New Year in Hong Kong

As this post might seem like complaining I must first announce that I have finally decided that I like Hong Kong; there are some things about the general state here that is not all great but all in all it is good. Basically I like it here and I intend to stay for a while.

The holidays however are not great, this is just my view of things and is because Christmas (especially Christmas Eve) and New Years are the most important holidays in Sweden and even though New Years Eve is always completely over-rated it still has that special charm of being so. So well I have been a bit home-sick these days. But we have to make the best out of situation and I already told about my Christmas experiences so now let's cover New Years Eve:

From the very start I decided that I did not want to end up in some extremely overcrowded area of Hong Kong where millions of people gather up to watch the fireworks over Victoria harbor. I tried to arrange some small party in my flat again but this time I hardly got any support at all, only Steve, one of my new Hong Kong friends were up for that idea. Instead Steve invited me to join the normal (normal as in same as always) group of people for a party somewhere else but since I didn't want to bother them too much, being the only gwailo (foreigner), I had my dinner alone at home and didn't head out until closer to 11pm.

This was a big mistake though because even though they were in a private flat (an office it turned out) in TST the only entrance was located just by Ferry pier which just happens to be one of the best locations to watch the fireworks, ergo the streets where massively crowded and police had set up roadblocks. I did manage to get through a few of those roadblocks, the first one by walking inside a shopping mall and the second by having Steve explain that I was heading to a private party (and delivering ice-cream), there was a third one that I never got passed though so even if I were only a few hundred meters from my friends (actually a lot less if we were to draw a straight line through space) it was impossible to reach them.

So at about 11.45pm I got stuck on street with thousands of strangers, it was also nearly impossible to get a signal but after about a hundred tries I managed to get hold of a semi-sleeping Joyce and greet her Happy New Year prematurely and then I managed to do the same with Ariel even closer to the strike of midnight. And close as I was to the harbor and the event of the night, the fireworks, I couldn't see them either because of the massive building at the end of the street. It is not as bad as it might sound though, basically I just had to wait 20 minutes to get to the party and it is just another party after all, I didn't have any expectations at all for this night anyway.

They opened the blockade at about 12.15am and less than 5 minutes later I was up at the 16th floor where my friends had a perfect view of the harbor and I'm guessing they must have enjoyed the fireworks a lot more than I did. After that it was mainly drinking and games and we kept playing until about 3am when I had had enough and went home.

HAPPY NEWYEAR EVERYBODY!!!

Ps. this year I will not get stuck on a random street on the other side of the world, I am coming home for Christmas and New Year.