December 2018 Part I (Hong Kong)
What’s the difference between backpacking through Asia at age 25 versus backpacking through Asia at age 30?
I remember the first time I travelled around Asia. I went from Beijing, China all the way down to Tonsai, Thailand without touching a plane.
Since I was broke, I sought out the cheapest options, which meant taking sleeper trains, napping on 12+ hour bus rides, getting lost trying to find stations, haggling down cab fares, catching four boat rides, and ending up on one ambulance.
There were many days spent in transit, all varying between uncomfortable and extremely uncomfortable.
But it was exciting.
As uncomfortable as it was, as lost as I got, every moment was an adventure and I reveled in it. Asking for help in broken Chinese and Vietnamese, making ridiculous gesticulations with hands and bodies and facial expressions, taking wrong turns and wrong buses, drawing maps and writing down contact information on paper, heart racing with worry that maybe I’d miss my stop—
They were all stories, blossoming before me.
But this time, as I sat on the 10-hour bus ride from Yangshuo to Shenzhen, anticipating the walk to the local bus station, the 2-hour bus ride to the Hong Kong border, the 30-minute subway ride to Mong Kok Station and then the half-mile walk to the Air BnB, all without any kind of phone plan to load Google Maps or call or message anyone—
As I sat on that bus, I realized I should’ve just paid the extra 30 fucking dollars for the direct train from Yangshuo to Hong Kong and skipped all this bullshit.
The density of people in Hong Kong is amazing.
Apartment towers block out the sky, and each of those apartments are so tiny. At all hours of the day, there are swarms of people out and about.
Millions of people in this tiny space, trying hard to live as best as they can. The outrageously wealthy pass so close to those in destitute poverty.
But as soon as you’re out of the city, it’s forest.
One day, we came across a wild hog in the road. It was the size of a large dog.
A place of east and west, English and Cantonese, wealthy and poor, wild and concrete. Rather than mixing together into homogeneity, it seems like they grind up past each other, expanding and pushing, each growing against the other.
HK food is my definition of ‘comfort food’.
Pork chops baked in tomato sauce and cheese over rice? Yes, please!
Portuguese egg tarts, slightly burnt on the top and extra buttery in the crust? You bet!
Mango slices, coconut cream and sago on top? Uh, yeah, of course!
Black sesame? YES. BLACK SESAME EVERYTHING. EVERYWHERE.
And if we could replace all my liquid intake with milk tea, that would be excellent, thanks.
I realized though that Hong Kong is the worst place you could visit as a vegetarian. Everything has at least a little meat. Stir fried broccoli? Stir fried with ground beef. Turnip cakes? Cooked with bits of pork. Struggles were real.
It turns out that even though I love granite trad climbing, granite sport climbing in a million percent humidity is really awful. My sweaty hands didn’t make it any more enjoyable, though the climbs themselves were pretty decent if not short.
Hong Kong actually has quite a bit of climbing, which is really impressive given its size! It’s not a climbing destination by any stretch of imagination, but it’s of decent quality and is available enough if you happen to be going there anyway.
The ease of access is great actually. There’s a HK climbing website with beta on everything. The major crags are just a train + bus + 10-20 minute hike approach away, which is convenient.
Central Crag is a somewhat tricky approach to figure out on your own, but it’s really an amazing sight— it’s in the middle of the city, giving you a great view of Hong Kong. At night, the lights come up and it’s really quite pretty.
Tung Lung island offers seaside climbing. Technical Wall which is on the island is one of the best in Hong Kong, but ferries to the island only run on the weekend making it quite crowded. If you ask the local climbers though, one of them may be hiring out a boat to go mid-week.