Matt Fleming goes in search of K-Chai on the streets of HK - and has some psychedelic, eye-opening stories to tell.

Standing over a precipice while gazing down into a swirling wormhole of psychedelic lights exploding with pulsating colours might not be everyone’s idea of a fun Friday night out. But we’ve delved into the seedy underworld of ketamine use in Hong Kong, allowing the deadening horse tranquiliser to put us in the saddle for a few lightheaded hours.

Our journey begins in Central where, after a little Dutch courage, we start asking for K-chai on the streets. Dressed in suits, we look more like undertakers than drug takers, so our over-zealous mission soon becomes uncouth. We’ve heard you can get a decent wrap or two from some dodgy LKF characters – but not on this Friday night, dressed like Armani adverts.

So we cross the harbour and head for Chungking Mansions. They won’t judge our attire. They’ll be too high. The thought of arrest briefly swims around our heads – along with the fear of being taken, literally, for a ride down a dark alley – as we mix unconvincingly with people of all ages, creeds and intoxication levels. We had wanted to be reporters looking to do some real, in-your-face journalism, but we feel like a couple of clowns who’ve just arrived at a séance.

However, scoring drugs turns out to be easy. We watch pedestrians who’ve clearly already had their first K bumps of the night (mental note: profusely runny noses and a tendency to walk at right angles to the pavement are dead giveaways). We approach a couple of ‘zombies’, mid-giggle; they point out the place to go. We smile and shuffle forward like stage-school understudies.

Point of interest: cocaine is awash in TST. Everyone’s touting it. Then it’s hashish. We’re even offered crack. But it isn’t long before we chance upon a guy who offers $500 for a K wrap. We haggle, despite our thumping heartbeats, and it works – we score a ‘g’ for $300 (still well overpriced but beggars and all that…) from a cackling old woman in a sari before making double quick tracks. Things are getting too surreal and we haven’t had a toot yet.

The contents of our wrap are, unsurprisingly, dubious at best. There are flecks of scraped paint alongside the white crystals, and we think there’s enough corn starch in there to make a good alfredo sauce. But we snort it anyway in uber-fat lines and then it’s on to a club.

After a few minutes there it is, the swirling precipice, that K-hole gaping through the floor. Time slows. We’re pretty sure we’re on the moon. A punch in the face would feel like a playful tickle at this point. But we don’t slip inside the hole. It’s there… and then gone. Disappointed, we clear our hazy minds and head for home, still giggling, still lightheaded. We reckon the rat poison, the washing powder and the paint flecks had countered the work of the real K. And maybe, just maybe, we’re relieved.

So that’s that. K is easy to get in HK. And it works – even if we didn’t actually climb inside the psychedelic hole. But we felt spiritual at times, we laughed, we floated and we ended up with runny noses. Don’t get us wrong. We’re not telling you to head out this Friday and fill your nosebags with the silver stuff. But we’re also not attacking drug use. They’re illegal (worth remembering) but can open a few amusing doors in the mind. We guess adventurous types can use them but not abuse them. In any case, we’ve now experienced Special K and, well, it was just about O-K.

Matt Fleming