Note: I spent three weeks backpacking through Southeast Asia, shuffling through city streets and dirt roads, dodging motorbikes and avoiding scams, wandering in unfamiliar lands in a constant state of bewilderment. It wasn’t quite the rugged travel marked with the kind of spontaneity often expected of a “backpacker’s journey”, but certainly we had our moments of awe and enlightenment, of discomfort and frustration, moments of childlike wonder that make you excited about all that life has to offer.
Here begins a series of summaries of each of the places that I visited. Of course, these descriptions of our all too brief encounters could never fully encapsulate the vibrant energies of each place and its culture — the distinct flavor, the colors, the smell, the people who shine and brim with their own passions and dreams, whose spirits burn under the constant sun and beat to a rhythm unheard by the masses. It’s only but a small fragment of the larger picture, but it’s something, and I hope you enjoy the quick reads.
Hong Kong is a city that glows — not shining like other cities in America with its orderly white lights from the windows of skyscrapers, but glowing, a technicolor heartthrob that pulses with neon, the bright red and yellow and blue and all other shades of the spectrum clashing around us like floating tints of vitality.
We step out of the bus from the airport and are immediately greeted by the hustle and bustle of the crowd roaming about Tsim Sha Tsui in Kowloon. It is easy to see why it has been designated as the major tourist hub in metropolitan Hong Kong: the main street is aligned with all sorts of shops and restaurants and billboards ushering passersby to saunter in as they wander dazedly down the endless stretch of what is the epitome of a tourist trap.
And the people — what an eclectic collection of people, all of them strutting down the red asphalt, each with their own sort of energies burning inside them. There are the old ladies standing by on the curbs, pouncing on passing tourists and shoving flyers into their hands, saying “massage” like a broken record with a persistence to be admired; there are modern day hipsters dressed like hypebeast catalogues, fashionable to the max, donning sneakers worth enough money to feed a small family for a month; men in black suits pace through the crowds, but there are slicker ones with pretty girls wrapped around their arm, all sauntering with puffed chests and breathing cosmopolitan luxury. And then of course, there are the tourists, the mass of us with a look of awe and excitement, congealing into some great wave that moves to the chaotic rhythm of the city.
Lan Kuai Fong feels like a shit show — not the kind in rowdy bar streets where the booze brings out the worst in us, but with a hint of elegance hidden throughout, like in the handful who are dressed to the nine, walking side by side with college kids in wrinkled t-shirts and beggars picking through the gutters for hidden treasures; or the older folks standing around with cocktail glasses in hand, ignoring the group of young bloods chugging tall-boys a mere few feet away. It’s all a big crazy mess, where the streets trickle with sweat and libation, and each hour marks another impending defeat for sobriety.
Music blares from every direction, each club and bar vying for liquor-thirsty heathens to stumble inside, each bowing to destroy its neighbors with their speakers like the night clubs’ version of who’s-got-the-biggest-dick-around-the-block.
To be honest, the clubs around here feel like glorified frat parties with the only difference being the bouncers decked out in black suits and the sometimes exorbitantly high cover charges. Call me cheap, but budget traveling doesn’t quite allow for big spending, so my friends and I opt for hanging around in front of the local 7-11 with dollar beer cans in our hands, watching all forget the concept of moderation. Sipping on what tastes like watered down wheat, we watch the horde of ex-pats fill the cobblestoned streets, the older folks holding classy cocktails while the youths suck jello shots out of syringes. It’s quite the sight.
We stay well into the night until the crowd dwindles down to a mere handful of stragglers babysitting that one kid of the friend group, hunched over on the curb, pulling trigger like there’s no tomorrow. Everyone else begins to stumble towards the taxi line; it’s thoroughly amazing that even after a night of debauchery, people here still find time to practice common courtesy.
The tragedy of Hong Kong may be its dying culture — the steady decay of the old against the rise of the new, the fast fury of development and monetary enlightenments, each with its own casualties that carve away at the city’s rich history. With each skyscraper like a pin drop on the cityscape, like a statement of luxury already coursing through its streets, the mountains that used to stand tall are thrusted to the back, living in the shadows of the army of buildings that touch the sky and reach for the moon. The booming cityscape, of course, is only a sign of progress, and progress is what keeps life interesting. But I do wish, for one brief moment, I could see the lands before they fused with the grey, the waters before they gleamed with neon letters…
During our last day, we meet up with more friends, who take us for dinner to Mr. Wong’s. Our friend warns us that the restaurant’s operation is sketchy enough to have ties with the Triads, but apparently he’ll give us free beer, so we go.
As soon as we get there — a shanty little place with open walls and plastic stools — a man, Mr. Wong, leads us through the kitchen and back door to a table outside. He immediately shoves 200 HKD into my hands and tells me and my friend where we can go to buy some booze for the table. Of course, I am confused as to when and why and how the roles of the vendor and customer has magically switched, but I am all for it, so we go and come back with a black bag full of cheap beers from a convenient store nearby.
His full name is Treeball Wong, an overly touchy restaurant owner who explains that his name’s Treeball because he was born under a tree. He likes to talk, but I can understand maybe only half the words coming out of his mouth, either because of his thick accent or because after every sentence he breaks out into a cackle like a hyena. Apparently, he had to move his restaurant to a new location a week or so ago, because the police raided his previous spot for reasons he does not mention. From the looks of the place and the busboys and waiters who look as if they were picked up from the local homeless shelter the day of, I can’t say I’m too surprised.
We learn he’s a big fan of classical music, and he decides to play some Bach for us from his iPhone while we feast on what are probably recycled Chinese dishes from others’ leftovers — fried dumplings, black pepper chicken, egg rolls, a mountain of fried rice and so on. It’s a banquet of mediocrity masked by its quantity and entertainment, not to mention the free booze keeping us brimming with good spirits.
The ridiculousness of it all, the highly amusing conversations with a local that painted the picture of the city in my mind a shade bit darker, a bit grimier, a tint that flares beneath the polished surface of my first visit — I think that’s what I’ll remember the most about my all-too-brief time in Hong Kong. It’s a city that boasts a vibrant variety unlike other metropolitan kings of the world — not only its setting, but also the people, their characters and their wants and inflated dreams that stand taller than the mountains they share the lands with — and I am bound to come experience it once more in the near future.
Hopefully Mr. Wong will still have his restaurant when I come back.
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