Well…. let’s just say being a procrastinator doesn’t bode well for blog output! That’s ok though, I still have plenty to share from 香港 21F in these next four blog posts. If you’re just tuning in after I subscribed you to my life back home after March 2022, welcome! You can (and should probably) read the first few posts about my time in HK in the Hong Kong 21F category if you want the whole story, as this picks up from where I left off there. But, I know this whole thing’s pretty long so don’t worry about it if you don’t have the time. I simply got nostalgic enough to finish out the rest of my adventures so I have a record for myself whenever I become sad. Just FYI all the tiled galleries have funny captions if you click to expand the photos 🙂
Saturday Oct. 16 – Friday Oct. 22
Following the LKF escapade last night, Saturday was comparatively chill—I called up some old high school friends (Ethan, Namjun, and Sandy) in the US and lambasted about how cool it was being in Hong Kong (and how even though I was so geographically close to my friend doing his South Korean military service, I wasn’t able to go visit due to travel restrictions 😓).
Sunday was casual as well; I ran some errands, and took time to visit the Chung Chi College canteen, one I don’t go to often due to its distance down the mountain on this stretched out campus.
Monday meant a quiz for my geography class, one that turned out fairly well, but what was more fun was meeting new local students at our hostel’s annual student orientation. The hostel wardens and tutors gave a dry talk about the unnecessarily strict rules about not being on floors of the opposite gender past 11:30pm (floors are gender-segregated) and stuff like no outside visitors without prior permission (you get the idea), rules in place even during normal years! Regardless, I met three local guys from my floor—Oscar, Anson, and Samson, all of whom knew my apparently famous roommate, Stephen, already. Oscar and Anson also lived literally next door, so it was cool to finally meet my dorm neighbors.
Tuesday had me try out a cheap but fast Japanese chain barbershop called QBHouse that Ivan recommended—for $70 HKD ($10 USD), you truly can’t get a much better deal in a city like HK. Also tried the “Tasty Congee and Wonton” restaurant at Sha Tin.
I had a not-so-refreshing start to my Wednesday morning with a 7am interview with Meta (which I didn’t even pass LOL), and I followed up by attending a cooking class with other fellow international students at CUHK’s gastronomy building (gastronomy—the art of cooking and eating good food!). Bumped into Ivan while walking in (he has class at that building, who knew?), and with generous help from the head chef, cooked some amazing 麻婆豆腐 (Mapo Tofu) for lunch. While there, the conversation somehow turned to the ongoing Chopin Piano Competition, a famous competition held every 5 years in Warsaw, which led to me meeting Pawel the Polish exchange and eventually his roommate, Jason, who is also a pianist. The same night, Jessica arranged a dinner between us and two Korean exchange students, Donghyun and Wooseok. Wooseok would turn out to be one of the most iconic of my friends there, as if you take a look at his foodie instagram, he hit up a new restaurant seemingly every day in Hong Kong, and not just some upscale mall rice noodle shop, his most frequent visits were to the uber-authentic ones that only spoke Cantonese. I mean, I think he’d probably learned enough Cantonese to hold a basic conversation just from visiting local restaurants by the end of the exchange. Just wow.
In my opinion, some of the best times I’ve had with friends have just been chilling and chatting about random stuff and life, especially when they bring new perspectives and are from different backgrounds. That night, I got treated to such an experience after my roommate came back, and we struck up a conversation about Hong Kong culture & things to do that lasted until 5 am. Thanks for filling my HK bucket list with more stuff! Late night honest hours are great for that kind of stuff.
Of course, given those circumstances, I woke up pretty late on Thursday and missed my two morning classes, which gave me extra time to prepare for my midterm for Environmental Engineering that night (and which I would eventually ace, only missing a single point for missing units on one question ¯\_(ツ)_/¯).
I forget if I’ve explained it before, but CUHK schedules are not standardized into periods like Dartmouth’s, meaning that if I so chose (and I did), we could make it so we only have class Monday-Thursday. Some people, like Willie, even got to have Mondays and Fridays without class. So, I went with Wooseok to another “study abroad” fair this Friday morning to hand out flyers to local students, and following that, ended up with him, Stefan, and two others (Sandi and a European) at an afternoon tea time chat with the heads of the CUHK Office of Academic Links (OAL, their equivalent to the Guarini Institute), Louis Wong and Shally Fan. An added bonus of the chat was getting to have some 5-star dim sum ordered from the nearby Hyatt Regency! The talk was mostly about how we were doing and how the exchange program is faring now under HK’s zero-COVID bubble restrictions. Apparently, the OAL used to sponsor an arrival dinner and even bussed group outings of all 700+ exchange students to various places in HK. Of course, for our term of only 200+ exchangees, they weren’t able to give that experience, instead, allowing us to explore HK on our own terms. They also told us about the 2019 protests at CUHK campus and how that year’s exchange class had to be evacuated in early November, which I heard a little bit about from my talks with previous Dartmouth exchangees.
In the evening, I went to “Malaysian Cultural Night”, a small gathering hosted by the Malaysian Student’s Association on campus. I met Wei Xuan there, who the observant may notice is the same man I met last Wednesday in my Algorithms class! Also present were Daiki, a Japanese exchangee, and Quentin, a French exchangee. We learned how to play Mancala and sang Mandopop with the prospect of winning some Heong Peng (insanely tasty Malaysian pastry snack).
Saturday Oct. 23: Ocean Park
Ocean Park is an amusement park on the south side of Hong Kong island. We had been planning to go for quite some time with a ragtag group of various exchangees, and as of this morning, only three people were confirmed—I met Jessica and Tyler at the MTR station, but since he had only gotten like 3 hours of sleep, we rang up Willie to take his ticket and she just so happened to be free today! So, spared from another day of exhaustion, Tyler went back to sleep and Willie came with us. We got to go on the South Island MTR line, the first time we’d been on an automated MTR line, finally arriving at the park after three transfer stations. And since the park had many of its Halloween decorations up for the coming weekend, we decided to stay all the way until nighttime. I’ll let the pictures do the rest of the talking!
Sunday Oct. 24 – Friday Oct. 29
Faced with many recommendations to try the “Be The Light” canteen at the remote lands of C. W. Chu College, I went and had some Taiwanese beef noodles and Lemon Grass Jelly Ice Tea with Kelly, Willie, and Matt. I guess a good canteen is necessary to entice the residents of the distant C. W. Chu college with at least some reason to be there. I also went back to my uncle’s place to have dinner with the newly-thinned family of three, as only him and two cousins remain after my aunt sent off cousin #2 to boarding school in Hangzhou. We ate at the “Nonsense Restaurant and Bar”, one that Shuting’s picky palette could finally tolerate, with Michelin Star-level dessert to boot.
Monday brought me back to class and into the Human Library for round two. This time, with familiarity on our side, we discussed more cultural background topics (NYC Subway Performers? Public transit culture, local holidays and customs, and urban safety) and we even found out that many of the locals would be going on exchange for 22W. After classes, I took time to visit the Chung Chi Orchestra (formerly the Chinese University Orchestra) by sitting in at one of their rehearsals. Given pandemic restrictions, the wind section actually sat out in the audience, heavily spaced out, which made for an interesting rehearsal dynamic by them having to look at the conductor’s back while playing. However, by that time of night, most of the canteens on campus were already closed (no late night, sad), so I took the MTR to Sha Tin to grab some shake shack before I went to bed.
Tuesday is always a light day for classes, so I grabbed breakfast with Willie and Carrie at LWS before heading up to do homework for the rest of the day. For dinner, I met the Japanese exchange student I met at Malaysian Cultural Night, Daiki, who despite living close by in New Asia college, had never gone to the LWS canteen before so I ordered for him.
More class, more homework. Grabbed brunch with Willie at the Ben Franklin coffee corner canteen at our student center, one of the few one on one meals I had throughout the term (despite me doing so very often at Dartmouth). Got the chance to be in the practice room again in the afternoon, before grabbing dinner with some people I saw in the LWS canteen. Lately, we noticed that someone has been using TP instead of a towel after showering in our fifth floor’s bathoom. When I got up to our floor that evening, everyone on the floor was crowding around the bathroom ready to pounce on who we suspected was leaving the TP in the shower after, and finally publicly shamed him enough to get him to stop.
Thursday morning, I woke up much earlier than usual to grab breakfast with Jims at the Med Center canteen, one of the local students I met through the human library. he’s a super cool environmental engineering major, even though he says he wants to be a pilot after he graduates. During the afternoon, I took my algorithms midterm, and even though it was low stakes since my classes are pass/fail, I still seem to have done pretty well. Afterwards, I checked out some of the PCs with super wide monitors they have in the main library put for grabbing afternoon tea at LWS and preparing to go into Central to meet a recent Dartmouth alum. It was a very surreal dinner getting to meet Revant Ranjan ‘21, basically the only other Dartmouth affiliated person close to my age in Hong Kong at the time. He was busy for a bit before I got there, so he suggested I visit the Don Don Donki store near our meeting spot, and now I have permanently engrained their theme song in my brain. We first hit up the crazy Halloween street market nearby before stopping at a Sicilian restaurant for dinner. We caught up on campus life, what he did while he was there, and at the million mutual friends that we had on campus while getting a fancy Italian dinner on his dime in Central. He was actually supposed to go directly to Tokyo when starting his new job, but since Japan still wasn’t issuing visas to Americans at the time, he worked with the Hong Kong branch of UBS while waiting for Japan to open. Before hopping back on the MTR home, he grabbed me some Boba and walked around Central. In a city of 7 million, I happened to bump into Kaya, another CUHK exchange student, in the line waiting for the Kwun Tong line (green train). At Kowloon Tong station, we needed to transfer to the East Rail line, and we saw a train pull in just as we pulled into the station too. We rush into that train right before the doors close and prematurely celebrate, thinking we had made it without needing to wait another few minutes, when suddenly, realization dawned on us that we had instead rushed onto the green line train going the opposite direction instead of the blue line one platform above. She was a little tipsy and I was on very little sleep, so I guess this wasn’t unexpected. I am proud to say though that was the only time I ever got on an unintended train without looking at it. (Consider our pinky promise to keep this between us broken, Kaya :P). Also some girl shushed us for talking too loud at 10pm on the bus ride back to our dorm… what the heck man…
My Fridays without classes are pulling in clutch again as I venture out with Ivan, Fendi, Carrie, and Tyler to the HK Art Museum this morning. We indulge in some artsy photos while there, and afterwords, hit up a Vietnamese restaurant in a mall in TST, where Ivan and I were subsequently clowned for liking the supposed substandard food there, according to our local Viet friend, Tyler. (This would ultimately be the start of Ivan’s redemption arc as his friends began taking him out on food tours for the rest of the semester). Hey, not our fault that we grew up in culture deserts in the Midwest while the rest of these city folk ate good. We spent some time shopping in that mall afterwards, where I bought some new Nike shoes and long sleeves, marking the first time that I ever bought clothes for myself (as opposed to my mom always buying them for me without my input). On the way back to CUHK, we stop for dinner at a Thai restaurant in Sha Tin, getting purple rice as a novelty dish.
Saturday, Sunday: Oct. 30 – 31
Scary evening, and not just because of Halloween celebrations going on.
Another late start to the day as I recover from a big day out yesterday. I swear I will be the healthiest I’ve ever been with the number of days I’ve had more than 10,000 steps. I grab a short afternoon snack in LWS Café Tolo before I put on half of my Halloween costume and headed back to my uncle’s place on the MTR. There, I meet my cousin, Shuting, and grab a ratchet screw for my mechanic costume before we head to central to meet my roommate, Stephen, and Jessica for dinner at Honbo, supposedly “the tastiest burger joint in Hong Kong” according to Stephen. It was kind of a hole in the wall place so after we taxied close by, we walked around a bit before getting there (but we were still first out of everyone). Once Stephen arrived, we grabbed a seat and ordered for ourselves and Jessica since she was going to be late, and I do have to agree, Stephen was right that it was the tastiest burger I had eaten in Hong Kong—so far. Afterwards, the four of us walked around Wan Chai searching for a Boba shop until we finally found one that was open before Steven departed. The remaining three of us went to the International Finance Center (IFC) open rooftop to meet the rest of our friends for some pregaming before our planned Halloween LKF fun night.
It was here that, unbeknownst to me, things would begin to go awry. While playing some drinking games with soju, she would take rather large swigs, and as we were wrapping up, I went to use the restroom. Since the clubs at LKF don’t let you bring in your own alcohol, we were planning to throw the rest of our Soju away but not wanting to waste it, she took and downed the rest of her bottle of Soju as well as another unopened bottle (for those that aren’t familiar, that’s like 8 standard drinks over the course of two hours or so). We made our way over to LKF on foot, where due to the Halloween weekend, there was, as the Chinese saying goes, 人山人海 (mountains and seas of people). The entrance to the nightlife district (4-5 entire blocks) was cordoned with police officers doing crowd management, having all of us walk back and forth along the queues they had laid out, and the whole way there, we were shoulder to shoulder with the other half million people in costumes trying to barge in to the clubs that evening. It was in this line that my cousin began to stumble, all the while being on the phone with her worried boyfriend who was encouraging to go home for the night. Deciding that was a good course of action, I told the rest of the group that I was going to take my cousin back home, and I subsequently led her out of the line and into the exit line that went back to the MTR station. At this point, she was already babbling nonsense and afterwords told me she didn’t remember anything from this point forward. We had to rest multiple times along the short walk back to the station, only being able to walk with help. In the station, she needed to use the restroom, so I brought her to one, and being in the tipsy state that I was, let her walk in with her purse. When she came out, it didn’t cross my mind that she didn’t have her purse on her (luckily, she had given her phone to me and showed me her lock earlier), so we walked to the train platform and hopped on the first train there. Some kind folks vacated their seats for us, but halfway to our first transfer stop, she hurled with her mask still on. With the help of some bystanders handing me napkins, I cleaned her up as best as I could and helped her off the train at our stop. On the escalator up from the platform, she threw up a second time, and after stepping off, collapsed to the ground, unable to walk anymore. At this point, I was absolutely freaking out and couldn’t handle it anymore, calling over the station manager to help call an ambulance. The paramedics came down the elevator with a gurney, and I followed them up into the ambulance, where they began pestering me about where her Hong Kong ID was (it was in her purse, back in the bathroom in Central station where she left it). They dropped us off at the nearest public hospital, where her boyfriend met us after I called him while on the ambulance. We subsequently waited four hours before she was seen by someone, even though she was marked as triage—the waiting room was absolutely packed, even at 4 AM when she was eventually seen. She eventually slept it off during that time and was conscious when the doc saw her, so we were immediately discharged. We found a taxi to take us back to our apartment, where I finally was able to shower off the puke and sleep at 6 AM.
I woke up the afternoon of the following day to my cousin telling me that some good Samaritan had found her purse, but without any money in her wallet anymore. Following a simple dinner of steamed buns, I returned to CUHK Campus, buying tomorrow’s breakfast along the way and doing my laundry immediately after getting back. As fate would have it, tonight was the first night that I called Ethan Chen 24, having been introduced to him by a mutual friend, Jeff, due to his shared interest in attending the CUHK exchange program—perfect timing, as I got to divulge the details of my two months in Hong Kong so far (minus the events of the previous evening). Luckily, I would not have any more nights in Hong Kong as wild as that one, despite many that were equally fun.
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