Hong Kong

We landed in Hong Kong on Valentine’s Day. I’m sure most guy would have taken the holiday off, especially since we’d been flying all day and just landed in a new country. But as you know…I’m not most guys. My lady has put up with me in tiny hotel rooms for over 9 months and deserved a romantic dinner. On top of that, we were in the city where the famous movie In the Mood for Love was filmed. So, as soon as we landed, I scrambled to get an eSim so I could find a night-of V-day reservation somewhere in the city.

Maybe I am like most guys…

Our last eight stops on this trip had been massive Asian cities and part of us seriously considered skipping Hong Kong. How different could it really be from the rest?

As it turns out, pretty different. This was like no place we had been before and even after just a few hours we realized Hong Kong was going to be one of our favorites.

It’s a hazy and tropical with tall pastel buildings everywhere you look. There are almost twice as many skyscrapers here as in New York City. The city gives you a weird feeling of nostalgia even having never seen anything like it before. The weather was unbeatable as well. After months of layering up and wearing the same coat for weeks, the warmth, sunshine, and ability to wear shorts in February gave us a new energy.

The main reasons we decided not to skip Hong Kong was Chinese New Year. The celebration started the week we arrived, and no city does it bigger. The three parts to any HK CNY is the parade, firework show, and horse races.

Night 1 was the big parade. We started the evening shopping street vendors, trying to find some festive t-shirts and a couple of Tsingtao’s for myself. Once we haggled to the lowest price possible, we put on our shirts and took the metro downtown. The streets were shut down and full of dancers, floats, and the famous Chinese dragons. There was even a McDonalds float in the finale. Of course that made us hungry. So after the final float, we made our way to Temple Street for some spicy noodles, and a lime juice to end the night. It was awesome.

Night 2 was a different story.

We left our hotel with plenty of time before the fireworks show would start. We hopped off the metro and headed for the harbor to see the fireworks show through the famous skyline and reflecting off the water. However, the Hong Kong PD had other plans for us.

As we were heading down to the water, we ended up being barricaded in such a way that we were forced to go left, and keep going and keep going. We eventually realized we were not going to be able to make it to the harbor. We actually were going to have no say in where we ended up. People were packed in so tight we just had to move with everyone else. Finally, the crowd was told to stop and the fences were put up. They stopped us right behind one of the biggest buildings in the city, which stood in the way of our view of the entire show. A few minutes later the show began.

We heard hundreds of fireworks, we saw zero.

It was pretty demoralizing in all honesty. There was nothing we could do. By the time we realized what had happened, we were packed in with thousands of people, blocking our way out. We couldn’t even leave either unless we wanted to push our way through people for the next half mile.

The next morning, though, we had to shake it off. We decided we needed to get back to basics and find some good breakfast. I came across a quote online from China’s most famous food critic, who said, “If you don't come to Lan Fong Yuen, you've wasted your trip to Hong Kong.” Lan Fong Yuen is super famous for its ‘pantyhose tea’, instant noodles, and French toast. How could we miss that combo? We stumbled our way down into an old basement to find the place. It was cash only and a long line. There was yelling everywhere and a pressure to order as soon as possible. We got all three of the items above and haven’t stopped thinking about it to this day. We went the following morning and were really kicking ourselves for not trying it sooner.

Our plan to drown our fireworks sorrows with pantyhose tea ended up being just the trick.

The last thing on our list was to go see the Apple TV screensaver. If you have one, you probably know what I’m talking about. Its a drone shot flying over the Victoria Peak showing the insane amount of buildings of the city.

We hiked up the peak and got to see it in real life. Seeing the sheer volume of skyscrapers coming out of dense jungle trees is like nothing we’ve ever seen. It was the grand finale to our time in Hong Kong.

The fun isn’t over yet though, we are hopping on a boat and heading over 40 miles to the lesser known neighboring city of Macau.

Macau

To be honest, we didn’t know much about Macau. I remembered watching an Anthony Bourdain episode about it and thought it might be cool to see since we were so close by.

The city might be one of the most bizarre we’ve visited. Macau, if you don’t know, was owned by the Portuguese for over 440 years before China gained ownership back in 1999. (Copy and paste situation with Britain and Hong Kong) The cherry on top is it’s the only city in China where gambling is legal. So it’s basically the perfect mix of China, Portugal, and the Las Vegas Strip.

You have the Venetian, Wynn, and even the Parisian with the Eiffel Tower. The big difference here is inside the casinos. There’s only one game: Baccarat. The game with the least house edge a.k.a. the best chance for you to win, so it’s the local favorite.

Walking through the casino floors, it’s a thick fog of cigarette smoke and men yelling and crumpling up cards on the table. (This is supposedly good luck but it means a card deck only gets one life here.) It was kind of intense.

I wanted to give it a try so I looked up the rules on YouTube, naturally.  It seemed easy enough, pick one option, either ‘Player’ or ‘Banker’. I worked up the courage and sat down at the table.

The first hand was dealt. “Okay, I’ll pick Banker, the guy on YouTube said it statistically wins the most.” Crap, the Youtube guy was wrong. Rough start but I stick to the plan, it’s foolproof.

Second hand… I lose again. Dang it.

“Okay, it can’t hit Player three time in a row", I think. It can and it does. Another loss.

Just like that, I could feel the snickering at the table and my wife’s disappointment.

Time to buckle down. There’s some money left so I’m still alive.

Screw the Banker. He sucks. I’m picking Player now.

Boom. I win. And I’m back, baby…now play it cool. Player has now hit five times in a row. It has to be Banker now.

And Boom. Hit. Another one! I’ve never felt more alive.

The words of Meek Mill flash in my head: “Scared money don’t make no money.” Meek’s right, I’m upping my ante and putting it all on Player.

Another hit! What a rush. The Chinese men look up from their cigarettes and give me a tiny nod of approval.

New plan, I’ll repeat that exactly and put everything on the line again, I’ll win some serious coin, finger guns back to the Chinese men at the table, my wife will jump up with excitement, and I’ll cash out and walk out of here nonchalant like I do this all the time.

“Lock in dude!”, I tell myself. I just need Banker one more time…

My heart drops to my stomach like a rock. It’s Player.

I hear the whole casino snicker as I’ve lost all my money in less than three minutes.

Kaitlyn asks me if it’s all gone. I sadly nod yes, defeated. She does not jump with excitement. Let’s get out of here.

But in the distance, a man walks over to us. He’s seen the whole thing and apparently taken pity on me. Without saying a word, he hands me his gold membership card and points toward the members-only drink tent. He’s letting us get a drink and a snack with his perks.

We were so happy. We smiled and gave him our best “Xiè xiè.” He smiled and nodded. He saved our night and my ego.

Our last couple of days here we tried some great Portuguese food, some standouts being UTMA and Apomac.

On our last night we had heard there might be a fireworks show over the water in Macau. We checked with our hotel concierge who said they weren’t sure if that would actually be happening. Since this brought up such negative emotions from our last fireworks show we decided to just go to dinner and forget about it. However as we were wrapping up dinner, we heard some ‘pops’ going off in the distance. We looked at each other, paid quickly and started running towards a clear view of the water. As we were running we realized we were still far off from a decent view, but we didn’t want to give up this shot at redemption. Obviously getting a lot of weird looks as we were running aimlessly across the city in our dinner clothes. But we were on a mission. Minutes passed and I was getting confident the show would end by the time we got there, but we pressed on regardless. Finally 1.8 miles later, we made it!

The show was beautiful and in all honesty the mix of sprinting right after dinner, a previous mishap of fireworks, and it being our last night in the city, we got emotional watching the show together. The city must have known we needed it because they went on for another 30 minutes to give us a full show of fireworks and drones.

We couldn’t have dreamt up a better way to end our time here.

Next, we fly out to spend Kaitlyn’s birthday in Thailand.

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