Hong Kong and Macau

I completed my first-ever week of solo travel!  As expected, there's a ceiling to how much fun can be had alone.  Daytime is generally fine, but nighttime is a little tricky.  Not sure I'll ever be a person that goes out all night to mingle by myself.  But with some sort of angle or intro, I'm set.  Made a new expat friend named Bennet, a friend of a friend, and we hung out for 9 hours visiting 8 bars!

Although solo travel is tricky, if someone were to tell me "You can see Hong Kong & Macau, but you'll have to do it alone, or you can never see Hong Kong & Macau," I'd say "I'll see Hong Kong & Macau alone."

HK is definitely the most humid place I've ever been.  With 84% humidity and 85 degree weather, I was sweating through my shirt in less than a minute being outside.  I can't remember the last time I wrung out my shirt and sweat would just pour out.  Being a fast walker, had to force myself to walk like an elderly person and take deep breaths to avoid gushing with sweat immediately.  Every store is blasting AC, so walking the sidewalks provides a split second of reprieve when you pass a store, and then back to brutal heat.

I loved seeing old HK mixed with new HK.  There's just enough of the grime and weird alleyways and neon signs to bring you back to previous eras of HK.

I also learned about the LBH acronym:  Losers Back Home.  It makes sense.  Definitely a lot of western white guys in Asia that clearly couldn't cut it back home, but think they're ballers (aka AA: Alphas Abroad) in terms of interacting with women.