A trip many years in the making. For each of the past 6 or so years of my (almost) 9 working at Avigilon, I had tentative plans to explore Asia, especially Japan. Plans that were always pushed aside by seemingly urgent deadlines. The key to making it happen? Leaving my job seemed to do the trick.

I am now almost four weeks into my trip, sitting in a ski lodge in Hakuba, Japan with so-so skiing weather. I’m over half way through my 7 week trip with Singapore, Hong Kong, and the Philippines already visited. It has been a great trip so far. This is the first point where I’ve had some down time to collect my thoughts and photos.

Day 1

The first ‘day’ in Hong Kong lasted only a few hours. With 12+ hours of airports, flying, and transit, it was after 10PM by the time Akshay, Kim, Gabe, and I had unloaded our bags and freshened up for a night-time wander. We had grand plans to get into a groove and whoop it up. Jet lag had other plans. We wandered the streets of the Lan Kwai Fong (LKF) party area looking for an inviting bar. It was pretty busy for a Sunday night, but we weren’t feeling it. The lack of sophistication in the LKF bar scene required a level of enthusiasm and energy that we couldn’t muster.

Hungry and having trouble keeping our eyes open we ended up finding a 24 hour food place to have a snack. We made one last attempt to find a lower key expat bar that was known for good beer. Our night ended when we discovered that it closed at midnight.

Day 2

The second day was our only full day in HK and we packed a lot into it. It started with a visit to a Michelin star rated dim sum restaurant, Tim Ho Wan. It was well known for the fact that it was one of the most affordable Michelin star rated restaurants. It was pretty damn tasty, especially the pork buns. Sadly, they didn’t stay on the table long enough to share any images.

Our next destination for the day was Victoria Peak, one of the most popular tourist destinations, and the vantage point for many iconic photos of the city. There is a popular tram that goes to the top of the peak but we decided to walk off the dim sum. Not long into our ascent, we happened upon the mid-levels escalators — a long sequence of outdoor escalators in the hilly portion of downtown. They sped up the climb and made for some fun photos.

The escalators eventually came to an end. Sadness. I checked google maps to see what was left. We still had some climbing and a bit of a traverse to the main paths heading to the peak. We saw a stairway/trail that looked like it might be going our direction. With some of the group expressing doubt, we moved onwards and up the little stairway into the sky, soon hitting an unusual playground perched above the surrounding buildings. Eventually, after navigating some more paths and roads, we hit the bottom of the official paved trail to the top. Huzzah!

At the top we took our time to snap pictures, explore the mall complexes, and refuel with some cold beer.

The plan for the evening was to check out the waterfront of Kowloon and then meet up with a friend of Gabe, Yuki, for dinner. With a quick hotel stop over we headed out to the ferry for Kowloon. On the peninsula, with the day’s light was fading, we walked Canton St. and ventured into Harbour City, a glitzy shopping St. and a huge mall with every luxury brand you could imagine. Nearing our meeting time with Yuki, we ventured through the underground maze of subway station walkways to find her.

The previous day, Gabe had relayed to Yuki that we (Akshay especially) were hoping to eat some of the best Hong Kong BBQ the city had on offer. Yuki had found a place, but it required a bit of an adventure to get to. Weary and hungry, we travelled on the metro and then on foot to a peculiar forested oasis surrounded by residential towers. It looked like something out of a fantasy movie.

It quickly became apparent that this was not the type of BBQ we were expecting. This was a ‘grill your own food on actual BBQ’ type place and not a restaurant serving the ready to devour roast pork, BBQ pork, BBQ duck, etc. that we’d envisioned. Whoops, communication fail! All was not lost however, it turned out to be quite an enjoyable, and more uniquely HK experience. Thank you Yuki!

After we’d filled our bellies we made our way back. We parted ways with Yuki, apologized for being zombies, and continued towards Central. The others decided to call it a night, I continued up to the M bar at the top of my hotel for a few drinks. I found a spot at the bar between two computer programmers and a pair of ladies flashing an AMEX black card.

The view from the bar was quite something. The drinks were pretty damned good too. So good I was a little surprised. My Old Fashioned was perfect. This is rare. Even in Canada or the USA, unless you’re in a cocktail specific bar in a city where cocktails are a ‘thing’ you can expect your Old Fashioned to be a mess. The Manhattan, also great. And then the Martini, the bartender pulled out a bottle of Aviation Gin. What? That is a Portland based distillery, no way it’s a gin of choice at an Asian hotel chain?! It turns out the bartender was from Portland — a partner in the House Spirits distillery behind Aviation Gin, a restaurant/bar owner in Portland, and on a two week consulting gig for the Mandarin Oriental. Aren’t I lucky! I was invited to come visit his new Portland restaurant called Easy Company. It opens (as of last week) in the space formerly occupied by Ping. Something to check out on the next PDX visit.

Day 3

The last day, like the first was only a partial day in the HK with the rest consisting of travel to Manila. We only had one MUST DO thing. We had to get some of that Hong Kong BBQ pork, roast pork, and BBQ duck! To cross this one off the list, we made our way to Joy Hing in Wan Chai. I’m sure there were better places, but this one was well-known with a decent reputation and only a few metro stops away. It was pretty good, but I think I speak for all when I say that our minds weren’t blown.

After we finished up at Joy Hing, we wandered the streets and stores of Wan Chai for a little while before heading back to Central.

With only an hour and change left before catching the train to the airport, we visited the expat beer bar that was closed on our first night. They had a pretty solid collection of beer, especially in bottles. I tried a beer called ’20’ by Mikkeller consisting of 20 varieties of hops in one crazy brew. It was a hoppin party in your mouth. After that I had something a little more mellow, a nice citrusy beer by the Japanese brewery Baird to cap the HK visit.