Party at the Aberdeen Marina Club

At the end of Jan Hannah was invited to the birthday party of her classmate Daniel.  It was held at the swanky Aberdeen Marina Club .

Aberdeen Marina Club (left) and Jumbo Restaurant (center)

The Marina Club is located in Aberdeen harbor near the 'Jumbo' floating restaurant.  It provides a first-class selection of sports and beauty facilities, pools, saunas, restaurants and bars, etc.    So members can relax after a hard days cruising in their gin-palaces around the outlying islands.

The AMC was founded in 1894 through the generosity of the HK tycoons as a charity to provide comfort for impoverished local fishermen....

Aberdeen harbour in 1960s?

As the fishing population declined,  the Marina club gradually gentrified, rather like England's famous public schools, so it now services a much higher-class of mariner.   (link, photo source)

Aberdeen Marina Club in the 1940s

The AMC boasts probably the largest and best play-room in Hong Kong.  There are 3 party rooms where members (or member's friends) can host birthday parties.

Some pretty cool slides...

Hannah had a great time playing with her friends.  And Rika and I enjoyed catching up with the other parents.

Hannah enjoying the slides

The hosts were both very interesting and charming.    And I was secretly rather relieved that they weren't actually members of the Marina Club - they had booked the party-room through a friend.

Party Room

Video:  Happy Birthday dear Daniel!

We'd been to a birthday party at the AMC in 2012.   Rika had sworn never to return after were caught in the black-hole of the AMC taxi queue.   The club runs 2 queues - one for members and one for commoners (guests, aunties etc..).    The member's queue gets priority, so if there few taxis and a few more members, it is quite possible for guests to spend 40min or more waiting in the commoners queue with the aunties.  

Nothing fuels Rika's class envy like repeatedly waiting 5min for a single taxi to appear, and then watching the staff assign it to some club member who has just appeared out of nowhere, leaving the commoners queue no further advanced.  So this time I took the precaution of installing a taxi-hailing app on my IPhone as a contingency plan.  In the end we didn't need it as the parents of one of Hannah's classmates very kindly gave us a lift.   

Aunties waiting on their young masters at the Marina Club.