In hindsight, I’m not exactly sure why I chose to visit Hong Kong during my mini Round the World trip back in 2019. But it should be obvious that when I picked Hong Kong, that I did not anticipate that the protests would occur and that they would still be something to consider 6 months down the line.
As the date to fly out drew near, news about the protests would ebb and flow. I read all of this with a morbid curiosity but with the lens of an outsider . . . interested but disconnected. With news coverage dying down, I erroneously thought the protests were dying down as well and made the decision to keep the Hong Kong stopover.
While picking up my metro card, I had nonchalantly asked the airport staff if anything major had occurred. Stepping out of Yau Ma Tei station and walking to my hotel on Nathan Street, I didn’t see anything immediately that made me think “danger”. Of course, as an outsider, I couldn’t sense the tension across the city (even though I knew on an intellectual level that it was present) and it was only when I turned on the news that I realized that the protest had paralyzed the entire metro system earlier that morning.
I ventured out timidly to capture my first scenes (and dinner) of Kowloon.
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