While I was on my big backpacking trip a few years ago, it was comforting to listen to that weekly show. No matter where I was in the world, I could always count on a familiar voice and two hours of music to put a smile on my face and keep me moving. I would often listen while working on photos or my blog in a coffee shop in some foreign land, but other times their podcast was the background music to something more interesting, like a bus ride along a winding mountain road or a ferry ride to a beautiful tropical island. Though it’s cheesy and an over-used sentiment, that music was the soundtrack to my travels and continues to be part of the soundtrack of my life.

I’ve seen Above & Beyond in person twice (including this past year), but considered it something of a bucket list item to go to one of their annual shows. Subscribing to the view of “If not now, then when?”, I decided that this would be the year I would finally go (before I’m too old to be doing stuff like this). I decided to build a trip around the show, so I formulated a plan: I would stay in Hong Kong for a week and work remotely, go to the show on the weekend, then take off from work the following week and go to Taiwan.

Towards the end of September, after a long week of work and trip preparations, I left for SFO’s international terminal to catch my Friday night red-eye. After a long but tolerable travel day, I arrived in Hong Kong Sunday morning and proceeded to have an almost identical first-day experience to the last time I was here. Without the assistance of the mid-levels escalators, I hauled my bags up the hill to my SoHo Airbnb – only a few minutes’ walk from the previous Airbnb I stayed in – and arrived a sweaty mess. After checking in, I spent the rest of the day wandering SoHo and Central, taking photos, and enjoying the perfect weather. I ended up turning in quite early that day because I didn’t sleep much on the plane. Still, it was exhilarating to be back in such a fascinating place.

Monday morning was a different story, as I had to get back to work. This was a somewhat bad case of the Mondays since it was raining heavily and I got utterly lost trying to find my coworking space. I ended up on the wrong floor of the wrong tower in the wrong building. Hong Kong’s beautiful labyrinth of streets, escalators, breezeways, alleys, and skyscrapers is undoubtedly romantic and exotic, but can be really frustrating when you aren’t a tourist and actually need to be somewhere on time.

Once I got my bearings and found the correct suite and got situated, my uber-productive work week began. I really enjoy these remote work stints in Asia because I finally have sizable blocks of time to get work done without any interruptions. After an hour-long session each morning to catch up on emails and Slack messages from the previous day, the entire day is mine! This particular week, I was working on a proof of concept UI for a new feature, so I would hack all day, send the day’s results to my manager and colleague before leaving, then wake up the next morning to feedback and suggestions. The lack of distractions, fast feedback cycle, and minimal communication time – only messages, no calls or meetings – probably doubled my normal efficiency. It was a great week of remote work, as usual.

The mid-levels escalators are one of my favorite parts of Hong Kong, so I had intentionally picked my Airbnb and my coworking space such that I would have to take the escalators every day during my commute.

Since I was pretty busy with my project for the week, I tried to make the most of my free time in the evenings. On Tuesday, I met up with a friend and her husband for dinner at one of their favorite restaurants in the city. On Wednesday, I met up with some friends of friends – also from California – and went to the races in Happy Valley, a popular Hong Kong activity that has been an omission from both of my previous trips to the city. While hundreds (or probably even thousands) of older men in the stands and boxes did their research and placed serious bets on the horses, we ate fried food and drank pitchers of beer on the concourse. The warm evening weather, quasi-party atmosphere, and photogenic background create a fun scene on their own, but because of the time of year, there was also an Oktoberfest element added to the mix in the form of German beer stands, lots of festive outfits, and even a dance troupe who performed on stage. The concourse definitely had the highest concentration of Westerners I had ever seen in Hong Kong.

Thursday evening was my pre-scheduled Airbnb “experience”, a walking tour to Victoria Peak starting at dusk. For most people in the group, it was their first time to Hong Kong and their first time booking a tour through Airbnb. As everyone introduced themselves, we realized that most of us were in town for the same reason and most were also flying solo. Our tour guide, Alfred, was a long-time Hong Kong resident and took us through the maze of the city, up the mid-levels escalators, and along a dark jungle path to various viewpoints and eventually the peak itself. He was pleasant and talkative, everyone in the group was friendly and buzzing as well, and the latter half of the hike had amazing views of the city and harbor below.

On Friday, after finishing up for the week with another strong workday, I took the MTR to Kowloon and walked to the promenade to catch the nightly laser and light show, which we had also seen the night before from our perch far above the city. Hong Kong is my favorite skyline in the whole world – I’ll happily take either the harbor view or the peak view – and I wanted to savor it as much as possible before the weekend’s activities.

After taking the Star Ferry – another Hong Kong must-do activity – back to Hong Kong Island, I met up with some new friends (from the previous night) for beers, bar bites, and a hilariously aging cover band, courtesy of The Wanch in Wan Chai. The lead singer was in his 60s, dressed like he was in his 20s, and sang B-sides from the 80s. He looked like he had fallen in love with Hong Kong decades ago, decided to never leave, and was on a mission to sing old rock songs in a dive bar until he croaked.

I checked out of my Airbnb Saturday morning and transferred to a hotel by the airport, as Saturday’s show was on Lantau Island and Sunday’s show was in a park in West Kowloon. I think it would be boring if I tried to write meaningful prose about dancing to live electronic music, so I’ll just say that both shows were amazing, memorable, and absolutely worth the trip. I’ll post a few photos below, but for the most part, I’m going to defer to the official concert videos.

Other Saturday sets: Ben Bohmer, Spencer Brown, Andrew Bayer, and Ilan Bluestone

Other Sunday sets: Dom Donnelly & Penelope, Luttrell

In the week leading up to the big show, Above & Beyond chartered a traditional Chinese junk, gathered up their crew and friends and a few superfans, and sailed around the harbor for an afternoon boat party. This video has been on heavy rotation for me since I’ve been back as it captures the excitement of the trip and the beauty and mystery of the city.

It was also really wonderful to have spent a couple days with awesome new friends from all over the world. It was the perfect end to a fantastic week, a life-affirming way to enjoy one of the world’s most interesting cities, and most definitely a satisfying way to cross an item off the bucket list.

That said, Above & Beyond do this every year, and I wouldn’t be opposed to doing a trip like this again…

Hong Kong

That said, my introduction to September weather in Hong Kong was not a pleasant one. After emerging from the airport train at the IFC mall and grabbing the keys from my Airbnb host, I made my way to the doors when I felt a blast of heat and humidity that just didn’t seem plausible, especially considering I had just spent nine months in Southeast Asia. Surely, I thought to myself, I’m in the vicinity of the exhaust heat from a really large aircon unit. I walked outside and, nope, it really was that miserable, even at 8:30 in the morning. I walked about 15 minutes to my Airbnb apartment, mostly uphill – the mid-levels escalators run downhill in the morning – with all of my stuff and way too many clothes on. The apartment was a fourth-floor (which would be the fifth floor in America) “walk-up”, a cute way of saying “no fucking elevator”.

By the time I made it inside, my clothes looked like I had just jumped into a pool and I had firmly decided that Hong Kong had been stricken from the list of places I’d consider living. I can deal with hot weather if I can wear shorts and tank tops and jump into an ocean or pool on demand, but if I have to dress professionally, I’m going to be a sweaty mess everywhere I go. Even though spending time in Southeast Asia has helped me acclimate to hot weather a bit, my genetics still dictate that I’m built for cool weather.

Since I had visited Hong Kong for nearly a week only a few months ago, most of the usual tourist activities had already been completed and were pretty fresh in my mind. I spent most of my long weekend exploring the city on foot, enjoying the atmosphere, taking photos from a couple skyscrapers (Bank of China and Central Plaza) that have high-numbered floors with public areas, spending time with friends, and meeting new ones.

Speaking of meeting new friends, I was heading back to my Airbnb one evening when I passed the corner bar on my street, which was filled with the usual assortment of professionals enjoying happy hour. As I glanced over, I caught sight of a familiar-looking man sitting by himself at the bar. I stopped on the sidewalk, looked at his profile for a few seconds, and decided to talk to him. The introductory conversation went something like this:

Me: “Hi, is your name Jess?”
Man: “Yes…”
Me: “Did you work for Riverbed?”
Man: “Yes.”
Me: “Holy shit.”

It turns out that, yes, this man was exactly who I thought it was: another former Riverbed employee, albeit one that worked in a very different department than me, so our previous interactions had been limited to faceless emails and pleasantries at company social outings. He had semi-recently quit Riverbed and was in town to attend a convention related to a new business venture. He invited me to join him for a beer, which led to another, which led to another, which led to me convincing my good Hong Kong friend Ka-Hing (another former Riverbedder) to join us, which led to barhopping, dinner, exploring the shitshow that is LKF, and ending up at a live music bar in Wan Chai until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning. It was a really fun night, not least of which because a stranger-slash-former-corporate-acquaintance became a 9-hour drinking partner with a minimal amount of effort.

Speaking of LKF (Lan Kwai Fong, a popular nightlife area in the city), I ended up there again on Saturday night with a couple friends, which reminds me that this area deserves special recognition on this blog for being one of the shittiest shitshows I’ve ever seen. That’s high praise considering I’ve been – multiples times – to Bourbon Street, Las Vegas, and Khao San Road. By 3:00 in the morning, multiple streets were covered in broken glass and I had seen at least half a dozen works of vomit art and four or five people – party-goers, not homeless folks – actually sleeping on the sidewalk. The whole scene was such a caricature of drunken partying that I was half-expecting Peter Griffin to stumble out of an alley and faceplant in front of me. My crude explanation for all of this: lots of early-to-mid-20s professionals with disposable income, a youthful exuberance for getting completely shitfaced, and, quite frankly, only an Asian tolerance to alcohol.

The rest of my weekend was quite mellow and I made a point of spending a solid chunk of my Sunday afternoon riding a ding ding across the island – one of my favorite things to do in Hong Kong – and practicing videography with my new camera so I could put together a montage.

Bangkok

From Hong Kong, I flew to Bangkok, where I planned to kill a few days before heading to Phuket. This plan worked out nicely for me since I didn’t spend much quality time in Bangkok the last time around; whatever time I had was mostly spent in clinics or on Khao San Road. This time, I made a point of doing some proper sightseeing and exploring some more authentic neighborhoods. This was made quite easy by the fact that my Airbnb was in Ratchathewi, a very “locals” part of the city, and close to a BTS (metro) station, so I could move around the city center easily.

Tuesday was my big historical and cultural sightseeing day, so I took one of the Chao Phraya boats up the river and visited the Grand Palace, Wat Phra Kaew (home of the Emerald Buddha, the most important Buddha statue in the country), Wat Pho (the massive reclining Buddha), and Wat Arun (the Angkor-style temple across the river).

That evening’s outing to Sirocco sky bar was filled with a lot of promise, but ended up being kind of a buzzkill. Sure, it’s the highest bar in the world and has a cool view of an endless expanse of twinkling lights, but all the couches on the patio face away from the view, there’s no skyline to see in that direction, and drink prices are astronomical. I paid $25 for a whiskey (one of the cheapest scotches I could find) and a water, which is more than I would pay in America at a rooftop bar, and this is Thailand! To put that in perspective, my drink was as expensive as my lodging for the night, which was a nice one-bedroom apartment in a skyrise, not a dorm in a hostel. When’s the last time one drink cost you the same as a night in a hotel? You can be damn sure I ate more than my fair share of pistachios and sweet olives while slowly, slowly nursing that drink.

Wednesday was very humid and rainy, so I spent most of the day strolling through a labyrinth of air-conditioned malls downtown. That evening’s festivities turned out much better. First, I stumbled upon a much cooler rooftop bar: Skytrain Jazz Pub (by Victory Monument), accessed by the same kind of questionable-looking, graffiti-covered stairwell I’ve come to expect in Thailand. Later on, I sipped cocktails and listened to live jazz at the Sheraton Grande’s Living Room lounge, courtesy of Randy Cannon, an American expat who’s been playing jazz for decades.

Not surprisingly, given that it’s September in Thailand, the skies opened up late in the evening and a torrential downpour rolled through, so I cut my night short, went home, and packed for my flight to Phuket the next day. I enjoyed my time in BKK a lot more than I thought I would (except the weather) and I know I haven’t discovered all the facets of the city yet, so I’m sure I’ll be back soon.

Toward the end of my time in Thailand, I started putting together a rough timeline for each country and fired off an email to my friend Ka-Hing, a former coworker at Riverbed. Ka-Hing is also going through something of a sabbatical and has temporarily moved back to Hong Kong, his birthplace. As expected, he was quite agreeable to getting together while I was in town, but his response also included an interesting bit of information: Andrew, a friend of ours and another former coworker at Riverbed, was kicking around the idea of a trip to Hong Kong and Japan to christen his own newly realized sabbatical. The fact that I was already going and had start and end dates already set served as pretty good motivation for him to buy some plane tickets and join me.

Being first world, Hong Kong is much more expensive than Southeast Asia, so Andrew and I gave ourselves about a week to enjoy it. I was very happy to have a travel buddy for that time, not least of which because the cheapest accommodation we could find was a small hotel room for $100 a night. After being used to guesthouses or cheap hotels at around $20 a night, even $50 a night was a heavy hit.

Almost every day of the next week was spent wandering around some part of the city, sometimes with a destination in mind, sometimes not. Being from San Francisco, we both enjoy walking a lot, so we would often walk until it was time for sustenance, whether that meant food or beer or both. Andrew is also vegetarian, which ended up being a huge blessing, as veggie food in Hong Kong (and Japan, but that comes later) is difficult to come by, requiring a lot of research, searching, and patience. I feel fairly certain that if my travel companion for those two countries wasn’t veggie, he or she would have become pretty annoyed with me pretty quickly.

Chances are that if we weren’t walking, we were taking advantage of Hong Kong’s excellent public transportation, mostly the MTR (their rail system). Andrew had 3G service on his phone, so access to Google Maps was all we needed to easily navigate the city, which certainly speaks volumes about Google Maps and modern technology in general. This also speaks highly of Hong Kong’s transportation systems, which are fast, on-time, and reasonably priced. Even the taxis are strictly regulated to the point of ensuring a consistent experience: all taxis are identical-looking, drivers must give change less than $100 HKD, and customers cannot be refused based on their destination.

My notes to myself for the Hong Kong portion of the trip are basically a laundry list of neighborhoods and tourist sites: Central, Mid-levels (including the world’s longest covered outdoor escalator system), Wan Chai, Kennedy Town, Times Square, Mong Kok, Jordan, Lan Kwai Fong (for lots of nightlife), the Star Ferry, rooftop bars, Tian Tan Buddha, smaller neighborhood temples, a variety of city parks (including an aviary and a museum about teapots), and casual rides on ding dings (double-decker trams somewhat reminiscent of the cable cars in San Francisco).

While wandering through Mong Kok, a neighborhood known for its shopping, we happened upon some (apparent) celebrities in the form of three handsome, almost identical-looking guys in very similar outfits. Whether they were fashion models, a boy band, actors, celebrity triplets, or something else is beyond me, but there was a non-trivial crowd of fans, reporters, and photographers around them. Andrew and I climbed up to the second floor of a nearby mall for a better view and watched for a bit. I still have no idea who these guys were.

After Mong Kok, we took the MTR to Jordan to check out a well-reviewed vegetarian restaurant. As we walked around the neighborhood before dinner, I convinced Andrew to join me for a foot massage in a back-alley, third-floor, also-someone’s-apartment massage shop (are there any other kind?). Initially, the ladies assumed we wanted oil massages and ushered us into the back rooms, disposable mesh underwear in hand. Based on how one of them was dressed, I’m fairly certain that some “extra services” were also available for purchase. After explaining that we just wanted foot massages, the ladies called in some reinforcements and we enjoyed an hour of massage and Hong Kong TV for about $12 a piece. Much more expensive than Southeast Asia, but still a good deal compared to America. In retrospect, I’m pretty sure the ladies were mildly annoyed that we wanted only foot massages.

The restaurant was good and in the traditional Chinese style and we were pleased to see we were the only Westerners in there. In fact, the waitress complimented me on the ability to use chopsticks, so they really must not get a lot of tourists.

Hong Kong is a place with a lot of different photo opportunities and two of my favorite spots were Victoria Peak (at night) and Chi Lin Nunnery. Victoria Peak is a tourist trap for sure and packed with people, but offers up some incredible views of the skyline on both sides of the water. Chi Lin Nunnery is a sprawling complex with temples, statues, rock gardens, bridges, walkways, ponds, and lush plants; like most of the other green spaces in Hong Kong, towering modern buildings in the background make for a classically Asian dichotomy.

On our only Sunday of the trip, Ka-Hing invited me and Andrew to join him for a hiking meetup that was starting in the late morning. After shaking off some mild hangovers, we took the train to Tung Chung, a station very close to the airport popular with outdoor enthusiasts going hiking or biking and shopping enthusiasts going to the mall. We met up with about 15 others and hiked for the rest of the day along the coast of Lantau Island, stopping for a noodle soup lunch in the mid-afternoon. The destination of the hike was Tai O, a small fishing village that has become a tourist destination for locals and foreigners alike. Sometimes referred to as the “Venice of Hong Kong”, its visual attraction comes from its waterways and stilted houses. The hike itself was beautiful and a welcome injection of exercise, but I also really enjoyed chatting with lots of locals all afternoon, most of whom are fluent in English.

Later that day, Andrew and I embarked on an unexpected adventure while in search of some live music. Courtesy of TimeOut Hong Kong, I had found an album release party for Carsick Cars, a Chinese indie rock band. The venue was named Hidden Agenda, which turned out to be an apt name indeed. We took a bus from Wan Chai for about half an hour and were dropped off in a dark, industrial part of the city. After we crossed under the highway and started wandering among closed warehouses and workshops, we noticed a couple was walking towards us. Sensing our confusion, the boy asked us if we were there to see Carsick Cars. After we confirmed, we followed him to one of the many featureless buildings, through an unmarked door into a body shop, and up a yellow steel elevator to the second floor. Once the doors opened, we were greeted by the familiar sight of walls covered in music fliers, teenagers in skinny jeans, and a cheap card table supporting the weight of a cashbox and a pile of paper tickets.

Overall the show was okay; Carsick Cars was good, but one of the opening bands was pretty horrendous. After their set, I told Andrew that I was really impressed… with how three technically proficient musicians could combine to make such terrible music. Luckily patrons of the club could make a “donation” to the venue and receive a free beer in return, being that Hidden Agenda obviously doesn’t have a liquor license. While the music was mostly forgettable, the evening as a whole was one of the most memorable parts of the trip.

My impressions and memories of Hong Kong are very positive. I was (and still am) very impressed with how clean (no spitting!), safe, and well-designed the city is. Public transportation is excellent, the British/Chinese culture is quite interesting, and I didn’t feel claustrophobic, even though Hong Kong is one of the most dense places on the planet. We met a lot of very friendly and interesting people and felt at ease communicating since English is spoken everywhere. Mostly because I’m vegetarian, I’m not really a fan of Chinese food and Hong Kong didn’t do anything to change that, but, like any good global city, there are plenty of other food options available. I feel like Andrew and I hit the pavement pretty hard and I don’t feel the need to go back as a tourist, but if somehow a professional opportunity in Hong Kong came up, I’d be hard-pressed to turn it down.

After a few more days of wandering the neighborhoods and a few more late nights, it was finally time to say goodbye. Ka-Hing joined us for a beer on our last night and luckily one of us remembered to get a photo before Andrew and I left on an early flight to Kyoto the next morning.