Our hotel is at the less fashionable end of Nathan Rd, the 'Golden Mile' is more the cut price clothes, pirated paperbacks, Chinese medicines and assorted naffness mile and a bit by the time you reach Booth Lodge. It's still just at the respectable end and the Sally Ann even has (discreetly, on the next block) a charity shop. A charity shop, in a city where people don't even throw away the head and feet when cooking chicken, is an oddity. I didn't go in because I thought it would make me homesick.
At least two other non-profit making organisations have their own hotels. The YMCA is the posh one. It shares a block with two other hotels in prime position on the sea front. Next to it is the Penininsula which is posher than posh. If you aren't sure whether you can afford to stay there, don't bother - you can't. Beyond that and more down market is the Sheraton. We couldn't even afford the YMCA.
About half way to Booth Lodge is B-P International House, a great chrome and glass palace owned by the Boy Scouts, strictly speaking the "Baden-Powell Boy Scouts". An atrium the size of a football pitch is dominated at one end by a 10ft high portrait of B-P gazing benignly across the lobby to a life size bronze sculpture depicting an adult scout leading two small children by the hand. The scale and decor seem so out of keeping with the idea of scouting as to make the whole thing seem ridiculous.
The Baden-Powell Boy Scouts is not the same as the Boy Scout Association. There was a dividing of the way in the scout fraternity over woggles or the words of the last verse of "She'll be coming round the mountain" or something similar leading to rancour and misuse of the scouts' two fingered salute.
The Salvation Army on the other hand is cosy, you even get breakfast. The favourite with Chinese guests seems to be vermicelli type pasta with a slice of pork luncheon meat on top and some lettuce. I couldn't take it first thing in the morning but at least it's a step up from one traditional Chinese breakfast: gruel made from fish heads. As I say, they don't waste much here.
