Thirty-six.

Sitting here on the ferry to Macau, I dream of a life spent chasing adventure.

I’m sitting on the ferry to Macau. As I boarded just minutes ago, I overheard a European woman in line ahead of me talking to her travel companions, and I think she mentioned that she’s from Italy. I had an in to engage but I chose to keep quiet, instead reminiscing about my own recent trip to Italy. This ferry gives me flashbacks to the ferry that operates between Napoli and Capri.

By the time I reached Hong Kong's water terminal near Central, the only tickets available for the 9:30 morning boat were the "Super" tickets priced at 395 HKD. They're a steep increase from the "Basic" tickets, but the next availability for those was noon and I didn’t want to wait two hours—my time here is already limited enough. So, I resigned myself to fate and tried to not think about it too much. I'm on vacation.

I arrived in Hong Kong yesterday afternoon. HKG is as clean and efficient an airport as is CDG, perhaps slightly superior to it, and the express train into the city is extremely convenient. I wish New York would be as well-constructed. My hotel turned out to be centrally located, and I dropped off my stuff first before deciding to poke around the neighborhood. Central is quite the bustling district: alleyways and raised walkways abound, and there are shops tucked into quite literally every nook and cranny. I was hungry, so I opened up the Google list that Stephen had shared with me when I prepared for this trip. I walked by a fish ball shop, remembering that Harris had instructed me to eat some curry fish balls (most likely skewered); I told myself I'd stop by and check it out later, but I ultimately never did.

The list of destinations I had saved in my maps informed me that a handcrafted mahjong shop was nearby, and I remembered that I'd wanted to look into possibly purchasing a set from them. It's one of my favorite games—it's equally social, competitive, and strategic with an element of luck—and, although I'd brought back home a set last year, I hoped to acquire one gorgeously handmade. I decided to go to the shop before eating, since it would soon close for the day.

Indonesian Restaurant 1968 in Central, Hong Kong.

I almost tripped as I made my way down the old, hilly cobblestone streets, turning my head in every direction so that I could take in as much of the sights as possible. From passing chatter, I was hearing British and Australian English in addition to Korean, Japanese, Mandarin, and—of course—Cantonese. There's a pretty Indonesian restaurant set into the wall beneath one of the elevated walkways, so I paused to look at its menu before moving on, realizing somewhat regretfully that I wouldn't have allocated enough stomach space to eat there before leaving Hong Kong. Nearby, I discovered all sorts of restaurants—Australian burger shops, Korean joints, pasta takeaways—and I appreciated the multiculturalism on display. If I lived here, at least my palate wouldn't go wanting.

Google informed me that I’d arrived at the mahjong shop, but I couldn't see it anywhere. I checked again—it’s on floor 1, and then I recalled that Hong Kong follows the British convention of ground levels starting at 0, not 1. I entered an unsuspecting office building and took the elevator up, finding the shop tucked away in the corner. It’s a tiny room, with multicolored mahjong sets stacked to the ceiling. I tried to browse slowly, with the shopkeepers (an older couple) doing their best to assist me, but decided not to buy anything because I had limited luggage space and no real need for a second set. Moreover, in all honesty, the handcrafted sets were a little too perfect and almost indistinguishable from generic sets, diminishing my interest in them. On my way out, I took the stairs back down to the ground level.

My order from Tsim Chai Kee Noodle in Central, Hong Kong.

I decided to eat in the area because Stephen’s list had lots of places marked close by, picking Tsim Chai Kee Noodle because it’s the closest. I queued for a brief ten minutes before being seated at a table with strangers, and I ordered their yellow noodles with three proteins: wontons, sliced beef, and a massive handmade fish ball. It’s as edifying as the Michelin guide claims it to be. A Cantonese couple sat across from me while I eavesdropped on a local next to me guiding his two American tourists, teaching them how to properly adjust the flavors of their food with the provided vinegar and chili sauces. I grew up splashing copious amounts of black vinegar into my Changsha noodle soups and I like spicy food, so I ate my order with alternating gusto.

After my late lunch, I was feeling refreshed. It's still early in the evening and I had the rest of the night to myself, so I decided to go take the tram to the Peak, which was merely a quick ten minute walk from my hotel. Walking there, I observed locals picking up bunches of flowers—it’s Valentine’s Day. At the station, I blended into a gaggle of Thai tourists to secure myself a seat. As I rode up, I was stricken with wisps of a memory of taking that very same tram twelve years ago with past friends no longer in my life, smiling wryly to myself that I'm still the same person that I was back then. Atop, I spent maybe an hour at the lookout; it’s a foggy evening and I couldn't see much of the city beyond its strongest LED lights.

I hopped on the tram back down and it's nighttime proper, so I opened up Stephen's list once again to locate the gay bars. Unsurprisingly, many are concentrated in Central, which I know is a popular nightlife district, and so I opted to walk back and around there. I peered into LinQ as I passed by but it's totally empty, so instead I ventured towards T:ME (pronounced "time") Bar. T:ME also wasn't busy and I initially thought to skip it, but I made eye contact with one of the dogs sitting outside the bar as I walked away and I was charmed. So, I spun back around to go inside.

Taking a seat at the bar, I ordered one of the house specials—an iteration of a pineapple margarita—and looked around. Inside, it's just me and a handful of regulars talking amongst themselves, so I tried to befriend the dogs that kept walking in and out, learning from the bartenders that there are three in total and all belong to the bar's owner. As I waited for my drink, the lead bartender handed me a cucumber slice to entice the dogs, and I successfully induced the largest one to come over. His name is Tyson, the bartender explained, and he’s so mild-mannered that he’ll let anyone pet him, whereas Mina (the smaller dog) will bite because she’s shy. Over the course of three drinks, one per dog employed, I played with Tyson because he’s the only one keeping me company. Hong Kongers aren’t as likely to strike up a conversation with strangers, I noticed, but they’re not standoffish either. I decided not to put in the effort to talk because I was tired from having just flown into the city, instead enjoying taking in the atmosphere and observing. The bartender had informed me that it usually gets busy around ten, so I whiled away the hours with Tyson. As T:ME finally began to fill with patrons, I decided to head out.

I meandered past LinQ a second time, but it's still empty and so I again didn't go in, heading instead to Pontiac a couple blocks away. As I ordered a cocktail, I jokingly asked the bartender if I'd accidentally stumbled into a lesbian bar (all the patrons next to me were women), in response to which she quipped that Pontiac is inclusive of everybody. Bras hung from the ceiling in droves and all the employees sported bright pink cowboy hats, laughing amongst themselves about the sheer amount of Chappell Roan's music they already customarily play and that no, this wasn't necessarily a "Pink Pony Club"—instead, I heard plenty of Shania Twain. The male bartender happily played the guide to my tourist as I peppered him with queries, explaining to me that the Hong Kong drag scene isn't very big and that only two bars (including LinQ) are really known for having drag, but that he wouldn't recommend the other to me because they pretended to be a straight bar during the initial few coronavirus pandemic years. I hopped into the only empty seat at the bar next to an older White expat couple who seemed to be about to leave, one of them immediately beginning to sneeze (possibly because I had Tyson's fur on me). Feeling exhausted, I stayed for just one drink; four drinks in one night was already far past my normal limit.

I decided to have a look at LinQ one last time, but the promised drag queen performances had either not materialized or yet taken place, and the entire venue wasn't very populated. One drag queen stood outside having a cigarette with someone I presumed to be an employee, but I gave up and headed back to my hotel to pass out. Walking around all the elevated walkways at night hit me with another blast of deja vu, remembering the night twelve years ago when my then-friends ordered rounds of flaming Lamborghinis for us, drinking through the actual fires with straws, and I wondered with a tinge of sadness whether I had spent that night in that very same neighborhood. Instinctively, I felt that the answer was yes.

In the morning, I got up just after five and I was quite happy about that because I didn't feel jet lagged, which meant that I had planned out my pre-trip sleep schedule quite well (I stayed up late every night until my flight). For my very first breakfast in Hong Kong, I figured it was the right time to stop by a proper tea house for yum cha, and Stephen's list led me to Luk Yu Tea House right around the corner. The menu's written exclusively in traditional Chinese, of which I'm basically a quarter-literate because I'm really only half-literate in simplified Chinese already, but I made some educated guesses, reasoning that anything made in Hong Kong would be unquestionably delicious, anyways. My logic proved fruitful, and I stuffed myself full in anticipation of a full day of gallivanting around Macau.

As I write this, the ferry operator alerts me that I've arrived. I step out onto the pier and make a beeline for the hotel shuttles, which Stephen had advised me to take from the ferry terminal because they're free, fast, and would take me straight to one of the many hotels from which I could start walking. I jump onto the bus scheduled to leave first and wind up at the Sands Macau.

For the sake of brevity, I have to condense my whirlwind of a day into the following sentences. I walk towards one of the central bakeries noted on Stephen's list for a proper pastel de nata, near which I meet my tour guide who spends the next ten hours walking around the city with me. From historic museums to Portuguese churches to native temples, he accompanies me, regaling me with stories about his childhood and about the culture of the city he loves so much. He introduces me to local gays and food alike, and I finally get back to my hotel in Hong Kong around midnight properly spent—obrigado, Macau.

I wake up the next morning with plans to meet up with my college roommate and his wife for yum cha. She picked the restaurant because she wanted me to experience one of the city's remaining old school venues, whose chefs still expertly cook certain dishes to order in the restaurant's center. As I walk towards Admiralty, I’m considering the degree to which the city has or hasn’t ceded land from pedestrians to cars. Certainly, with all the elevated walkways, it feels like the city has found a way to be walkable while still giving ground to vehicular traffic, preserving the benefits of extreme density. I wonder whether this would be a viable development model for American cities, too.

I pass groups and groups of Filipino women, and I’m reminded it’s Sunday. They congregate on benches, sidewalks, on floor mats or tarps or even their own tents, clustered into small handfuls each around what looks like homemade Filipino food (I hear passing mentions of karekare and I see pancit in their carrying bags) and card games, many of them on their phones video-chatting away in predominantly Tagalog to whom I assume to be their family members across the sea. Does Hong Kong—or, indeed, all of Asia’s megacities—require a permanent underclass to uphold it? Is this merely a fact of life to be accepted, that some lives are spent in service to others? I suppose it's not a fair question to ask; America equally has its own version of such indentured servitude. Once more, I’m thinking about the circumstances of birth, how an involuntary option determines a life's trajectory far before exiting the womb—it's a persistent, nagging thought that returns to me a week later in Taipei as I observe the middle-aged street vendors squatting on the street to rinse clean their cookwares. Next to the women, who sit out in the warm sunlight, I enter one of Hong Kong’s air-conditioned mega-malls.

My yum cha is, of course, spectacular, and I spend the day with my friends. They map out an adventure for me across Victoria Harbour and back, eating and shopping and looking at the Cézanne and Renoir exhibit at the Hong Kong Museum of Art; I'd wanted to see the latter for its inclusion of masterpieces from the Musée de l'Orangerie and the Musée d'Orsay, both of which I'd loved during my recent trips to Paris. With them, I try to plot out the mechanics of actually moving to Asia—it feels like a waste to not do so, at least with my heritage, and the development happening in the region makes it feel particularly exciting. I tell them that I've been feeling for the past few years that there's a grand escapade out there in the world for me, that America feels particularly stagnant and stifling. They tell me to take whatever opportunities I can.

The next day, I catch a flight to Singapore. As I head to the airport, I stop for a final meal in Hong Kong, picking the bakeshop because it shares its name with my friend's mother. I realize that I haven't been using my headphones in Asia as I normally would in America because I'm actually interested in hearing the local soundscape.

In Singapore, Tin has lovingly planned out a week's worth of activities for me. Around this itinerary, I meet up with Kevin, who became a good friend of mine after I first met him during my era of Hinge dates. A Thai national whose upbringing around the world informs his answer, I pose to him the same question I had in Hong Kong about megacities and their permanent underclass; his observation is that it's a necessary evil for the particular evils of our current economic systems, which can and should be changed. He teaches me about local politics as we work our way through the Gardens by the Bay. With him, I debate my theory of American stagnation, that incurious people are born when they have no motivating factor inspiring them to go see the world. Unlike here in Asia, where a plethora of world-class cities are available at one's fingertips, Americans don't have such cities to ably and nimbly visit—what we do have is dereliction.

For one of my off days, after we eat our weight in strawberry cuisine, Tin knowingly suggests that I look through the National Gallery of Singapore. He's heard my many (irrational) gripes with the city and points me to the art, which moves me as he expected it would. As I lose myself in the Gallery, I have a million thoughts.

The elephant in the room (in the city-state?) is my ex-boyfriend, Henry, a native Singaporean. Everything in the city triggers me because everything reminds me of him, from the food to the city's neurotic tidiness to the accented English that I hear all around me. I don't react like I used to because there's much more distance now between him and me, between me and the pain, yet still I can't distance myself enough from that incredibly dark period of my life. The sadness from that time surfaces as I gaze into Membasoh Kain di Tepi Sungai (Washing Cloths by the River), an oil painting by Patrick Ng Kah Onn. Through this painting, through history, through time, I catch a glimpse of the trauma that Henry must have had, something that likely influenced our end. For him, for us, I'm terribly sad.

Onn, Patrick Ng Kah. Membasoh Kain di Tepi Sungai. 1960s. National Gallery of Singapore, Singapore.

About this painting, the Gallery solicited for its fifth anniversary the following commentary by Ng Yi-Sheng, a writer and researcher specializing in Southeast Asian history, fantasy, and mythology:

I'm a Chinese guy who's super interested in Malay culture. These days it's a little weird, but back in the 60s, people of all races were celebrating our independence from the Brits by promoting Malayan identity. Patrick Ng Kah Onn was kinda hardcore about it: he wore Malay clothes, studied Malay dance—and as you can see in this painting, he even signed his name in Jawi.

Some scholars say the guy on the right is Patrick's self-portrait. He's dressed in a sarong, his body stretched out like a wayang kulit puppet, holding a Malay boy, among Malay women. But he can't quite blend into the Malay landscape—his pale skin marks him as an outsider.

Membasoh Kain di Tepi Sungai was probably completed before the racial riots of 13 May 1969. They changed Malaysian society forever, creating a deep divide between the Malays and Chinese. Patrick must've been heartbroken. His dream of a unified Malayan culture was crushed forever.

Henry grew up as an ethnic Malay in Singapore. Although I'd often pester him for stories about his upbringing, he spoke of it only sparingly, mentioning in passing the axis around which the discrimination he experienced as a gay, Muslim Malay man was constructed. He'd told me of the Chinese supremacy that still permeates throughout the gay dating scene in Singapore; I imagine that the hurt I, Chinese by descent, caused him must have been made manifold with this background context, and that it became impossible for him to believe me when I told him I'd loved him.

In Membasoh Kain di Tepi Sungai, I see—in addition to the labor of the women in the humid landscape—a life I never lived. In Patrick's self-insert and his male Malay counterpart, I see myself and Henry. I am forced to confront, am confronted by, my history and my mistakes and the future I had envisioned and my helplessness at changing the fact of circumstance that what I had wanted will never come to pass. How lucky I am to have unwittingly stumbled upon an artist whose portfolio of work demonstrates, as I later learn, a clear subversion of and challenge to the immutability of gender and sexuality as are understood by and within the West. Here, in the National Gallery of Singapore, I think of the mythos of nation-building as I had discussed with Kevin, I think of the lives we don't choose because we don't choose how we're born, and I think of the impossibility of love.

Days later, I leave Singapore for Taipei. Two of my friends from college have separately entreated me to visit them, and I give in—it's altogether too rare for me to be in the region, and so I can't say no.

I'm realizing, over and over again, that my friends have all been getting married. I ask them about their relationships; they all echo the same sentiment, that it's a deliberate choice with someone who's willing to communicate. I think back to my string of breakups in the past few years and I wonder if it's all my fault. My exes have their issues, but nobody is perfect. How do I know if something is too much or nothing at all? How do I know if I can make this work? Isn't it ultimately up to me? Therefore, isn't it just a measure of what I will (and won't) accept? How do I know when to stick it out, when things aren't so great? Throwing in the towel is just giving up, but how do I know when that's the right thing to do?

Photo strips from Taipei.

At Jiantan station, while looking for my friends, I watch four elderly women hugging each other goodbye, laughing and repeating "有你真好! 喜欢你!" to each other, behaving exactly as I do with my chosen family. I think about this moment for the rest of my trip, as I gorge myself on stinky tofu and as I play with my loved ones inside the innumerous photo booth studios, into and out of the latter I dart incessantly because I need the candied fruit skewers cart salesman parked just outside to exchange NTD bills with me so that we can pay the photo machines. It's nice to see in real life that some things are universal, that they don't disappear with age. I've written before that I should accept the love that presents itself, the love that exists; I guess I should heed my own advice.