Hong Kong!

Happy Birthday to me.
I don’t know exactly when it started, but I have for some years now been maintaining the tradition of getting the hell out of whatever city I live in for my birthday. Some of these trips have been boring, others have been great. This year, I decided to travel to Hong Kong. The whole day by trip will have to wait for other posts, but I think I can drop a few lines about my birthday.
Hong Kong is fucking great. Imagine Manhattan in the tropics and you are about their. I’ll lay out my bias immediately and say that one of the reasons I might have liked it so much was because of certain behavioral contrasts from mainland China. People in Hong Kong act very different, and frankly, better. People here are civilized, something the Chinese simply aren’t.

A lantern I would later go mad trying to get a good shot of.

But let’s put that aside.
The birthday proper actually began te night before, when I drank some cheap vodka with some randos at the hostel I was staying at. I told them I wanted to be out for a drink when midnight hit, and we had to dash for a bar when the hour got close. I did the requisite shot of whisky and sent it down with a pint of Guiness. As I was getting ready to leave, I saw a roach so large that were it any bigger it would have starred in a Cronenberg movie.
I woke up super early, said ‘fuck it’ rolled over and slept in. I woke up at almost 9! I got up, got dressed, and took a walk to a computer mall. Three floors of tiny shops crammed floor to ceiling with gadgets. This is how I nerd. I wasn’t really looking for anything, but it was nice to window shop for a bit. I then headed to downtown proper and got pretty horribly lost for a bit. Once I found where I was I was in the vicinity of the Hong History Museum, which lead to some pretty good photo opportunities. Not to spoil things for a later photo dump, but here are some highlights. The museum covered the history of Hong Kong, from pre-history to reintegration with mainland China.
The museum was free on my birthday (who told them) and filled with Chinese tourist. This was not much of a problem, until we got to the part of the museum that discussed the opium wars. I sat down for a short movie that seemed to be very pro-British in nature. Every voice actor doing a Chinese person sounded either sinister or incompetent. I guess Beijing’s power out this way is still pretty limited. We can hope.

A dragony thing.

Stuff I got out of the museum feeling very recharged. I got on the metro and went to another part of the city hoping to get to another museum. My timing was off, however, and by the time I got there the last tour had gone. I made an appointment for later. Then, I went off back to the hostel.

There I met a Swede who wasn’t doing anything in particular. We chatted for a bit, then went out for some traditional Hong Kongese food. He had been on an extended holiday throughout south-east asia, and was generally an interesting person to spend an evening with. Later we made a quick stop back to the hostel to see if we could convince some other people to come out, but unfortunately we could not. I was going to let that get me down, so me and the Swede went out on our own and ended up at a live music bar that was far too loud, but had nice music. Had another few drinks there, listened to the music, and took some more photos.

Bassist playing music at the bar