7NNT25: Day 27 Cebu to Hong Kong

Soundtrack: [intentionally left blank]

I don’t know how, given the time my head hit the pillow, that I was awake before the alarm. Possibly the magic of travel brain, that just kicks in to make sure I don’t oversleep and miss a flight (even when I also set two alarms to make sure). I’d given myself plenty of time to negotiate any traffic in getting back to the airport, but there wasn’t much, sparing me a good few minutes of easy listening radio.

The Phillipines and easy listening radio. I don’t know if it’s something that drivers do when they’re picking up tourists, but pretty much every car I’ve taken in this country had its radio tuned to the easiest of easy listening stations. Not even modern pop, which I know they have here just like everywhere else, no 80s pop, not even 90s boy bands. No k-pop, j-pop, l-pop, m-pop (or even m-bop), just the blandest, plainest, inanest, easy listening. The traffic is bad enough, maybe that’s why the traffic is so bad, the drivers can’t concentrate while their brains are being turned to mush. Maybe it’s a preview of hell, a place where every car is gridlocked and ever radio is playing Air Supply, Peter Cetera, and that fucking song by Bryan Adams on a loop. When they played Milli Vanilli it was a welcome change, it was that bad. Every car, every driver. In Cebu, the number of the beast is 96.3. During one ride they announced that it was Bono’s birthday, and I thought I’d at least get to hear some U2, but nope, here’s another song full of cliche lyrics sung over uninspiring keyboards. I’d rather sit through a thousand performances of queens lip-syncing to “Abracadabra”.

It was good that I got to the airport early, as the check-in line took an hour. I’m not sure why, it wasn’t hundreds of passengers, but a lot of them seemed to take their time being processed. It might have been issues or things with their connecting flights, something that only occurred to me after a while, as my flight was point to point. Maybe in addition to the lanes for business class, they should have a dedicated lane for passengers with no connecting flights (that said, I did then have to show the airline my onward ticket from Hong Kong, something I’ve had to do a few times on this trip so that’s a big gold star for last month organised me in printing out all of my flight and hotel bookings). Immigration had a bit of a queue but I got through fine, same with the security screening. In the shopping on the other side I finally found a snow globe for Cebu, but it was large, had a wooden base, and a price tag of $33 USD so no sale.

For the rest of the trip I’m flying regular (non-budget) airlines, so I had some inflight entertainment choices. I went with City Hunter, the rather silly and occasionally dodgy 90s Jackie Chan film, mainly as the skate park shown early in the film is in Hong Kong and I’m hoping to go there. I’d forgotten that it’s really not a great film though, some interesting moments and the fun of Jackie Chan as Chun Li, but otherwise…

Hong Kong. Through immigration, I got stopped by some guy who was doing surveys about the airport’s facilities, gave him some answers but given all I’d done is collect my luggage, I couldn’t really give any ratings on services or my experience of the place, all I’d bought was a ticket on the express train to the city, but the customer service people there were helpful. Hope that helps your survey.

The express train to the city really is an express, three stops and I was at the main station, about 20 minutes, time I spent working out how to get to the hotel. The MTR map is fairly easy to follow, and I do like a colour-coded system, so once I worked out I needed the blue Island line I was sorted. Tried to buy a $6 train ticket but only had $100 HKD notes and the machines won’t give more than $80 in change, but the turnstyles all work for tapping a visa card. Even better, when I got to my station the list of exits included one that mentioned my hotel by name, very handy indeed.

My hotel room has a wonderful view of Hong Kong harbour that isn’t obscured by the many high rise buildings. Hong Kong is a very tall city, full of towers where people hang washing outside their windows. Given my room’s window has a sign saying not to open it (I’m not sure if it can open) my first mission was finding a laundry service. There are lots of coin laundromats in the neighbourhood, but I found a place that would do my bag for about the same price as doing it myself.

After a bit of exploring the surrounds I was ready for dinner. Given the theme of the trip, I headed across the road from the hotel to a place that has “noodle” in its name, or at least the English translation in google maps does. They had a menu out the front in English, which was good enough for me. One of the house specialties was sweet and sour pork, so figured I’d give that a go, with dry noodle and soup on the side. I was the only white person in the small restaurant, so didn’t get offended when they asked if I could use chopsticks (I love eating asian food with chopsticks, though I’ll also say there’s something that’s just correct about eating Thai with the thinnest, cheapest metal fork and spoon). The sweet and sour wasn’t the starchy battered offering, just pork in a wonderful sauce. With a couple of spoonfuls of the chilli paste (packed full of sichuan pepper so my lips were quite numb by the end) and with the prawn-stock flavoured soup, I was very happy. I was also happy to discover that here you can get pueh erh flavoured iced tea in a bottle.

Because I refuse to respect my aging body, just before midnight I was in a taxi heading to LinQ Bar, an LGBTQIA+ venue that has drag performances on Saturdays, starting at midnight (that’s midnight drag time) and 1.30am (ditto). Sunday is a planned rest day anyway, so why not? LinQ Bar is on a street of steps, again not a large venue but at least they have a sound system more appropriate for the space. I bought a Tsingtao beer and found a place to stand, not actually sure if the venue had a stage (it does, but it’s quite small and short, and I walked past without noticing it). Tonight’s performer was Jhara Latina, who funnily enough is also a Filipina. She does a wonderful and energetic show, using all of the space she can, and it was great to watch. Not as full-on as the Cebu performers, there was no dancing in the street, but still a lot of fun. I tipped and thanked, and went to leave when I saw that it was raining, so waited a while in the bar. Ended up talking to the owner/manager, and when I told her I thought she was doing a great thing with a place like this, she made me do a black sambuca shot with her. Also in the bar was Mocha Diva (Filipina queen, season 2 Drag Race Thailand, is based in Hong Kong) so I had a quick chat with her while waiting for the rain to ease, mentioned that I’d seen so many performances to “Abracadabra” on my travels but not tonight, and she mentioned she’d performed that recently at a different venue. Eventually it did so I figured I’d do a quick look around the area before heading back to the hotel.

LinQ Bar is on the edge of one of Hong Kong island’s night time entertainment districts, a 3D maze of pubs and clubs and also, because some things do seem to be almost universal, a few kebab shops. Unable to resist the lure of the scent of lamb wafting across the street, I stopped for a very decent kebab (I didn’t check if the preferred name is kebab here, but they understood what I was asking for). I grabbed a couple of bottles of water from a 7-11, as it was looking like I’d have to walk a way to get a taxi as there were queues at the designated ranks, but ended up giving these away to a couple of locals who were well on their way to Sunday hangovers.

With the rain stopped, and the night being much cooler than the Philippines (still probably mid to high 20s) I walked the kilometer and a bit back to the hotel. I probably could have flagged a taxi down after I cleared the throng, but figured the fresh air would be good (after 3 beers, a bourbon and coke, and a shot). Certainly this area of Hong Kong feels safe at night, there were a few locals also walking around, and a complete lack of tooled up security guards and vans. After the Philippines, HK feels quieter, more relaxed, less chaotic: I don’t need to keep one eye on the ground in front of me all the time as the footpaths are generally unbroken.

Onwards to Sunday, rest day. Time to recover from back to back after midnight drag shows in two countries.