Capsule Tour

Location: Hong Kong I got back to my hostel after a day of sightseeing. Turning the corner to my room, I heard a boom box playing eurotrash EDM at maximum volume, and I saw two naked Italian men in their 20s. They had checked into the room next to mine while I was out. They weren't completely naked. They were wearing Speedo-cut underwear, designer belts, and designer sunglasses. (Belts... but no pants.) They were having an enthusiastic conversation about which belt buckle went with which pair of sunglasses. One of them asked me to weigh in. "Which one is a-bett-ah, dis one or dis one?" I picked a pair of sunglasses at random, wished them luck, and retired to my room.

Location: New Territories, Hong Kong Lonely Planet recommended visiting a museum in the New Territories. I think it was the Hong Kong Heritage Museum. This was before smartphones, and the only information Lonely Planet provided about how to get there was which bus to take and which stop to get off at. I assumed that would be enough. Otherwise, it seems like they would have written more. The bus ride was half an hour long. It started out in downtown Kowloon, which is as built-up as Manhattan. As we entered the New Territories, the landscape transitioned to huge apartment buildings made of concrete. They had become stained with age. Each building had hundreds of old air conditioners and clothes lines hanging off its sides. Towards the end of the route, I started to see large undeveloped fields of grass and weeds. I felt like I was very far from what I thought of as "Hong Kong." The recommended stop turned out to be a small bus depot in the middle of nowhere. It was on a road th...

Location: Hong Kong I used Hostelworld to find a place to stay in Hong Kong. I found it suspicious that a dozen hostels had basically the same address, and none of them had existed for more than a few months. I guessed that the hostels were being rebranded every few months to eliminate bad reviews on sites like Hostelworld. But for $8 a night, I was willing to overlook a lot. I found out later that the hostels were in "Chungking Mansions," which is a group of huge run-down buildings in downtown Kowloon that are famous for drugs, crime, scams, illegal immigration, murders, and being fire traps. The hostel I booked occupied part of one floor. It wasn't so bad. The paint was fresh, the bed was comfortable, the sheets were clean, and it seemed safe enough. There was always a guy at the front desk, monitoring various CCTV feeds. There were problems. I had picked the lower bunk of a bunk bed. The mattress above me was suspended by wooden slats, and half the slats were broken. I...