Sino Travel Blog 2017: Taipei

So I started writing this like December 2017 and it's never going to be finished so i'll just post it here lol. Oops. 

After the claustrophobic clutter of Hong Kong, Taipei, with its wide roads and low buildings, came as a relief. We got off our China Airlines flight, which, despite being only a little longer than an hour, had a ton of movies––we were able to introduce Blaise to Moonlight––and took the commuter MRT into town, getting of at Ximen station, right next to a vibrant pedestrian shopping district called Ximending. Meander Hostel, where we stayed, was at the very other end of Chengdu Road, a long strip lined on both sides by shops, cafés, and cinemas. Throughout the week that we stayed in Taipei, we learned to walk briskly and dodge the groups of young people chatting around street stalls. We often passed a New Balance flagship store and would hover to gaze admiringly at the blown-up photos of glamorous people wearing sensible but cool sneakers by the window, even going inside a few times to check out the shoes, until eventually I gave in and purchased a white pair that was on sale. It was too pure in color, however, to wear, so I wrapped them up in plastic bags and shoved them to the bottom of my backpack, where they took up quite a large amount of space, waiting for the day to arrive when they could prove their worth...


We'd originally booked a 4-person room with an en-suite bathroom (yay!), but since Yasmin wasn't able to make it, we had to agree to let a stranger stay in the fourth bed if needed. The first few nights, however, it remained unoccupied. We dumped our stuff on the bunk beds and sat under the air conditioning for a while, relishing the cool breeze. Taiwan may be less dense in population compared to Hong Kong, but it wasn't any less humid. It became a running joke to sigh in contentment and say, "So this is the breeze that Kevin was talking about in that beach scene in Moonlight..." every time we walked past a storefront that was blasting its AC out onto the street.

That first evening, we had what might have been the best meal of the entire trip: an unassuming Sichuanese restaurant tucked away in a side street off Chengdu Road, where a huge pot of rice, unlimited tea, a cold appetizer, and five dishes cost a tight $900 NTD... 30CHF! The price of a single bowl of noodles in Switzerland! And best of all was how much Blaise and Seb enjoyed it. We picked up some bubble tea, naturally––we were in its homeland, after all––and waddled over to Ximending, where we wandered around its labyrinth-like streets, getting lost in the LED lights, stinky tofu smells, and racks and racks of fidget spinners on sale.




The hostel did free breakfast every morning, so we resolved to get up at human hours this time round. The next day, we helped ourselves to peanut butter on toast and green tea at 9am and got ready for the day ahead, but Blaise promptly went back to bed and refused to budge. After many attempts at persuasion, Seb and I left him behind and ambled towards the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall under a blazing mid-afternoon heat. Despite the gray clouds in the sky, I could feel every individual ray of sunlight that beat down upon my skin.

After a photo-op on Liberty Square, we climbed the stairs to enter the cavernous hall, thinking it would be cooler. It wasn't much better, but at least we got to see the changing of the guards. I wondered how these guards managed to maintain absolute stillness while in full military gear. I knew that they were boiling––they needed a man to come and dab the sweat off their cheeks before performing the changing ceremony. The actual ceremony involved a lot of musket-waving and heel-clicking––each little noise that they made in unison reverberated across the entire silent hall. In front of Seb and I were two Taiwanese-American kids brought here by their father and grandfather who stood fidgeting impatiently. I wondered if they visited often, or if this trip would become a major component of their identity crises in the future. I would see quite a few diasporic children while travelling, including a boy and a girl at the Youjian Pingyao performance in Shanxi whose mother needed to constantly whisper them translations, and a pair of mixed teenage sisters who threw each other conspiratorial looks at the Muslim Quarter in Xi'an. I don't even remember how I felt about these visits when I was a small child, though I probably didn't appreciate them all that much, since they mostly consisted of talking to family members I didn't recognise, watching television, and being teased for my bad Chinese. Eventually I developed a lot of diaspora angst, which was one of the initial reasons why I'd planned this trip, although I was now more self-aware. I wondered if, in ten years' time, these little boys would look back at that moment in the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall and also feel nostalgia for a home that both was, and wasn't, theirs.

Outside, there were troupes of dancers and drummers rehearsing for some kind of event. Seb and I sat on the steps of the National Theatre (left in photo above) to watch the uniformed performers, and talked about a film idea we had: someone who works in a small photo-developing store who discovers stories hidden in other people's photographs. 

We walked to the 228 Peace Park (and telling Seb the, like, three things I know about that event) and at some point we must've picked up Blaise –– I don't remember. I flipped through the journal that I tried to keep this summer but I only really wrote on Hong Kong, and stopped when we arrived in Taipei, apart from a brief bit on the last day (more on that later...) I stopped doing a lot of things a week into the trip, such as brushing my hair. I got really tangly and plasticky because I didn't bring conditioner, so I would basically just wash it, let it air dry, and then throw it back into the ponytail that permanently hung out of the hole on the back of my baseball cap. I'd also long given up on makeup: the eyeliner would immediately melt in the heat and print a circle under my eyes, making me look like I'd come from the early-2000s emo scene. And I learned that there was no point in trying to avoid mosquitos. I diligently spread large quantities of anti-itch cream on my bites and sprayed lemony chemicals all over myself every morning, but it didn't stop a dozen bites from appearing every day, some swelling into astonishing proportions. I gave in to my primal urges and scratched them until they broke, leaving scabs on my arms and legs. This was a really terrible idea, because now, six months later, I still have faint scars that I fear shall never disappear. Don't scratch your bites, kids.

I also eventually gave up on this log, so know that there were many, many unrecorded ones, too.

The hostel was one of those really well-organised ones where they have events every day that you can join for free. The first night that we were there, one of the guests, who was a trainee hairstylist, was cutting hair in exchange for "stories". Seb really wanted to do it, but the person in front of us was waiting too long, so eventually we left. That second evening, Bonnie, one of the staff members, took a group of us to climb Elephant Mountain on the southeastern edge of the city. The climb was, frankly, one of the most difficult physical exercises I've ever had to do. Blaise and Seb quickly disappeared ahead, and I struggled to climb the individual stone steps up, feeling pressure both to keep up and to not block the people behind me. Every time I thought we were almost at the top, I would glimpse yet another row of stairs. I had to grip the filthy, paint-chipped banisters for support, which was disgusting. The copious amounts of sweat I was producing mixed in with the humidity in the air, making me feel like I was wearing a bodysuit made of pure moisture. I could feel it in my ears. I feel like that was when the floodgates of my sweat glands were pushed open––for the rest of the summer, I would be constantly mocked for having "a lake down my back" and "literal drops of water on my neck". On that fateful evening, Bonnie gave me tissues with which to physically wipe my sweat as a reward for reaching the top... and I would never be the same again.


The view, though, was worth it. We arrived just in time to watch the sun slowly set in the west, creating a gorgeous silhouette of the Taipei skyline, including the Taipei 101 building, with its joints of metal-and-glass bamboo (eight of them, naturally!). The viewing platform had a circular bench on which you could sit, and God did I want to sit, but it turned out that the tree in the middle of the circle was full of ants. So we stood, and watched the pink glow of the sky flush up Seb's face as he wore a pink hat, a pink shirt, and ate strawberry-flavored Pocky. Truly a Wes Anderson moment.

Touching the moss on the rocks.

The next day was spent doing what I did best on this trip: racking up those steps on Wechat. (My record was ~37'000 in Nanjing!) We navigated Taipei with our feet, checking out everything from the Huashan 1914 Creative Park (hipster heaven) to Zhongshan Park. Tsai Ing-wen, if you're reading this: please put more benches and garbage bins in Taipei, please. Sincerely, teenagers who walked for a very long time while holding our trash in our hands and with no rest.

We spent a great part of the afternoon looking for the Qi Dong Poetry Salon, which we thought was a poetry-themed tearoom/café.

The Google Street View for this quartier is actually bringing back all the war flashbacks... I even recognise some of these signs!

Following the directions given to me by Baidu Maps, we spun round and round the tiny lanes of Qidong street, finding only an empty playground, gray residential apartments, and worn-looking small businesses. I thought I was hallucinating: surely the Poetry Salon was right where we were standing! Why couldn't we see it? Had it been shut down? There was a traditional-looking house to our left, and I peered at the brochures in the glass case on the wall, trying to understand what this establishment was. It looked like some kind of museum or temple. We stepped inside, into a shushed hallway that required us to take our shoes off. Beyond the doorway, there were tatami mats and shadows of people walking around somewhere far off. Was this the Qi Dong Poetry Salon? I still didn't understand this building's function. A paragraph seemed to invite us to go inside for tea. Was it free? I was confused. Seb and Blaise knew nothing, of course. We hurried out before someone could ask us if we needed any help. I was convinced that the Poetry Salon was still out there, somewhere, waiting for us. It taunted me. It called me a coward for not being able to find it. I could feel my friends getting annoyed, though, and we were hot and thirsty, so we adjusted our search parameters to "anything with air conditioning". We ended up going into a café where I had a really awkward conversation with the barista because I misunderstood a quickfire "eat in or take out?" as "you're not allowed to bring in that milk tea that you bought from a different store". (After having spent the week in Hong Kong speaking English––terrified of offending locals by speaking Mandarin to them and knowing no Cantonese except m goi––I was still getting used to the fact that I could actually speak freely to people in Taipei. But who am I kidding? My Mandarin sucks.) We sat down, had some drinks and food, used the toilet, and played around with creating the Vertigo Effect on our phones. After spending enough time inside to feel guilty about not drinking in the city, we set off again, but not before taking some really cool selfies in one of the mirrors that they use to let drivers see around a corner.

We picked up some takeaway dumplings (the ladies asked me how many dumplings I wanted, but for some reason I thought they'd said how many grams... a fumbling exchange ensued where I became more and more embarrassed, but we did end up with a box of 15, which the ladies insisted weren't enough for all three of us. I reassured them that it was only for a snack) and walked down Zhongxiao East Road––the long horizontal line that cuts across all of Taipei, dividing it into two––window shopping until nightfall.

I think this was the day that we visited the Shilin Night Market, one of the places that, to this day, makes me "that annoying girl who won't stop talking about that time she went traveling in Asia". Yet, how could I not? A street full of mouth-watering smells and delightful sights. I can still remember the warm orange glow of the street stalls selling lamb skewers, Xinjiang wraps, Taiwanese sausages (Ô, l'amour de ma vie, les saucisses taïwanaises! Si grasses, si douces, si sucrées! Si dégueulasses! Mais tellement bons...!), seafood of all kinds, cold noodles, stinky tofu, Korean fried chicken, and––and––and––! Oh, my!!! While Seb and I walked around eating wonderful cold noodles off paper plates, Blaise dragged me to a stall that only sold chicken and asked me to translate the menu. After rattling off each item, he reluctantly chose the chicken thigh filled with rice. It was so spicy that tears filled his eyes, but he second he finished it, he ran back to buy a second one. If I was a street stall owner, this sight of a white guy running back to my stand crying––willing to suffer to enjoy my food––would bring me so much joy. Another stall helped us get rid of our rubbish (again, President Tsai: please put more bins in the streets!) while blasting Guan Zhe's 想你的夜, an absolutely iconic song that is one of those angsty C-pop ballads that make me miss my ex even though I don't have an ex.

After stuffing ourselves, we strolled into a clothing shop that sold really cool Instagrammy stuff like DHL T-shirts, flannels, and graphic tees (including one of FKA Twigs). While Seb and Blaise pored through the selection, I figured I could get the same stuff off Taobao anyway, so I wandered around and danced to the music being played on the speakers. The shop assistant was really nice, complimenting my outfit (a white sports polo paired with pink H&M sweat shorts, which, along with the permanent fixtures that were my cap and sneakers, made me look like a tennis player). He told me I had really cool style, and admired my confidence and lack of self-consciousness because he saw me dancing around. (And this is why summers are amazing! I'm writing this in December right now, and I would never have this kind of confidence in cold weather.) Likely assuming that I was Blaise and Seb's Taiwanese friend, he asked me where they were from, and when I replied, he said, "Oh. They're so shuai!"

The staff at the baseball cap store in Ximending were also super friendly. We'd walked past it in the first evening and decided to get custom embroidered hats, but it took us a while, the night after Shilin, to find it again. Each of us was convinced that we had the best combination of directional instinct and photographic memory, but ultimately I have no idea how we managed to come across it. I'm convinced that Ximending's side streets are magical, and shuffle around every night, with some shops being at times revealed or concealed, and that we simply didn't have the enchanted map. A few months previously, Seb and I had started planning potentially getting tattoos of minimalist Rothkos, but in Taipei we settled for hats. We each picked out a Rothko we liked, and I also designed a cap depicting a Swisscom photobooth for Gabriel. There was a fat guy dressed like a hypebeast and a girl who was the definition of "goth gf": all-black with silver chains and a sharp bob, but with the kindest demeanor and friendliest smile. They helped us finalise our design, and sweetly made us part with quite a lot of cash. The hats, when we picked them up a few days later, didn't turn out exactly as expected, with Seb's graphic looking more like a ribosome than was desired, but it wasn't really their fault.

With mango shaved ice! 

Blaise left halfway through the Taiwan stay. He had a flight in the morning got up at around 8 to take a taxi; I remained asleep while he snuck away. By the time I woke up at 11am, his bed was empty. "Why didn't you wake me up?" I asked Seb, feeling horrible. He replied, "I thought that if you woke up early you'd want to go outside. I wanted to stay in bed." That was that. The evening before he left, we deviated from our usual straight-line route from Ximen station to our hostel by visiting the Cinema Park, of which we knew nothing apart from its cool intriguing name. We were delightfully surprised by the graffiti everywhere. There was a giant painting of two herons on the side of a building. A girl was dancing in front of a camera fixed onto a tripod. After wandering around for a while, we sat down on the pavement next to the park itself, which was all concrete and included some young people wearing Thrasher and fishnets teaching themselves how to skate, which was adorable. This one guy kept going around doing tricks –– he obviously thought he was talented. Another girl was wobbling. The other half of the park was taken up by a huge group of teenagers wearing matching athletic wear and orange T-shirts: they were rehearsing for some kind of dance competition. They moved in almost-perfect synchronisation, with a few people at the front of the group directing the sharp, confident poses that they were striking. Another week and they'd nail it. Off to the side, some members were taking breaks, drinking water and chatting with their friends. We sat there on the (ant-infested, I worried) concrete and listened to the music being blasted for what seemed like an hour, staring at nothing and everything. In that moment, as scratched the massive mosquito bite on my wrist and I let the dusk take me, I felt like a true flâneur.

The day that Blaise left, Seb and I finally got to visit the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA). We had previously tried to go on a Monday when it was closed, and had instead spent some time in the tiny tea shop nearby where Blaise bought some tea for his mom. They only had one exhibit currently on –– another was being installed –– about the artist's father who would peel off spam adverts in the streets and fold them into origami boxes. I had to dissuade Seb from trying to shoplift from the museum shop. Then, bubble tea in hand, we decided to follow the path of a free walking tour that we were too cheap to take. All the while developing a slight addiction to whistling. It started out with me showing Seb Shostakovich's Jazz Waltz No. 2, which I had recently discovered, while sitting on a bench in Da'an. The tune soon became stuck in our heads (although I could never quite remember the whole thing) so we would belt it out, with some short breaks to pretend that we were on the walking tour by making up explanations for the history of the city. Seb is a far better whistler than I; he can reach all the high notes in Chopin's Nocturne No. 2. The route took us past the Taipei Grand Mosque, which I hadn't known existed, and into the Qingtian neighborhood full of little restaurants and cute stores. We bought some xiaolongbao to-go and sat down in a small park to eat it. That was the best xiaolongbao I had ever had: not too much soup, with the perfect sauce dip. Even after the time I spent in Nanjing and Shanghai, no other xiaolongbao would ever taste as good. There was a big tree with yellowing leaves so I took one to use as a fan. It was triple the size of my head. When we returned to the hostel, Bonnie let us borrow a permanent marker to draw Blaise's face on it. Thus Blaise was easily replaced.

The next day saw me and Seb going to the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, a massive, modern block of white in the north of the city. Outside there was an installation that featured white hammock-like structures and cool fog that would be sprayed out every once in a while. Seb and I stayed there to enjoy the respite from the heat. Tiny droplets of water latched themselves onto Seb's leg hair and glistened in the sunlight. Inside was a typical modern art museum with expansive spaces and interesting large-scale multimedia installations. We stayed inside a dark room with projections of blue waves for a while, listening to the sound of the ocean. We also visited the Story Museum nearby, which contained sketches of how Taipei used to look compared to now. It had a small swing set in a park and we sat there talking until our shadows got longer. That evening, we went to a restaurant that my Tumblr friend recommended. It had a queue around the block and a lady was going around giving us laminated menus. We ordered the famous eel rice, as well as some tempura, and were ushered into the busy room, where we sat at a large table facing some random girls. The tea was bottomless; all we had to do was go and get it from a giant dispenser and bring the boiling hot beverage across the crowded restaurant without being knocked over. It was delicious and totally worth it. It's called Hizenya.

The next day, something happened that I still talk about a lot. We had rather lazily wandered around Taipei and had decided to visit a cat café –– I no longer remember where it was, but we then had the brilliant idea of walking back to our hostel by following the river. Seb wanted to use a bike-sharing app; I didn't. We figured it would be nice to see the scenery. I held an empty bubble tea cup in a plastic bag and waited for a trash can to appear. We walked, and walked, and talked. We took photos. We played music out loud –– everything from Hotel California to Swan Lake. We got thirstier, but there was nothing to drink. We used porta-potties. Our legs began to ache, but we couldn't stop. We could only walk. There was only forwards. When we finally got to the point where Google Maps was telling us to turn east back to Chengdu Road, there was actually a giant wall. We had to cross busy traffic and go up some stairs in order to bypass the wall; beyond it, it was rush hour and a constant, endless stream of scooter drivers blocked us from being able to cross the road. 

Arriving at Meander was bliss. We immediately rushed to the water fountain and proceeded to chug from the glass. 

Sino Travel Blog 2017: Hong Kong

This summer after graduating from high school I embarked upon a two-month trip across Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland China. I'd originally planned on posting on this now-rather dusty blog daily during the trip, but this proved to be an incredibly arduous task, impossible to fit between enjoying marvellously cheap food, snoozing, and posting on Instagram every day (with, yes, an official hashtag: #GVA2CHN2k17. We are millennials, after all.)

So now, almost three months after returning from China, having spent idyllic weeks lying around watching movies before moving to Oxford, where I've now been for more than a month (time flies when you've got weekly reading lists to complete!), aided by photos I snapped along the way, I will finally begin to recount #GVA2CHN2k17.

First stop: Hong Kong...

Day One: June 15/16

Our flight to Hong Kong left at 3pm, so I spent the morning packing my €30 Amazon hiker backpack. I thought it would be absolutely full, but it turns out that half a dozen white T-shirts and H&M shorts, flip flops, a Spartan toiletry set (toothbrush, toothpaste, towels, and a Lush solid shampoo that would cause me some trouble later), a 10-year-old Sony digital camera, my iPad, and a bag full of chargers doesn't really take up that much space. I threw in some eyeliner and the backpack ended up weighing a little more than 8kg –– impressive, for two months. Blaise, on the other hand, brought a 19kg bag for a two week trip. Life is hard when you wanna look good on vacation...

With a stopover in Dubai, where Blaise nonchalantly purchased a pastel-colored Swatch and we sat down to catch up –– we hadn't really talked in the past year apart from bored back-and-forths in TOK –– we landed in Hong Kong in the late afternoon. After an hour or so spent moving from one sterile, air-conditioned environment to another, wrung out from economy class seats and back-to-back movies, we emerged from the Prince Edward MTR stop into an absolute cacophony of neon signs piled up one on top of another clamoring for space, and the frantic beeping sounds of crosswalk lights, and throngs of people huddled under umbrellas as if blocking the rain from above would protect them from the insurmountable humidity that slithered past the narrow streets and grimy balconies to clamber into our rolled-up sweatpants. 

Our hostel was Wontonmeen, which in any other circumstance would be deemed sad, damp, and small, but because it was joined to an organic coffeeshop and was frequented by hipsters such as Mark, the harem pants-wearing industrial design intern, was instead "cool" and "edgy". It had one large room with ten bunk beds, three toilets, two showers, a washing machine we weren't allowed to use, a common room that was actually outside and was filled with potted plants, a drying rack full of clothes, and a neon sign that spelled out HONG KONG (see above), a full-length mirror, a shoe rack, powerful air-conditioning, and an extremely kind, artsy thirty-eight-year-old lady for an owner. Blaise and I dropped our bags onto our bunks and set off to explore Mong Kok.

Eight Pearls Food Products

Day Two: June 17

The next day was probably one of the most eventful ones of the entire two-month trip. My friend Ariel, whom I'd met the previous summer at Harvard Summer School, met us in the morning, along with her friend Jen, who studies Film and Philosophy at HKU, and Jen's friend Jair, who studies Linguistics and East Asian Studies at McGill and had recently completed his year abroad, and we got breakfast at a joint with a queue snaking around the block and grumpy waitstaff who barked harsh questions at us in Cantonese. The food was amazing: a curious East-West fusion that consisted of macaroni and sliced ham in chicken soup, with scrambled eggs on toast and yuenyeung: half milk tea, half coffee. I still think about that meal to this day. 

Ariel in her natural environment (water... get it?)

Next we took the ferry from Tsim Sha Tsui to Hong Kong Island. The ubiquitous rain covered the view with a thin fog.

Question: What else did we do on that day? 

Choose from this list of possible answers: 

A) Visited Chungking Mansions (for about two minutes)

B) Purchased flowers from an old woman in the IFC mall that smelled strong, sweet, and sticky, like pineapples

C) Got sour plum juice (酸梅汤) and sugarcane tea

D) Visited a store called GOD that sold household things like teapots and wallets with cool Hong Kong designs

E) Went to a building full of small independent design stores with expensive tchotchkes

F) Rode a streetcar

G) Went to a typical mall in Mong Kok

H) Had a waffle with spicy Korean chicken on it

I) Had curry fishballs from a street stall

J) Visited Man Mo Temple and paid our respects

K) Got caught in torrential rain

L) All of the above

Solution: L, of course.

Ariel had a sore throat, so she purchased some remedial herbal tea from this stall in Mong Kok.

After a long, exhausting day, Blaise and I squelched back to the hostel in our wet shoes. We were surprised by how well we were holding up against jetlag. Setting the alarm for 9am, we went to sleep.

Day Three: June 18

We woke up at noon. Oops.

Blaise and I took the tram up the steep, steep hill to Victoria Peak, paying using our Octopus cards instead of purchasing a ticket, which is much more expensive! It was still shrouded in fog, and when we went onto the balcony, it looked as though we were looking out onto oblivion.

Soon the fog cleared a little, and from it emerged that legendary skyline.

Being cheapskates, we descended from Victoria Peak by foot, following winding paths through the forest. After a while, these turned into steep roads with minimal sidewalks that took a toll on our knees. I was wearing flip-flops because my sneakers were still wet from the previous day's thunderstorm, and Blaise's heel was developing a blister. We slid into the nearest sit-down place, which turned out to be an overpriced American-style diner for hipster expats. A white guy on another table was there with his adorable pug. The coleslaw was too oniony.

We chatted and wandered around the streets of Hong Kong island until night fell, then went home.

Day Four: June 19

I woke up with disintegrating cuticles, probably as a result of the change in environment –– Blaise's face was shedding dry skin. I wrapped up my fingertips with band-aids to stop myself picking at them, and we set off. It was noon by then, but we chalked it up to jetlag. We weren't too worried, because our friend Seb was in the air and due to land in Hong Kong in the afternoon, and that was all that mattered. Seb had been working at a conference in the ILO for two weeks, so hadn't been able to join us at the beginning. 

Thus the trio for 'phase one' of the China trip was completed. We were originally supposed to be four –– the four students who made up the most fun table in Year 11 Spanish –– but unfortunately Yasmin wasn't able to make it. We missed her dearly!

Blaise and I killed time munching baozi at Kowloon Park, visiting a small museum, and checking out Canton Road and the waterfront at Tsim Sha Tsui again, before making our way back to the airport. 

Referencing Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters at MUJI.

We checked Seb into the hostel too and went out for a walk around Kowloon. It started raining again, and as we wandered past crowds of bobbing umbrellas, Blaise fell in love with the 7-Eleven umbrella that some people were toting around, so we walked around, checking each store location, until we found him one.

We ended up in Fa Hui Park and its empty sports court whose shallow puddles glinted under the lamps. Following near-empty streets and going out of our way to climb overpasses, we returned to our hostel via the flower market. 

Day Five: June 20

Woke up at noon again. It was becoming more and more difficult to make a good excuse for this, and it would become an awful habit for the next two weeks. :( 

Had dim sum at a nearby place called Ming Dim Sum. We queued for around 15 minutes in the rain, but it was totally worth it for the grilled wonton, the pork and century egg congee, the cheung fan, the chicken rice wrapped in lotus leaves, and of course, the beautiful white, fluffy char siu buns that were as soft as clouds and as sweet as a kiss. The best feeling in the world is introducing your friends to something you love and seeing them love it too. Nursing our food babies, we set off for the afternoon.

We took the gondolas on Ngong Ping Island to see the Big Buddha. It being typhoon season, the weather was still very overcast, and we were initially hesitant about spending money on the télécabines if we weren't even able to enjoy the view. We hadn't considered that the view might be enhanced by the fog.

We lurched forward slowly, passing murky waters, construction projects, and lush green foliage. Ahead was absolute nothingness –– cue that track off the Interstellar soundtrack that makes you feel like the only living being in the universe. 

Up at the top, cute orange dogs lazed around on the floor. The Buddha looked splendid, only barely outlined from behind the fog as we looked at it from the bottom of the steps. We climbed higher and higher, and its forms materialised until it was colossal and we had to crane our necks to see it. Inside, there were rows of people's ashes, and I discovered, from the cards and flowers placed in abundance, that this was Anita Mui's resting place.

We'd been playing Yumeji's Theme in the gondola, so in the evening we checked out Goldfinch Restaurant, where they filmed the famous diner scene from In the Mood for Love. It wasn't that good, and we weren't able to get nice photos. Still worth it, though. After pho, we went back up to Victoria Peak to catch the cityscape at night. 

We had been here for only a few days but I was already being devoured by mosquitoes. It turns out I'm weirdly sensitive to mosquito bites, because not only did I have triple the amount of bites my friends had, but they also swelled to astonishing proportions. We stopped by a Watsons and I purchased some mosquito products to fool myself into thinking such things would make a difference. Obviously mosquitoes are a big issue in Hong Kong, because there was a whole aisle of mosquito sprays and anti-itch lotions. The choice was overwhelming. I stood there for what seemed like an eternity, trying to decide which one was cheap but effective without looking like an idiot. In the end I settled for a spray that had a picture of Gudetama on it, because priorities.

Then went to the bottom of the HSBC building to look at cool lights. When Blaise had taken enough photos, we went to a bar that a friend had recommended in Lan Kwai Fong. We talked for hours over mojitos and caught the last MTR home. 

Day Six: June 21

This was a much more relaxed day. We visited the HKU campus in the afternoon, with its gorgeous architecture, steep hills, and relentless mosquitoes. 

There was an extremely hipster café next to the campus called ethos that sold stuff like kiwi smoothies and crème brûlée. We sat there, enjoying the air conditioning and looking at memes on Instagram.

In the evening we were invited to dinner by my parents' college schoolmate, Sui a-yi, and her son. She told us to meet her at the Hong Kong Bankers' Club, which could only be accessed via a really high-tech elevator from a high-end shopping mall. Once we arrived, we realised it was an extremely fancy, exclusive location, with a low-key front desk that made it look like more of an office. We were barred from entering, though, because shorts, flip-flops, and sneakers apparently weren't part of the whitecollar dress code. Sui a-yi wanted to see if we could borrow some jackets to put on, but this wasn't allowed. Instead we had marvellous Argentinian steak that cost so much, we felt extremely guilty. Later we discovered that Sui a-yi was the CFO of Bank of China (Hong Kong). So it wasn't that bad. And the Occitane lavender lotion box-set we'd purchased for her as a gift probably wasn't that impressive to her. She was a really nice lady. 

Day Seven: June 22

Started the day by getting tagliatelle carbonara at the Wontonmeen café. Blaise and I had had it once a couple of days ago, ordering the meals ten minutes before the kitchen closed. It had been cooked up behind the bar by the barista using a teensy-tiny pan, and had been served with a runny egg and a smattering of pepper. I'll let my short-lived journal explain how much we'd loved it: 

(Falling in love, as it turns out, does indeed feel as good as that carbonara.)

So on that day we ordered the carbonara again. Unfortunately it didn't taste as good as the first time. The egg wasn't runny enough. I was sad. 

The magic always wears off. Thus is life.

We took the MTR all the way up north to Sha Tin, where the Hong Kong Heritage Museum is located. The MTR station is connected to a giant mall (not to be confused with MTR stations that are also malls, with underground MUJI To Gos and Mrs Fields Cookies) and we wandered around for a while, confused by Google Maps. Eventually we realised we had to go through a store and step out onto a balcony, where employees were taking a smoke, then cross a bridge into another section of the mall... Finally we arrived. The reason why we were so interested in the Hong Kong Heritage Museum was because, at the time, a lot of Hong Kong museums were closed for renovation. Back when Blaise and I were killing time waiting for Seb's plane to land, we'd visited what we thought was the Hong Kong Heritage Museum in Kowloon Park. It turned out that it was actually the Hong Kong Heritage Discovery Centre, a building with some worn-out exhibits (a lot of things were out of order) that illustrated the history of the city with some slight pro-PRC undertones. Stunned by the fact that there are two institutions by the same name, we went in search of the true museum. And when we found it, it was a little anticlimactic.

I really don't remember what was inside the museum. One of the temporary exhibitions, I think, was about constructing the Louvre. Another was about Jin Yong / Louis Cha, the prolific and revered martial arts author, which made me really happy because I love Legend of the Condor Heroes. I tried to explain Jin Yong to Seb and Blaise, but I don't think they really got it. It's something you have to experience. 

The museum played Erik Satie's Gymnopédie No. 1 on a loop. Blaise and Seb didn't recognise the song. I was filled with disappointment. 

We took a nice stroll along the Shin Mun River and then returned to the city center. For dinner we took up Sui a-yi's recommendation and tried out bo jai fan (rice cooked in a clay pot with meat on top) at this grimy restaurant in Yau Ma Tei where the bright lights glared into our eyes. We got some chrysanthemum tea to go with the dish, and proceeded to have one of the best meals of the entire trip. Seb and Blaise finished the whole thing, but it was too much for me –– and I personally wasn't interested in scraping burnt rice off the sides of the pot, although apparently it tasted excellent. It was a little shady, but we know the adage: the shadier the ethnic food place, the better the ethnic food. 

Bellies full, we wanted to go to sleep early so that we could catch the flight to Taiwan the next morning. But as we were packing up, the proprietor of the hostel invited us to a movie night that she was hosting. Blaise stayed in bed to text his girlfriend, but Seb and I went downstairs and chatted with some of the other hostel guests in the closed Wontonmeen café. It looked so different empty and with the lights dimmed: I felt like I was partaking in something secret and sacred. Crammed in the back room, where she had installed some cinema seats, we watched Ah Ying (1983), a sort of hybrid documentary about a girl who sells fish at a market, but decides to become an actress. She falls in love with her teacher, who is like twice her age, but it's quite a beautiful and contemplative film overall. And Ah Ying is played by the real-life Ah Ying who inspired the movie. 

To be continued...