A bit late but hey, I had to visit the in-laws.

Last year on January 30th, I officially became a married man. Better late than never, eh?

I didn't think about it at the time but that date was kind of a pain in the butt, because there's an extremely high chance that it falls on the same one or two-week period of Chinese New Year, the biggest holiday of them all focussed entirely on going back to your family.

Now don't get me wrong, I struck lucky with my in-laws, they're exceptionally cool and relaxed on their expectations of me, I'm not required to follow some strict traditions, they don't drink heavily or smoke. It's actually a sweet deal for me.

But.

When I think celebrating my wedding anniversary, I don't generally imagine parents being involved. It seems a bit weird taking her to some michelin restaurant with her mum and dad cheering away and telling stories of extended family members.

And so it was dumb luck that our first anniversary ever landed slap bang in the middle of it all this year. (remember, the dates change each year). Alas!

What to do??

At first we considered artificially changing the date to, say, the day we first met, or first became an official couple. But I think it would always feel fake, knowing the real date.

Instead, our temporary solution for this year was to visit the family, elope to Hong Kong for a couple of days, and return. Her family is in the city of Shenzhen which borders HK. We literally got a short drive to the border and crossed over in like, an hour tops. Kinda weird given it's supposedly the same country now.

We didn't really have anything super-romantic in mind given how most of our mindset was kinda bummed out by the timing, so we started off in an almost hostel-like hotel before upgrading the next day to Shangri-la right by the waterfront where New Year fireworks were going to be blasting off that evening right in front of the building!

Couldn't have timed it better, from that perspective!

However, we already had a firework-facing dinner booked so we decided not to cash out on such a room and get a comparative bargain of just a normal city-view room.

For context, the famous Ritz Carlton in Hong Kong, known for being the tallest hotel in the world, was our initial plan. It was crazy expensive given the time, marketed at about $600 for the night. Before we truly bit the bullet, I gave them a call to ask if we'd get a guaranteed view from our room.

As it turns out you have to... sign up? Or something, to get those rooms, which the woman on the phone very, very rapidly started confirming and getting ready to book in my card details, at a starting price of $2,000 per night.

So yeah. Fireworks Dinner it is! Not the best view, but pretty good given we booked it only hours earlier:

Review of Hong Kong: Meh

To be honest, I never really liked Hong Kong. I've been there many times although not for about a decade now! As a young man, it was certainly a vibrant, crazy place, so I totally get the vibe and why anyone would live and work there. There really is a lot going for it, IF you're a certain kind of person.

But I'm not that kind of person. As far as I'm concerned there's really not much to do at all, it's insanely crowded, chaotic, too many hills, noisy, barely any green space at all.

And nowadays, it seems like even though there's still insane crowds, it's a shell of what it used to be. Granted, a large part of that was due to it being Chinese New Year and most local establishments were closed up, but even so, something about it.

Everything was still so old, it looked pretty much identical to a decade before. Their payment systems were kinda like Japan with many places only accepting cash or HK-based payment systems (again, I get it, but it made it impossible for me to use my own money).

It was hot, stressful, kinda dull. For my wife, a foodie, every meal was pretty unimpressive, even the classy fireworks one we paid through the nose to experience.

As much as I hesitate to compliment Shanghai, it has all this stuff and more for a fraction of the price, with far more modern infrastructure, public and private transport costing barely pennies and I just don't see what HK has to offer to someone like me who has already spent his life living in mega cities.

Like I said, for a certain kind of person, HK is definitely incredible. If you didn't already live in Shanghai with its dazzling city skyline and all that, then HK is going to make your neck sore with awe as you walk around, staring at dizzyingly tall buildings, excellent public transport, and a high percentage of English-speaking locals and multiculturalism if that's the kind of thing you use to grade goodness.

For me, similar to London, I only usually go there for necessary reasons. More than a couple of days and you start to go a bit mad.

However, if you want to get away from all that hustle and bustle, you CAN. There is, admittedly, more to Hong Kong than meets the eye, but this post is already pretty long so I'll save it for a part 2.

Wow I'm pretty good at writing a lot of nothing.

Let's wrap up with this:

One year of marriage! Woo!

Easy peasy.

I'll admit there's been some bumps, I guess that's no different to any marriage. But I reckon we've had it easier than average. Most of our bumps are really just trying to figure each other out in terms of cultural differences, future expectations, living together generally. Kinda menial things tbh.

I'm definitely the bigger pain in the ass and I could never take for granted that she puts up with me so well. I have improved a ton and that's the key thing, even though I have a ways to go. She on the other hand has never done anything wrong, ever, and I would be lying if I ever said a single word of criticism. (Am I doing it right?)

'til part 2, ciao for now!

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