Prophet and loss: In the hall of the White Dragon King

WHITE MISCHIEF: THE  DRAGON KING
 TRIES CRANIAL SCREW-TOP ENTRY 
IN RARE CELEB LOBOTOMY

It's amazing what a bit of self-belief and snappy patter can do for your prospects. Chau Yum-nam started out as a jobbing electrician in Pattaya before plugging in to a different power source which would see him become the unofficial prophet of Cantopop and the high priest of Hong Kong show business as the self-styled White Dragon King.

When Chau popped his white dragon clogs earlier this month, more than 5,000 fans and disciples gathered for the funeral. This who's who of Hong Kong showbiz royalty included businessman Albert Yeung, movie director Meng Yao, Cantopop king Andy Lau, movie stars  Shu Qi and Tony Leung Chiu Wai. Thailand's King Bhumibol even sent some 'holy mud' for the burial. 

The White Dragon King was still at the height of his powers when I visited his lair  seven years ago for a brief and deeply weird audience. 


Hours before dawn they begin to assemble. Buses and cars form an orderly queue, disgorging white-clad figures who drift about like ghosts in the gloom. As dawn's fingers clutch at the bruised sky, a spark of excitement jumps from vehicle to vehicle. A small, bent figure has emerged from behind the spike-topped red gates and silently passes from group to group, handing out numbers.

At exactly 6am, the gates will be thrown open and this pale cavalcade will proceed along a winding driveway, stopping in the shadows of an impressive Chinese temple topped by two huge, bejewelled dragons rampant. The true believers will be ushered into an anteroom, where they will trade the number assigned their vehicle for individual numbers for each of their group. They will shake incense sticks at grotesquely rendered deities and purchase amulets and charms. They will quaff coffee and greasy, fried cakes. Then they will sit patiently and wait for their allotted minute or two with Thailand's most eccentric sage, an illiterate former electrician who has a growing portion of Hong Kong in his thrall, including Cantonese pop and movie royalty. Enter, if you will, the lair of the White Dragon King.

I had stood before the same red gates two days earlier, oozing sweat under a violent Pattaya sun. 'I'm sorry,' said the voice that answered a telephone number emblazoned on a sign by the fence. 'The master doesn't give interviews.'

WHITE  TANG CLAN: THE GURU
WILL SEE YOU NOW

I pleaded, stammered and grovelled, explaining I'd driven all the way from Bangkok and my editor wouldn't take no for an answer. 'I'm sorry,' said the voice again. 'No interviews. Ever. But you can come back on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday and wait in line with everybody else. The master might decide to speak with you.' And you would be? 'I,' said the voice, 'am Mr Lo.'

And so it is that at 4.30am one Friday I find myself waiting with the rest of the devout in the White Dragon King's driveway, dressed in my least-stained white T-shirt, whey-faced from lack of sleep. The mysterious Mr Lo, I had learned, is no faceless lackey: he is the master's right-hand man and translator, the chap who decodes the Dragon King's pronouncements for his Cantonese, Putonghua and English-speaking supplicants.

Indeed, it was Lo whom the Dragon King sent to the fatal shores of Hong Kong during the height of the Sars scare to bestow a blessing on the 'camera-cranking ceremony' to mark the commencement of filming Infernal Affairs 2, the $40 million prequel to the smash hit starring Andy Lau Tak-wah and Tony Leung Chiu-wai. 'The master wanted to come, but he was worried about catching Sars,' revealed a spokesman from production company Media Asia at the time.

The White Dragon King had blessed the first instalment of the planned trilogy, and it went on to become the year's top-grosser, collected countless awards and is soon to be remade by Hollywood hunk Brad Pitt.

Now Everyone Can Lie ... grounded and pounded by AirHeinous

Final Call.... OK time to go. Except they already went.

Viva AirHeinous .... Air Asia has stooped to new lows: My colleague and company owner David Johnson and I, who fly these air pirates about once a week on average, missed out flight from Bali to Bandung just now because after delaying the flight for nearly an hour (a short history of time compared to the usual Air Asia delay) they went and took off while 'final call' was still showing on the screens.

We were sitting within eyesight of the gate and both of us can hear. Staff at Air Asia, in between sneers and giggles, told us our names had been called three times before the plane took off. An outright lie unless they called the flight at sub audible levels in some incomprehensible accent. And this at Denpasar, global aviation hub to one of the world's most famous resort islands.

I suppose we should count ourselves lucky that there was another flight at midnight - we only have a five hour delay rather than miss a crucial new business meeting tomorrow morning. This comes just weeks after Air Asia kept four high profile Hong Kong journos and the rest of the flight's passengers captive for almost 18 hours while feeding them an escalating farrago of twisted truths, fibs, porky pies and big fat lies.

The journalists eventually mutinied and went home, outraged at the treatment and in no mood to come on the press trip our agency, Delivering Asia Communications, had put together. Meaning a loss of ink to the value of over four million baht in terms of what was have been published.

Congratulations Air Asia. If this is how they treat the people who can pen nasty things about them, imagine how they treat the common man.

Let's lie with the world's best .... is that airline's nosecone growing longer?

Well, with sneers and lies and blank stares mostly.