11/21-11/29 2025 Hong Kong!

 Pre-trip Prep

 I had started a very restrictive diet (the candida diet) for my eczema almost two months before the trip and have been seeing decent progress with my eczema. The categories of food to avoid is all sugars, simple carbs, inflammatory foods, and fungal. Basically, what I've been limiting myself to eating is brown rice, meat, veggies, and nuts. Thankfully, I'm not a very big enjoyer of food so missing out on things wasn't devastating to me at all. However, I do value convenience quite a bit, so I anticipated this aspect would be the most difficult for me on the trip. As such, I came up with a plan to minimize diet cheating: stuffing my luggage with 12 pre-cooked brown rice packages, 12 cans of sardines, 5 packets of organic vegan protein powder, 20 organic beef sticks, and a variety of nuts! This caused my check-in luggage to total to 42 lbs. The goal is to try to avoid the worst foods and supplement with the foods I brought. In the beginning, I did a good job of avoiding but not supplementing, so I ended up finding myself hungry at nights/right after I wake up. This led me to let myself go a lot more towards the end of the trip. 

Part of the diet also required me to take 5 different supplements at every meal, so I was carrying 5 bottles of pills around. In hindsight, I really should've put them in smaller plastic bags for space efficiency, but I had not thought that far in advance.

 

 11/21 Hawaii Time -11/23 Hong Kong Time Travel Day

I was travelling with college friends from the California Bay Area, so I decided to go to SFO first before flying to HKG together. In hindsight, 50/50 on if this was the right move or not. I saved on having to spend an extra night in HKG but had to fly extra. I'm usually pretty good with flying, so I went for the flying option. I thought this would give me the perfect opportunity to catch up on a bunch of movies, shows, and books I had been wanting to get to. It turned out the flight there felt bad, but coming back I was pretty good. 

My flight took off Friday 11/21 11:30 PM to land Saturday 11/22 6:30 AM local time. Unfortunately, I only got 2.5 hours of solid sleep. When I got to the airport, I got some plain rolled oats, green juice (very good for feeding my probiotics!), beef sticks, and nuts for breakfast and took a 30 minute nap. Pretty productive if I say so myself!

I then went off to go greet my friends with a VIP greeting as they came out of TSA with an awesome custom-made sign. Our friend group formed in a Civil Engineering Hydrology class, hence the hydrologists sign.

 

Afterwards, they got some airport food, while I munched on my microwavable brown rice (though I did not microwave it) and sardines, and then we were off for our 15 hour flight!

 

After having slept only around 3 hours total, I thought I'd be dead tired and be able to just pass out for the beginning of the flight. But for some reason, I was wide awake. I ended up binging the 5 remaining episodes of Andor season 2 I hadn't watched back to back. What a wonderful show! A very engaging plot that allowed for complex, morally gray characters to be explored in depth. The rest of the time I spent watching the Marvel movie Thunderbolts, intermittent napping, reading, and chatting with the random guy next to me. He was very friendly! He saw that I was scratching a lot with my eczema, so gave me a bunch of tips he used to get better. Despite all that, the flight got rough with the 15 hours because I developed a sore lower back and was cold. 

 

At 7:20 PM, we finally landed. I was able to bust out my Cantonese skills to buy Octopus cards, which they use for public transportations and paying for most things at shops as well. After a ~1 hour commute, we made it to our hotel (which was very small and compact (not complaining but an interesting observation)), and then we were off to explore and eat a small dinner! My young-at-heart friends didn't want to sleep that quickly despite my old-at-heart protests, so we walked to a more busy and lively part of the neighborhood to explore. Our first ever meal there: Mcdonald's! My friends had Ovaltine ice cream and a peach drink (I could not eat except small bites to try because of my diet). On the way back, however, I picked up some microwaveable chicken breast. I think I was hungry because I thought that was one of the most delicious chicken I've ever had.

 

 Day 1 (Monday 11/24): Victoria Peak + Shopping

 WOOHOOO it's the very first day of the trip! I got my day started with my own breakfast of protein shake, beef sticks, and nuts. The hotel gave us a free glass jar for us to use during our trip, so that was rather convenient. Unfortunately, the neck of the bottle was tiny, so I made a comically huge mess trying to pour the powder in. Fear not though, I learned my lesson and made future protein shakes in the bathroom sink and got better at pouring it in, though not good enough for completely no spillage :(.

Our first stop was breakfast at the Australia Dairy Company. Their specialty: scrambled eggs, macaroni soup, ham, and milk tea. With my diet, I ordered a warm almond milk and then leeched off my friends. I ended up drinking 1.5 bowls of the chicken noodle soup they didn't want. Both were very good!

 Next was onto our first tourist destination of the day: Victoria Peak, which is just a tallish mountain overlooking the city. We had to travel to the financial part of town, and I was stunned by the futuristic looking skyscrapers they had there. Having just finished Andor on the plane, it really reminded me of Coruscant (a mega city in Star Wars with a dense amount of tall futuristic buildings). 

The ride up to the top was by tram. It was a crazy steep ride though. It honestly felt we were slanted more than 45 degrees climbing up at some points. I had suggested hiking up there when we were planning but good thing we never went for it; the hike was just stairs zig zagging straight up. 

The top was pretty nice. Random restaurants and shops for tourists with a Disney themed building. Of course, a nice view of the city as well. There was a walk around the peak, but we only made it as far as where the shade stopped.

 

Next was time for Dim Sum! It tasted pretty good. Better than the ones in Hawaii, but in my opinion as a food non-enthusiast, only a bit better because the taste didn't especially pop out to me.

 I only had a little bit because of my diet, so we wandered over to a vegetarian restaurant nearby (Priyanka is vegeterian) to supplement our food. It was called Veggie 4 Love, and based on this name (bad grammar and the use of "4"), I thought this would be a small lower end restaurant (lower end is not used degradingly here. Many have good food for cheap, which I love a lot). But surprisingly it was higher end and located on one of the floors of a tower with a fancy interior. It had a SF theme as well with a bunch of items from SF decorating the place (maps, license plates, etc.). I really enjoyed looking at all the little tidbits they had laying around. Unfortunately, being high end, it set a minimum price limit per person in the party, but only two out of the four of us were going to eat. So I chugged all the free water they gave me, and we hightailed to a 7-Eleven for some more microwaveable chicken. I tried the chicken leg this time. It was not the move. Very messy to eat since I had to grab the saucy bone while chewing the meat. The chicken breast I had the day before was very clean to eat since I could bite on it while leaving it in the bag.

 After that was a whole afternoon of shopping. We mainly spent our time at Uniqlo and Muji. I bought a Muji pen and the ink refills. I enjoyed the time walking around malls and whatnot, but as you can tell, I am not an avid shopper at all.

 Last for the night was a light show. But we were very tired, so we dropped our stuff back at the hotel and took a short nap before heading out to dinner. We had an Indian restaurant planned, but it was quite elusive; we went down alleyways and into buildings around the Google Maps pin, but couldn't find it. We ended up giving up because the light show was about to begin. 

Or so we thought. ChatGPT planned our itinerary, and it gave us a start time that was 30 minutes earlier. It was a good time to do some stretches and look up an alternative dinner spot though. The lightshow itself was at the harbor with lots of tall lit up buildings on the other side of the bay. The spot played some music and the lights on the building would move in patterns and or make shapes. It lasted a total of 10 minutes. Not going to lie: not worth the wait. Music was nice but the patterns were not very exciting at all.

We ended the night with a late dinner at 9PM and then off to sleep. 

 

Day 2 (Tuesday 11/25): Exploring the City

 We got our day started at another breakfast place with pineapple bun and more milk tea. I discovered that they only call it pineapple bun because the bread is bumpy and looks like a pineapple. The special thing here is that they put a slab of cold butter into a warm bread. I had a bite and the butter was great! 

Afterwards, it was time for something I had been very much looking forward to. HAGGLING! At street vendors. To clarify on my excitement: I'm not looking to exert maximum leverage with verbal shouting to scam the seller. I took a negotiation class in my final year of Stanford that completely reframed my perspective on negotiation. It's simply a conversation between two parties to determine if their goals/incentives are aligned enough to work together. So it's an opportunity to collaborate for the better good of all parties! Unfortunately, things get rather complicated in reality due to evil motives, wrong assumptions, emotions, etc. Having a normalized culture of haggling at the street vendors is exciting to me because it allows me to have a say in the negotiation. In normal stores, if the price of an item didn't line up with my interests (it wasn't worth it to me personally), there is nothing I could do except walk away. However with haggling, I had an opportunity to gauge the range of price that would still be in the seller's interest and see if it aligned with my price. A win-win for both of us!

Going in, my gameplan was simple. Determine the maximum price I would pay and just tell them anything above that is not worth it to me personally very politely. And if they can't make the price, then I just walk away. No hard feelings, it just didn't work out because our interests were different. Of course, the vendor may harbor hard feelings, but nothing I can do about it except be very polite.

The first chance I had was for a toy car (my neighbor has a kid that really likes cars). This store was technically not a street vendor, but her store was fronting the street with the vendors. We didn't know if haggling was culturally accepted here, but I really wanted to go for it. My friends were actually really embarrassed because of that, and left the store first haha. I also made sure they bought their things first in case things go really south, and I ruin their purchases. Now for the haggling! It was a 20 HKD (~2.5 USD) toy car. The max I would go for is 10 HKD (~1.29 USD). I actually prefered just 1 USD but keeping it at 10 HKD is just more convenient to deal with. 

It was a success! I actually felt bad midway through, so I caved and went up to 15 HKD. But I didn't have a 5 HKD bill, so I would've needed change and she just gave it to me for 10.

To address possible allegations that I was being mean to a local storeowner: I disagree because I was very nice with a polite tone. What I wasn't being at that moment was charitable though.

The street vendors weren't open that early, so we pivoted to random street shopping. I was able to grab some snacks at a random grocery store to bring to work and some creams my mom wanted from a Chinese medicine store. Next, food at Cafe de Coral, Hong Kong's largest fast food chain. I've always heard the Cantonese name mentioned by my family so cool to finally see what it's about. I ended up getting their fried pork cutlet, sausage, and toast (my memory is fuzz already but I think I had toast and just didn't eat it. The pork cutlet is certain though). It was pretty good, and I was amazed at such a wide selection of items on their menu, from soups to rice bowls to noodles.

Unfortunately during this time, one of our friends had some stomach issues, possibly because of the large slab of fatty butter earlier in the morning with the pineapple bun. So we also hopped around multiple bathrooms and loitered outside.

Our lunch destination was at a Chiikawa pop up restaurant. Chiikawa is a children's anime show that apparently became pretty popular in Asia (possibly in the U.S. too) though I had not heard about it. Justin L in particular became quite obsessed with it after being introduced to it in his Japan trip where he was bombarded with Chiikawa videos and songs everywhere he went. 

 Justin C was pretty full from Cafe de Coral and Priyanka couldn't eat the only pork ramen, so it ended up just being me and Justin L. I wasn't a fan of them at all (Minions are superior imo), but it was pretty cool how they themed everything. The mall it was in was pretty cool too. I guess Hong Kong is so dense that they had to build upwards. They had this gigantic atrium spanning multiple floors. Not really sure what it was for, but I was in awe at the seemingly vast open space and nice natural lighting it let in. It was at this moment my diet went downhill. I had to get a bowl of ramen, and I don't like wasting. So I thought I'd eat a little of it. That turned to 3/4 of the bowl with me being very full. I didn't realize how hungry I'd gotten with the diet. I wasn't starving, but the lack of food choices I had meant I wasn't eating to my fill. 

The afternoon for me was split off from the others. I first had an appointment with a traditional Chinese medicine doctor. Very nice checkup and conversation since I've taken more of an interest in more natural approaches to healthcare with my eczema. Afterwards, I went off to meet up with a family friend to drop off a gift. Being a local, she took me to see the Avenue of Stars. It was in the same place as the light show last night. On the railing of the harbor, they have handprint molds of famous movie stars and singers, similar to Hollywood Stars. I always enjoy meeting new people and I barely knew anything about her, so it was nice to get to know her and get to hear about life in Hong Kong too. Here's a fun pig statue. I'm not sure what it was doing there though. 

Now, back with the group! I met up with them at Times Square, which I thought would be similar to New York's, but it turns out it's just a mall. The plan was to walk around a bit before going to a beef brisket noodle place. But Priyanka and I decided to eat at Shake Shack first to accomodate our diet (vegeterian patties for her and I get to avoid carbs by doing lettuce wrap). The food ended up being so enticing that the Justins decided to forgo beef brisket entirely to also get their burgers. The vegetarian patty burger was actually quite good I must say. 

Our night plan was to explore some bars. My diet prohibits me from any alcohol at all, so I wouldn't be having anything. Our first bar had an Australian bartender raised in Hong Kong. What I found amazing was she didn't know Cantonese at all, so that meant you could get by completely with English. The next bar had a really cool atmosphere. It had an iron fairy theme based off of some fairy tale apparently. Throughout this whole trip, I relied almost completely on my friends to take pictures, and this is the one time I wished I took some because of how cool I thought it was. Below is the only pic that was snapped out of us all, but it's called The Mixing Room if anyone is interested. We ended up leaving pretty quickly though because they weren't interested in the drinks.

 Day 3 (Wednesday 11/26): Big Buddha Statue

 Our day started out at the same place as yesterday in the pineapple bun breakfast restaurant. It was so good that we returned once again. This time I decided to order something: luncheon meat and noodles except without the noodles. The lady taking our order was very confused, but very nice because she supplemented my order with bread and tomatoes and lettuce, so I could make a sandwich. 

 After, we headed off to visit the Tian Tan Buddha, a 112' bronze sculpture of a Buddha. To get there, we first had to take a 25 minute cable car ride. Nice views climbing over small mountains on the way, though nothing too special. I saw a tunnel going under the sea, which apparently led to Macau. That was very interesting to spot as a Civil Engineer. At the top, they replicated an old Chinese village for the path that led to the Buddha, and filled it with tourist souvenir shops and restaurants.

 To get to the Buddha itself, we had to climb many many stairs, so we prepared our aging body with knee stretches. For some reason, Justin C. hit this very very epic Kung Fu pose.

The Buddha statue itself has a little museum inside with pictures explaining the story of the original Buddha's path to enlightenment and very old paintings. I actually enjoyed going through it all and briefly learning the history of it.

For lunch, there were only vegetarian restaurants up there, which was perfect for all of our diets and tasted very good.

Finally, we headed home for some rest. I took this time to get a very cheap haircut. Going into the cut, I didn't quite know how to communicate what I wanted, so decided to just tell him how long I wanted him to cut. I had just wanted him to do some short trimming, so my hair could still have some length to it. Unfortunately, I had greatly overestimated how much that would be. One inch seems pretty short to me in normal everyday terms, but it seems like it is quite drastic in the context of male hairstyling. The haircut itself was pretty good though, just not exactly what I had planned. More importantly (to me at least), the cut was only 100 HKD or $12.86 USD! What great value! The guy was very quick with it too. You can see the cut in the next pic I put in.

 Our dinner plans was something a little bit fancier for that night: a 2-star Michelin restaurant! 

I got pigeon and some vegetables in a bone broth, Priyanka got a vegetarian soup, and the Justins got the tasting menu. Very fancy presentations and services. We somehow also drank 6 tea kettles worth of tea. I suspect it was because there was a long waiting time between the dishes for the tasting menu, so our hands just gravitated towards drinking tea. The tasting menu included dessert, but we also ordered red bean soup in addition. My first thought was that I got scammed because the US ones taste better, and many times the Chinese restaurants give it to you for free after dinner. But then I realized it was just because the US ones are much sweeter, so they probably unhealthily dump a bunch of sugar into it. A shocking revelation on how different it tasted.

 

 

One of the most exciting features of the place was the bathroom. My grandpa used to take me to explore the bathrooms of fancier restaurants while we were waiting for food when I was a wee child. Given this was a 2-star Michelin restaurant, I was very eager to go. And it did not disappoint at all! There was a whole aquarium tank in there right above the urinals. Naturally, we had to take a selfie.

 We ended the night with a night ferris wheel ride by the harbor. This was nice ... if it only went around one time. But it made us go around four times, and that was way too repetitive. It would stop every quarter of the way too.

Our original plan was to end the night off with some karaoke. Sadly, they only offered rooms in chunks of three hours, which was way too expensive. On a side note, this karaoke place took us a bit too find similar to that Indian restaurant from Day 1 Monday (though we actually found it this time). Google Maps had us walking around this one block two times before we realized it was in the next block. There was actually a visible sign that pointed it out, but I guess we were so focused on the block shown on the map we couldn't see it. 

 Day 4 (Thursday 11/27): Ocean Park

 This day was Ocean Park, a mix between a theme park and a zoo. It was incredibly easy to get there because the subway went straight there. Our first move was to take some cable cars to the part of the island with the thrill rides (there was a mountain that separated two parts of the park). The Rapids was up first! It was a spinning ride along a water track. This one was actually quite chill, except I don't do well with spinning things so I was worried of being nauseated at first. They also splash you with water, but good thing I came prepared with a wide-brimmed hat!

 

Next, the Justins did Hair Raiser, a rollercoaster with many many loops. I had not done a rollercoaster going upside down at that point, so I chickened out of this one. For now...

 After, we grabbed lunch at Clown Corner. I ended up getting the rice vermicelli in soup with braised beef brisket. I completely avoided the noodles but supplemented them by dumping brown rice into the soup and my sardines. I love rice in soup, so this was a very great meal for me. Plus my non-microwaved microwaveable rice would have been cold and dry, so it was nice to not have that for a change.

 Next up were aquatic animal aquariums with Shark Mistique and Sea Jelly Spectacular (two separate exhibits). It was pretty cool to see the sharks so close to us. One of the most feared predators in the sea swimming right next to us. They also threw in a stingray as well. At some point, they swam just a foot away from an open tank exhibit, and it was the neatest thing to see them smoothly flap their bodies to swim.

And now to revisit the Hair Raiser. The Justins were able to convince me to do it, and I was able to hype myself up enough. They were saying that the seatbelts weren't too tight, so their butts would lift off from the seats during the ride. Thank God mine was different though. I had the tightest seatbelt ever; they had to really press it in to make sure it locked. Very surprising given how skinny I am. As we were about to take off, I screamed a "LETS GOO" real loud to hype myself up even more. This prompted a teen to yell "be quiet" in Cantonese, so I responded with a "NOOO" of equal volume. The ride actually wasn't too bad. I was able to calm myself down a little bit by thinking of how trustworthy seatbelts were. Not something I'd do alone, but if friends drag me along, I wouldn't mind. 

 As we neared the end of our time at the park, we took a themed train back to initial part of the park. It was submarine themed, and I thought the design of it looked very cool (I once again did not snap any pictures). And now... PANDAS! It just so happened to be nursing time for the baby pandas there, so we got to see something unique. 

 

We also took a picture with a touristy photo cutout. Normally, I don't think much of these at all, but I was very impressed by how nice of a picture this turned out to be. It's my favorite of the entire trip. It was also taken with Priyanka's new iPhone 17 Max, so the great photo quality might have something to do with it. Regardless, my thoughts have shifted for the positive for these types of things.

 

We headed straight back home afterwards and rested up a little bit before heading back out on the streets. Our next plan was some street food and more importantly ... MORE HAGGLING!! It was back at the same street that we had gone to on Tuesday morning. This time, I had my eyes set on a Minion luggage tag. Justin L also had his eyes set on a Chiikawa one. This was great for us because it's in the seller's interest to sell more even at a lower price. The listed price was 20 HKD each with an option for a10 HKD for 3 deal. The price we would go for is 2 tags for 15 HKD each. This time was actually very easy. She suggested I buy three, but I politely declined by saying that we had no need for three. Another success!

 

 ... or so I thought. We walked further into the street market and found a vendor selling the same tags for 10 HKD each! I was FLABBERGASTED. I actually saw this coming beforehand though. I acknowledged that I wouldn't be able to gauge the market value of an item because I wasn't going to invest time scoping out vendors while I'm on vacation. That wasn't enough to overcome the Chinese in me I guess. 

 

And good for that vendor too! I think the reason she set her price higher was because her shop was by the road, so people would see her prices first and not be able to compare with the ones deeper in. Very smart in taking advantage of her location!

 

It was then that sickness struck one of us once again due to a bad chicken bun. So we cut our time early at the night market and dropped the sick person at the hotel to rest. The rest of us got even more dinner at an Italian restaurant then walked around to explore the neighborhood surrounding the hotel. Their parks had elderly workout equipment, so we played around with those too.

 

 Day 5 (Friday 11/28): Cheng Chau Island

 Today's breakfast spot was a small outdoor restaurant all ran by very nice old ladies. I always find it fun interacting with nice old ladies for some reason. I find them to be naturally funny in the things they say and manner they speak in. And I suspect that because they're getting a little bit deaf, both of us are speaking louder, making the situation subtly more humorous. Nonetheless, there's always a layer of unseriousness to the conversations that I find pleasant. Anyhow, my morning was off to a great start!

 

Hong Kong consists of many small islands, so we hopped onto a 45 minute ferry to visit one of them: Cheng Chau Island. For scale, Google Map seems to indicate that you can walk across the whole island in a bit over one hour. Transportation on the island was limited to only bikes and motorcycles pulling small flatbeds to transport bigger things. 

 

Our first stop was the beach. No active beach activities though. The Justins sat on a bench in the shade, Priyanka waded in the shallow tides, and I got some vitamin D by soaking up the strong high noon UV rays. I did the same procedure I do on my work lunch walk where I don a hat to protect my face from the sun and roll up the jacket of my sleeves for sun exposure (I keep my jacket on in the Hawaii heat because I'm still cold from the office AC).

 

Afterwards, we walked through the streets to look for lunch. It was a chill 10 minute walk with a mixture of very quiet residential buildings and bustling market streets. I really enjoyed just observing life in a much quieter environment. 

 

We ended up at a Singaporean restaurant. Very good food! I got some sort of stew. She only accepted cash or Octopus card. It was nearing the end of our trip, so we had strategically let our cash and card balance run low. As a result, we were scrambling to calculate and combine our cards and cash to be able to pay the bill. Fortunately, the nice employee had pity on us and let us pay by credit card. I assumed she was trying to avoid credit card fees. 

 

 Afterwards, we decided to walk off our lunch. It was supposed to be a short walk, but unfortunately for them, they let me navigate. I had chosen a close location at first, but thought "ehhhh this landmark is only slightly further away." It went from a 15 minutes to 30 minutes walk. Apparently, that was much further than they'd like. A very nice walk though. It cut through the forested island, past a cemetery overlooking a beautiful stretch of beach, and went along the coast. The landmark itself was incredibly lame though. It was called Reclining Rock in English, and the Chinese name was translated to Five Element Rocks. It was just five rocks jutting out of the ground. The views on the way made it more than worth it though. 

 

The way back was a chill, completely downhill coastal walk and along a different path too, so we got unique views. I'm sure my friends enjoyed the walk overall though I inadvertently duped them. 

Overall, I really enjoyed the small island. It was such a different vibe from the very bustling, very dense city that we were immersed in throughout the week. I didn't realize how much I would enjoy that more peaceful environment. 

When we got back on land, we swung by Don Quijote for some snack gifts back home. Big mistake by me coming here. I thought there'd be at least some unique Hong Kong snacks, but it was all Japanese things. We were flying back the next morning, so I had no choice but to grab them. Afterwards, we ate dinner at a ramen place and then went home to pack and rest up. Because later that night would be bar and clubs. My young-at-heart friends wanted to stay up until 1 AM despite having to get up at 6 AM for our flight. During packing, I realized I bought way too many gifts. My luggage was packed to the max, but looking very good with my newly haggled Minion luggage tag!

By 9:30 PM, we were hitting the streets of the bar. They were crazy aggressive in trying to pull you in with deals though. Everytime we walked by, they got in your face to tell you they'll give you free shots if you come in. We weren't going to drink much, but I had an itch to haggle just for the fun of it (though I did not). Ironically, we went to the one bar that wasn't aggressive at all because I saw they had a darts machine. My cousins introduced me to darts at a bar in December of 2024 in Australia, and it was a real fun casual game. I was excited to play with my friends. 

Initially, I was playing very casually. But all of a sudden Justin L started hitting these bullseyes and triple point spots out of nowhere. He wasn't even aiming too. He just chucked it lackadaisically (see below screenshot of a video). No body movement to propel the throw, all arm. Head tilted upwards instead of level to the ground and straining forward to lock his eyes on the target. Very perplexing on how he was hitting things spot on. Anyhow, my competitive spirit was kindled, so I started tryharding. Even then, I was skeptical of being able to best him, but nevertheless, I did.

 

 The clubs were still not open yet, so we hopped on over to another bar. This one was a bit fancier; they handed out a complimentary bowl of nuts for our table, and you best believe that we got a refill before we left. Despite my diet, I did take a sip of the whiskey they got, and it was pretty darn smooth. 

 Afterwards, we tried to head into a club but discovered it was very expensive, so we pivoted to another bar and then some frat-house-party-looking establishment underground. There was this one guy that came to talk to us, so that was very nice. When we were leaving, I asked to take a selfie and held one arm out high to get the angle. He didn't hear me I guess and thought it was a hug haha. 

 

Day 6 (Saturday 11/29): Flight Home

And just like that the trip was over, and it was time to head back home. We awoke at 6 AM and were out by 6:45. It was an easy ride to the airport and getting through security. For breakfast, I got a plate of chicken organ meats and vegetables along with the brown rice I got. Very filling! We had a bit of time, so we walked around to explore shops and the airport in general. I appreciated how they had a warm water machine (though there was quite a line). One of their bathrooms also had a little screen that allows you to see which toilet stall is being occupied. One of us was waiting to get in, so in my boredom, I tried to track which one he was in. The airport was huge. We had to walk a lot to get to our gate. There was a shuttle though to take you between sections.

 

The plane ride back to SFO was much shorter, being only 12 hours instead of 15 the other way. This time our seats were such that two of us were seated directly behind the other two. Once again, I saw this as an opportunity to negotiate and get us all seated in one row. Fortunately, the seat right next to me was completely empty, so I could offer it up as a benefit. And it worked! Collaboration successful. They got more space with an empty seat beside them, and we got a whole row to ourselves. 

 

My activities this time were sleeping, reading, watching Fantastic Four, and group playing this Mahjong tiles matching game Priyanka randomly downloaded. It was actually a harder puzzle than it sounds. The tiles were stacked, and you could only flip over certain ones to check for matching. You really had to be strategic about it in order to get all the matches. Fantastic Four was a nice movie. It was the last movie/show I wanted to catch up on too. All within one month's subscription of Disney+! My reading progress wasn't as good though. I had brought 4 books onto the trip, excited to get good reading done on the long flights. The flight to HK, I finished a short book that I already was 1/2 way through, and the flight back, I only got 100 pages in of a new book. Unfortunate :(.

 

The flight this time felt much better and I wasn't sore at all. I wouldn't mind doing that flight again. After we landed, we went through customs effortlessly, and then it was time for me to part ways with them and say goodbye.

 

My flight to Hawaii was really smooth. I had a window seat and leaned my head against the side and knocked out for the full 5 hours. 

 

Wrap-up 

Overall, Hong Kong was a really cool city to explore. The walkability aspect of it made it very convenient to get around. We didn't have to go through the hassle of renting a car or finding parking and whatnot. I really enjoy walking too, so the great distances weren't a problem for me. It was cool seeing the walking infrastructure too. There were long underground tunnels connecting streets and subway stations. A part of the city had wide sky bridges attached to their buildings and spanning across intersections, so the pedestrians didn't need to get in the way of the cars below. Also, one thing I really appreciated was how fast their escalators were. It was double the speed of the ones in the States. I'm not sure how their elderly can get on/off safely, but they seemed to manage. 

 

 

And overall it was a very enjoyable trip. It had been awhile since I've seen my friends in-person, so it was very fun getting to spend time with them once again, especially exploring a completely new city.