HK & Macau 2024 (1/9) – Visit

With Hong’s encouragement, Phil and I embarked on a guys’ trip to Hong Kong and Macau.

Itinerary

Phil had a long transit day from SD to SF, while I had to end the work week with an unusually rough email to an outside party. Then the fun began! We boarded the flight (Cathay in premium economy) at midnight, landing in HK right around sunrise on Sunday.

We stayed on Hong Kong Island for two days at the JW Marriott. The hotel was fantastic with a great view, and its location was impeccable. Even though it was connected to the Admiralty MTR station through a mall, it was tricky to orient ourselves within HK’s 3D urban landscape. We finally figured out the most efficient way to get in and out right around when we left this place.

From there, we took a ferry to Macau and stayed two nights at the Holiday Inn on the Macau Peninsula. This tiny city-state SAR is known to many as the Las Vegas of the East, but both of us preferred to stay on the historic side away from the “strip” equivalent.

After too many Portuguese egg tarts in 48 hours, we took a bus back to Hong Kong via the incredible Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge (HZMB). We made a detour to the Po Lin Monastery on Lantau Island, before continuing on to Kowloon. The last 3 nights were spent in The Mira Hong Kong in TST, before the mid-Sunday flight back to the States.

Friends

The week-long trip was anchored on both ends with friends. Just hours after arriving in Hong Kong, we met up with Phil’s friend’s friend Caroline. What we thought was just a lunch date turned into 9 hours of food and activities. She was pretty cool and instantly felt like a good friend. While we could have explored on our own just fine, having her lead us through the city had a different vibe. The confidence of a local, I suppose.

For our last dinner, we visited Cynthia and Aaron in Tsing Yi. We got to meet Aris (8) again and Aria (3) for the first time, and had a wonderful hot pot dinner. Visiting their home high above the major train station and shopping mall reminded me a lot of their wedding day from ten years ago. It was so nice to catch up with these old friends / coworkers, and so neat to talk to fellow parents about experiences in a different country.

Celebrate

We did not realize that our trip was scheduled over the “Golden Week” in China, around the National Day (October 1st) of the PRC. If we had known earlier, this wasn’t something we would have cared to take part in. However, we were surprised to see all the festivities and counted ourselves lucky to have run into it by chance.

At the most basic level, we watched a fireworks show on the waterfront in Macau. It was one of a series of shows over multiple days, each of which was supposedly sponsored by a different country. It would have been far more spectacular if we were across the channel in Zhuhai (city in Mainland China), but from a distance it was still quite impressive.

Some of the Hong Kong staples were given a special color. While in Tsim Sha Tsui for the 20-year-running Symphony of Lights show, we saw key buildings on both sides of the harbour decked out with celebratory messages and a drone show featuring Chinese motifs.

And there were the endless signs, banners, and flower arrangements in both Hong Kong and Macau “enthusiastically celebrating” 75 years of People’s Republic of China. We aren’t just talking about government entities and large Chinese companies doing this, either. Banks, privately-held tourist attractions, American brand hotels, and religious temples were all uniformly flashing red and gold everywhere, congratulating the Communist China with writings in Traditional Chinese, English, and Portuguese.

Growing up with Taiwanese and American biases, both of us had initially found these propagandist celebrations of a Communist regime off-putting. Then it slowly grew on us and became so cool to see the number 75 everywhere.

HK & Macau 2024 Index

1. Visit
2. Move
3. Obsess
4. Pilgrimage
5. See
6. Watch
7. Shop
8. Eat
9. Play