I really hate traveling to China most of the time. The flights are too long, and I don’t usually enjoy the food. I tend to enjoy the experience of being in a minority, and the looks I get being an over six-foot-tall white guy walking through the city, and especially the groups of girls who shyly want to try out their English with me, but a few novelties don’t make up for being jet-lagged and hungry the entire time. But at the end of the last trip I was lucky enough to have a much better night than usual in Hong Kong.
For the fist part of the night, this definitely wasn’t the case. I was there with some colleagues in Wan Chai, which, as my local friend explained to me, was the Dirty Old Man district. Ladyboys wandering the streets, strip clubs on the sides, and lots of bars with guys way past their prime who didn’t mind trading cash for attention. I was at a bar with a live cover band, which I really can’t stand, either, watching a young Filipina using some Newt Gringrich-looking guy like a stripper pole while a very wrong rendition of “Sweet Home Alabama” skullfucked the room. Yeah, I was in hell. So I was really glad to see my phone light up in WhatsApp when my local friend got off work. I happily bade my colleagues good night and walked around to the hotel where she was waiting for me.