Mui Wo resident Jo Lodder has somehow found time to run across Hong Kong, commit to three charities, and throw Lantau’s best Block Parties. What was your Covid project?
Elizabeth Kerr Reports
PHOTOS BY Beatrix Malan – www.tmstudiohk.com
Jo Lodder’s got stories. His grandfather left him with some inspiring words years ago: “If you’ve died without a story you’ve failed.” The 52-year-old real-estate developer and runner is the picture of a bon vivant on this sweltering day, looking relaxed in his Central office.
Jo’s quick with a quip or anecdote from some random moment in his past as he explains how he and his chef wife, Novy, managed to become the centre of Wang Tong village society. In direct opposition to rest of us, Jo lost several trouser sizes during the first COVID wave. He once had a run-in with what some call an urban legend, Devil’s Breath. His first challenge after he took up running was the MacLehose Trail. He’s decided to create his own personal ESG mandate. Granddad’s mantra is, he says, something he lives his life by. Ya think?
LIVING TO THE MAX
If that description makes Jo sound like a flaky social butterfly that wasn’t the intention. But it’s hard to capture just how much Jo has decided to pile on his plate – while maintaining a positive attitude and a willingness to grab a pint. He mentions how “there isn’t a holiday Novy doesn’t want to celebrate,” and it’s made the couple the centre of attention in Lantau (mostly Mui Wo), around whom parties grow. Those and Jo’s social runs around the island, which he got into during COVID.
“I want other people to enjoy what I’m enjoying. That’s why I do the social runs with Lantau Base Camp,” he says. “And that’s the thing with runners and hikers. They’re all very positive. I like being around them. I like positivity in my life.” None of it is anything Jo set out to do, but he enjoys every minute of it.
The UK native packed up and moved to Hong Kong on a whim 18 years ago. Literally. After an injury put his 10-year career as a jockey at home and in France on ice, Jo relocated to Spain after selling a business he’d started. While chatting with a friend one day, she declared she was going to move to Hong Kong. “She didn’t have a timeline but I thought that sounded incredible,” Jo recalls. “Two weeks later I was in Hong Kong. She never came,” he finishes with a laugh.
Jo’s first Hong Kong gig was a bust, but he remained friends with the guy who hired him, and he’s now the proud founder of JNW Properties Asia, a property marketing and sales company specialising in holiday destinations like Koh Samui and Niseko. “I’ve had the most brilliant time of my life. It’s flown by like that,” Jo says. “I travelled all over, up until COVID, and these past years, I’ve spent more time with my kids than I ever did.”
COVID weight aside, most of us did some degree of soul searching in 2020, and on the cusp of 50, Jo was no different. He’d taken up hiking prior to that, and on a walk one day, his mind started wandering to the future, to how JNW would weather the storm, and how he would keep himself motivated.
“I was listening to this podcast about a woman who’d come across these homeless young twins. She tried to find a home for them, no one would take them, and just like that she decided to rent a house and start an orphanage that’s still open to this day,” he says, looking a tiny bit awestruck. “The point was, make a decision and act on it. As I was going up the hill I thought, ‘I need to do more for other people. Today.’”
HIKING FOR FREEDOM
So, he did. Jo’s first foray into community work was to help out Ark Eden (www.arkedenonlantau.org) in covering some of its costs when the pandemic was first wreaking havoc. One Thursday, he decided to do the Lantau Trail the following Saturday. He raised HK$26,000. His next effort took him mountain biking up Chi Ma Wan – in a hail storm – during which he crashed and broke his collarbone.
Then he came up with the idea for a four-day Hike for Freedom across Lantau. “I met a neighbour Catherine Cormack, a vet, and we were hiking together one day and I said, ‘Do you fancy doing the Four Trails for charity?’ She said OK, and we put it in the diary. That nearly killed me. I was so naïve.” Neither of them finished the 298-kilometre, 18,000-metre total elevation challenge, the equivalent of climbing Everest, Kilimanjaro and The Eiger, but they did raise HK$100,000 for STOP – Stop Trafficking of People (stophk.org) and Lantau-based animal rescue TAILS (www.tailslantau.org). Jo moves fast.
STOP and TAILS make up two of the three pillars in Jo’s philanthropic work, the former seed being planted years ago, when he and Novy met a woman, who’d been trafficked to Hong Kong from Indonesia, and he got an up-close look at the insidious and complicated nature of the crime, and how hard it is to get out of.
“It took nine months to get her home,” he explains. “She had no passport, the police wouldn’t arrest her, immigration wouldn’t do anything until she was arrested, and the embassy couldn’t do anything because they didn’t know who she was. It was insane. That’s where STOP comes in to help.”
An added challenge comes from a public perception that trafficking doesn’t happen to men (“It’s about 50/50”), or in Hong Kong. While getting treated for an injury on the Hike for Freedom Four Trails challenge, Jo recalls talking to some doctors: “I’m wearing a shirt with STOP on it, and they claimed it didn’t happen here. ‘We don’t have that here.’ Yeah. We do.”
STAYING ON
Jo wants to make it clear not everything he does pivots on human (or animal) misery, the Lantau Base Camp (LBC) hikes and runs being a prime example. Jo leads Tuesday and Thursday morning (5.15am or 6.15am) sunrise hikes, followed by HIT training with his Oddball MW Crew on the beach – plus free coffee or kombucha. Then there’s evening trail runs from the LBC (up to 8 kilometres).
“The LBC hikes are aimed at encouraging Lantauers to exercise, and see the island’s great outdoors,” he says, stressing it’s a great community that all are welcome to join, and arguing, “Who wants to do that kind of thing alone?”
For the immediate future, Jo will host a property sales event for his dog-friendly SnowDog project in Niseko, the first in two years, which is home to his third charity – the eco-focused NPO SnowDog (www.jnwasia.com/snowdog-nonprofit).
After that he and Novy will be vacationing in Indonesia and the UK for a couple of months. Jo’s going to keep training, because when he gets back in the autumn (yes, he’s coming back) he’ll again be looking to raise funds through running. He’s doing the TransLantau 100 in November in preparation for the Four Trails – again – in February 2023.
“That’s my next challenge,” he chuckles determinedly. “And I’m going to complete it this time.” No doubt.