On the morning of New Year’s Eve, we all packed into a taxi and were off to Taoyuan International Airport. We had breakfast there, unaware at the time that in an hour we would be split up on our journey to Hong Kong. We snapped a quick photo of the beginning of our New Years adventure at the terminal, and soon we were in line to board the plane.

Tammy’s sister, Xania, was in front of me, and the woman taking tickets had said something to her sternly in Chinese. I assumed it was about the size of her luggage, and maybe she needed to check it. They had an exchange in Mandarin, and I proceeded through the gate onto the plane. More time passed, and Tammy and Xania still weren’t in on the plane. As it got later, more seats filled out, and suddenly theirs were the only two empty seats. Brian and I were getting concerned. And then they closed the cabin door. Uh-oh. I texted Tammy. She said that Taiwanese citizens need a visa to go to Hong Kong, which they didn’t know, but the staff said they could get one shortly and be on the next flight. We planned to meet them in Hong Kong.

The flight was short, about an hour and a half. Brian and I went through customs, and were off to find our hostel, which was more elusive than we expected. Because we hadn’t gotten a Hong Kong SIM card yet, we tested standing in different places (mostly near restaurants) trying to catch any vestige of a wifi signal we could find. Turns out that the hostel lobby was on a random floor in a residential building, which, according to a sign in the lobby is technically illegal. We got our key after some suspicion from the hostel staff since the reservation was under Xania’s Chinese name and we were two white people checking in. Our room was in a different nearby residential building. I was very happy with the room, it had a great view of the fashion district we were staying in. However, I can’t imagine actually living in this building and having tourists coming in and out every day and using the elevator constantly— that would get pretty annoying. After our journey over the South China Sea, we were hungry and went to a Vietnamese place for lunch, grabbing a SIM card on the way. As we fiddled with the SIM card and mentally converted prices on the menu to USD, we ordered. I got a sandwich called bahn mi, filled with rich pork belly, slices of carrot, and cilantro. This was just our first preview into the fantastic eats in Hong Kong. There is an amazing food scene here.

Our leisurely lunch gave Tammy and Xania enough time to get to the hostel, and we met up with them with plenty of time to spare for the big fireworks show over Victoria Harbor at midnight. I went with the three of them to scope out a hole-in-the-wall restaurant I had read about online that served minced meat towers topped with a salty egg. Brian, still jet lagged, wanted to take a long nap, so we left him behind in the room to sleep.

When we came back, we all got ready to scope out the best place to watch the fireworks. We stopped at a rooftop restaurant, but with a hefty cover charge for New Years Eve, we decided to just walk to the harbor and watch from there. We took a twisty, roundabout route to the spot we finally ended up, just following the crowds of people until we got somewhere with a good view. There were tons of people standing along the harbor, eagerly awaiting midnight. All of the lights from Christmas still decorated buildings on the skyline. Finally, one of the towers on the harbor displayed a countdown… 10… 9… 8. People chanted along until finally it displayed 2017 and an explosion of color lit up the night sky and rained down onto the water. Couples kissed and little kids pointed, oohing and ah-ing at the sky. It was hard to believe I was spending the first minutes of 2017 in Hong Kong, among friends from high school and college, and from different countries an ocean apart. If someone told me I would be here earlier in the year, I would have found it hard to believe. I love when life is unexpected like that.

We found a more direct route home after the show, and all passed out in the hostel after the long, travel-filled day.

The next morning was full of food-scoping. We went to Fu Sing Shark Fin Sea Food Restaurant, a Michelin recommended restaurant with lots of options for dim sum (small plates). Each plate that came out we split between the four of us, sampling the different culinary masterpieces. One of my favorite was a baked, crumbly tart-like item topped with walnuts. Everything they brought out was so delicious. A couple more favorites at the table were the steamed barbecue pork buns, and the glazed slab of tender pork.

Afterwards, we went to Honolulu Cafe for a post-lunch snack. We got some iconic Hong Kong desserts here, like egg tarts and a pineapple bun. The flaky egg tart melted in my mouth with each bite, combining perfectly with the refreshing lemony tea. The sweet pineapple bun had a slice of butter in the center, and didn’t taste like pineapple. It just has the criss-cross shape of one.

We wanted to take a tram tour of the city after dessert, but we were late getting there. Fortunately, we hadn’t missed it at all. Turns out, all tram tours were cancelled that day due to a political march that had many streets closed. We saw floods of people walking down the street holding signs to protest the government. After some very preliminary research, we believed they were protesting China’s control over Hong Kong’s politicians. The current state of affairs had Hong Kong’s politicians essentially serving as political puppets to China’s whims. Since many of the streets were closed and it was a national holiday, the sidewalks and public transit areas were packed.

We decided to just walk around Victoria Park for a while until we needed to be at the movie theater for a show we were planning to see. There were tons of Indonesians in the park. Many of them just set out a blanket with their suitcase on it and had everything from food to clothes on hand. Earlier, we saw a similar picnic-style gathering of Indonesians sitting on an extremely busy sidewalk near the Fashion Walk having a feast. Paper plates scattered with all kinds of food. It was fascinating to me.

We went to the movie theater to see a movie called “See You Tomorrow.” The movie had been directed by a famous Hong Kong director, and was filmed in a Hong Kong style, with quick movements, flashy colors, and a comicbook-esque flow to the story. Xania, who teaches film and design to high school students, was really interested in seeing the director’s work. It was pretty neat to see a movie in theaters with such a different style than a typical Hollywood film. The movie utilized a lot of hyperbolic situational humor. Chiefly, it was silly, but not in a childish way. Love stories between characters were exaggerated to the “I would do absolutely anything to prove my love to you” level, which has many comedic opportunities. The movie culminated in a drinking match between two girls in a fight to win the love of a washed up former celebrity. It was all very ridiculous.

Then we attempted to see “A Symphony of Lights,” the famous light show on the harbor, but we were given some misinformation by marquee text scrolling up the side of a building about the time of the show. We thought there would be two shows around 7-something and 9-something, but it turned out there was just one at 8-something, and we just missed it. So, like any rational people would, we decided to ride a pirate ship instead. This red, medieval-style pirate ship sailed around Victoria Harbor playing tunes and getting awed at by passing pedestrians. Servers on board delivered us wine and nuts, and the seats were actually more like beds. We all reclined on the long seating, legs up, breeze in our hair. We were drinking wine on a pirate ship in Hong Kong on New Years day. Life couldn’t be better.

Afterwards we went to another hole-in-the-wall noodle joint, and passed out. We would travel to the island of Macau tomorrow.

Since we had really wanted to do the tram tour, we got up early and did it before leaving for Macau. We sat on the top, open-air level of the two-story tram car, and listened to the history of the city, surrounding architecture, and tramways through earbuds. A couple of memorable things from the tour was that around 60 square kilometers of land had been reclaimed (turning the ocean into usable, build-able land), and that the most expensive retail space in the world was here in Hong Kong. We also learned that the Bank of China building has all kinds of Xs, sharp edges, and crisscrosses on it, creating very bad Feng Shui and garnered lots of criticism when it was built. Later, they added trees and fountains around the building to remedy the negative energy of the jarring features.

After the tram tour, we were off to the island of Macau, much like a larger scale Las Vegas with gambling, flashy lights, and giant hotels. According to CNN, Macau makes seven times as much as Vegas in revenue, and is far and away the biggest and most popular destination for gambling in the world.

As we were about to buy tickets for the ferry, Brian realized he didn’t have his passport. So we had to separate again, leaving Brian on his own to go retrieve it from our hostel. Tammy, Xania, and I boarded the hour-long ferry and immediately went on a hunt for some of the recommended food in Tammy’s guidebook. Our first stop was a small restaurant well-known for their rice noodles. At stop two everything was so cheap I just ordered everything I was in the mood for: a plate of beef ho fun noodles, a pork cutlet sandwich, another egg tart, and lemon tea. It sounds like a lot, but I was hungry and it was cheap, so… when in Macau!  We also bought a pork cutlet sandwich for Brian, who was supposedly arriving soon.

Finally, between intermittent wifi, we managed to find Brian in the central square. From there, we went to a few of Macau’s historic landmarks, like St. Dominic’s Chuch and the Ruins of St. Paul’s. The architecture and vibe of the area felt somewhat Spanish or South American, bizarre for an island off of China. It turns out that in the days of Marco Polo, Macau was settled by the Portuguese. China then gave the island to Portugal in hopes of keeping pirates away. Despite mainly being inhabited by Chinese, Portugal ruled the island until the late 1990s, when Portugal gave it back to China.

St. Dominic’s Church was built in 1587 by three priests who came from Mexico. It’s a very recognizable building, fashioned in a baroque style, and light yellow and white in color. It’s part of the 29 buildings that make up the world heritage site here.

The Ruins of St. Paul’s was formerly St. Paul’s College and the Church of St. Paul. Built by Jesuits in the early 1600s, it was one of the largest Catholic churches in Asia at the time. It was destroyed by a fire during a typhoon in 1835, and in 2005 it was listed as being part of Macau’s UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Then we hiked up Fortaleza do Monte, a military fort built directly above the Ruins of St. Paul’s to protect the building from pirates and other intruders. We passed gardens on the way up, and at the top were 32 cannons pointed outward, away from the fort. We also saw an amazing view of the island, only made better by the blazing sun sinking into the tin-roof buildings in a stunning sunset. Unfortunately, Xania had to make it back to central Hong Kong for her flight home, so she left.

We took a taxi to another area of the island and got out at The City of Dreams Resort. Inside where colorful lights, gold and marble architecture, and glittering chandeliers. We also found a Din Tai Fung restaurant, which I’d never been to and is “all the talk” in Taiwan for having a Michelin star and being ranked one of the top ten restaurants in the world by the New York Times. In Taiwan, there’s always huge waits at this restaurant, but inside this resort, we walked right in. The steamed dumplings have 18 intricate folds sealing each one. The restaurant chain originated in Taiwan, but now has locations in several southeast Asian countries, Australia, and the United States.

After eating dumplings until we were full, we went to the theater. The circular arena featured a pool of water in the center, and hanging ivy intertwined with gold lights around the outside. It was a stunning setup. Perhaps what was more stunning though, was when the show started, and a gigantic climbable pirate ship shot out of the center and acrobatic pirates began diving off of the side and performing all kinds of tumbling tricks. Then, a floor rose within the stage. Where pirates were able to dive just minutes ago, now actors walked and danced. At times, the flooring would only lower slightly, which created a “walking on water” effect, especially when they were dancing. The stage and actors were so versatile that in the middle of the production, the flooring came up, ramps were driven onto the small, circular stage by little trucks, and motorcyclists came revving out of the side corridors. They did insane tricks for the space they had, often leaving only one hand on the motorcycle in midair to pose in shocking ways. Then the stage went back to water, a pool so deep that people could dive into it from the rafters of the building (which happened). The show didn’t include any talking, but the story told about woman with magical abilities to move water, who was captured by an evil queen and sent away in a cage. Two male travelers, a scrawnier one thrown out of a boat on rough waters and a more buff one captured by pirates, worked together to defeat the evil queen and her posse, thus freeing the girl with magical water powers and crowning the scrawnier man as the new king. And naturally, there was a love story component— it was implied that the magical water girl and the buff hostage were in love and going to be together after escaping. A comedic jester punctuated the show with some laughs, occasionally splashing parts of the audience he didn’t like. Complex fight scenes with swords and ropes hanging from the ceiling over a partially submerged stage made for very exciting and aesthetic battles. At times, the actors would be so close to the seating, or hanging directly above you, that you could see the twisted expressions on their faces. The costumes in the show were also incredibly intricate. I especially loved a scene where the magical water woman was dancing with the water and lights, and a parade of “swans” were essentially her backup dancers, their arms covered in long, white gloves that replicated the neck and head of a swan. The swans ladies could synchronously move their wrists and it truly looked like heads of dancing swans. The show was part cirque du soleil acrobatics, part water ballet, and part motocross X games, all the while being displayed in beautiful visuals and fitting into a greater story.

Completely impressed by the show, we were glad to have gotten the tickets. We walked around the casino a little bit more, and took a taxi to another, larger casino aptly named “The Galaxy,” just to see how grand it was. None of us were planning on gambling, so we took advantage of all the little casino perks designed to keep gamblers there longer. For instance, all of the food was incredibly cheap. We walked down a “Little New York” style street called Broadway where a rock band sang in Chinese on an elevated stage, and there were tons of street food stalls. I bought a Belgian waffle with chocolate inside that was buy-one-get-one-free for around $2 USD. As I ate the delectable, melty waffle, we decided it was time to get a taxi back to the ferry port. There was a huge line by the ferry boarding, and a much shorter line to the side. We weren’t entirely sure why, so we just went in the shorter line and walked right onto the boat. It’s possible we cut the whole line and they didn’t say anything, we aren’t sure. Either way, it was quick getting on the boat despite all the people standing around. On the ride back, we could hear people getting sick, unsure of whether it was from drinking, seasickness, or a combination of both, but all of us were fine. Finally we caught one of the last subways back to our hostel and passed out on our last night in Hong Kong.

On our last day, we got lunch in Hong Kong before riding the Ngong Ping 360, a gondola leading to a giant Buddha statue. We went to a highly rated dim sum restaurant in the Hong Kong City Hall building called City Hall Maxim’s Palace. We had to get our last helping of dim sum before we headed back to Taipei! When we got there, we stood in a very long line of people, waiting for it to open. We were surprised to find such a long line, since the restaurant was inside City Hall, away from the crowded streets filled with hungry passersby. Once they opened the floodgates, the gigantic room was packed. Ladies came through the aisles of the tall-ceilinged, massive ballroom with carts fogged up from steam. Small placards had English and Chinese labeling the contents of the steamy carts. You could stop them and ask for a plate of this or a plate of that, and then they stamped a box on your card to indicate the size and number you ordered. There was a wall of windows in the restaurant, overlooking the waterfront and ferris wheel. I can see why this restaurant is so popular— great views, a small taster of practically everything on the menu, and a fancy atmosphere. Lots of businesspeople were sent there to stake out larger tables for their coworkers right along the wall of windows. They either got bored of waiting or hungry, and started ordering their own small plates as they waited for the rest of their party.

Then we took the subway to the Ngong Ping 360 gondola, with clear-bottom units that dangle over water and mountains, eventually reaching a gigantic Buddha statue and Po Lin Monastery. Known as “Tian Tan Buddha” or “Big Buddha,” the 34-meter tall statue took 12 years to complete, and was finally finished in 1993. A total of 268 stairs lead to the base of the Buddha. The view from the gondola and the the base of the statue were beautiful.

Finally, we went to the airport. It was a fantastic start to 2017, and I hope it’s an indication of a fantastic year to come! I didn’t know what to expect of Hong Kong, but it’s up there with the ranks of Paris, London, New York, and Los Angeles. Hong Kong has the fashion, food, and hustle and bustle to fit in with the big leagues.

I was perplexed by the British influence leftover, although I guess it isn’t so surprising when you find out Hong Kong was under British rule from 1841 to 1997 (minus a four-year period it was occupied by the Japanese). English names were intermingled with Chinese names on street signs and on the MTR map… not to be confused with the MRT, Taiwan’s subway system. That anagram confused me the whole weekend. Double decker buses were commonplace, and everyone knew English (English and Chinese are both official languages). The city was a fascinating mix of western and eastern culture, that has since thrived economically. It could also be considered a melting pot, but with very different influences than the likes of New York City. It was hard to believe that such a modern city is still technically part of communist China. The city reminded me of a larger scale model of an immigrant/expatriate experience— when someone grows up with two completely different upbringings, a unique fusion is created, with two perspectives and two value systems. It would be neat to see more of these fusions on a larger scale, but I don’t think something like that can happen quickly. I think some neighborhoods in New York are models of this duality, and that’s part of what makes it such a special city too. I can’t wait to discover more cities with a mixed heritage; I find them fascinating. Until next time—