Dragon boating - the sad way

The drums signalled the start of the race. The twelve neat and slim boats, full of serious players and the ones looking for the beer bong, started splashing across the water towards the narrow strip of coarse gold sand at Stanley Beach as the Cantonese commentary boomed across the humid air.
"What are they saying?" I yelled at one of the lobster-coloured men at the front of the deck.
"It's the semi-finals," he yelled back, waving his beer bottle. I realised we weren't really watching the boats, we were drinking in the company of alternately bronzed and raw red sunburnt Caucasian expats. The truth was, the dragon boats were too far away from the corporate junks lined up along the racecourse.

The junk I was on was red and dusty. There was a miniature Tin Hau shrine at the foot of the deck and incense was smoking at the front of the toilet. I dunked my hand into the icebox for another cold beer. My friends were standing outside in the glaring sunlight, in the 'VERY HOT WEATHER' warning, on the blazing hot wood flooring. I felt sick.
"Are we going to have something to eat?"
I asked one of them. He pointed towards the inside of the cabin. I looked but there were only leathery fragments of takeaway boxes left. It was mid-afternoon and I was stuck on a dusty boat with a Tin Hau shrine and red sunburnt men. I remembered other junk trips, pleasant ones involving a bit of sea breeze, chilled seafood and swimming, and I started to feel a headache coming on.
"Go on!" yelled someone from the junk tied next to us, although from that distance he couldn't possibly have been able to see any of the boats competing. "More speed! More speed!" He was drinking beer and had his arms around a brown-skinned sliver of a lady, wearing a skimpy bathing suit. I thought, "There's another hottie with a nottie," and decided life was depressing. I recalled the colourful stalls and people eating hot slices of pizza on the shore and felt I was missing out. The winning boats were being splashed with water - and I was standing on a junk surrounded by drunken expats.

As my friends talked about HSBC's accounts (good), living in Singapore (apparently not too bad) I drank my beer and longed for a cold salad and air-conditioning. I started having imaginary conversations with M. in my head, all the time nodding to random comments about working in London, rowing boats and what to do on weekends.

I came back home with a headache. I was feverish, I felt weak - I had taken a good beating from the mid-summer sun. The walls rocked around me as I fell into a deep sleep.