when one visits The Peninsula. But that wasn’t how I had seen it in my teenage dreams. I had envisioned myself in a white tuxedo with a beautiful woman at my side. While she may have worked for the enemy, she couldn’t resist my worldly charms. This dream was too personal to share with a lobby full of tea sippers. I found the ideal spot: a cozy second-floor piano bar with a just enough lighting, mahogany wood-paneling, and old-time jazz playing softly in the background. It was perfect.

Having the place to myself, I ordered a Perrier. In my teenage dreams it was always a “martini – shaken, not stirred” à la Bond, but liquor and I had parted ways a few years back. I just sat there happy as could be, sipping my twenty-dollar mineral water (being number one in the world doesn’t come cheap!). I thought on about how long I had held onto this vision and how grateful I was to have acted on it.

Alas, I didn’t have a beautiful woman at my side as in my fantasy. However, I think that was probably for the best, because in my dream, while the woman was quite alluring and fetching, oddly enough, she snored like a truck-driver.