One of the most exciting places on the departures board

When I go to the airport I love to look at the departures board. I look at the list of places all over the world and marvel at the number of amazing places I could go. And then I end up flying somewhere I've been a hundred times.

But not this time. This time I looked at the departures board and found my flight: Cathay Pacific CX873, destination: Hong Kong!

I left San Francisco at 12:05 am on March 27th (local time) and arrived in Hong Kong at 5:50 am on March 28th (local time) which basically means that Wednesday March 27th disappeared from my life. Mind blown. I'm here for the Hong Kong International Film Festival - my filmmaker friend/mentor Emiko Omori has an excellent film called To Chris Marker, An Unsent Letter screening here so I asked to tag along. Now I'm her official entourage. I'll take it!

I got travel nerves a few days before I left. Apparently that's a thing that happens to me, despite my love for adventure. I started worrying about everything. And I do mean everything. But as soon as I got to the airport it all disappeared and the excitement took over. I am ready for anything! I can only wait and see what happens.

As we began our descent over the city I pressed my face against the window of the plane, searching for a glimpse of the well-known skyline; the lights, the buildings. But all I saw was a large ship; bright lights in the middle of a black sea. And then we landed on the dark cloudy runway.

We made it to our hotel in Kowloon (guided by the lovely festival workers) and then set out on our first adventure: coffee and breakfast. It was harder than we expected- most things were still closed at 8:00 in the morning and we had no idea where to look. In a city known for its excellent cuisine I have to admit that we failed pretty miserably. We ended up at a hole in the wall noodle joint where nobody spoke English. Our coffees were loaded with condensed milk and the only thing we managed to successfully order to eat was some exceedingly oily fried bread. We didn't really know what to do with it so we tried dunking it in our coffee. It was weird. Later we saw a guy put it in his soup. Still weird.

This city is crazy. The number of stores and shopping malls is unbelievable. Western stores like Gucci, Coach, H&M, The Body Shop, hundreds of shoe stores, and everything else you can imagine are joined by crowded malls of nameless stalls selling knock-off purses, discount cell phones, and watches- thousands of watches. The streets are crazy, cabs drive fast, and places are really hard to find. I haven't quite figured out the numbering system for stores. I'm sure I'm gonna have to learn how to barter in half-English-half-gestures if I want to buy anything around here. It all has a very exciting feeling to it.

We showered and got settled in our hotel room. We're kinda being pampered here. The next objective was lunch. After searching for a while for a restaurant that no longer exists, we wandered into the "Temporary Market" which apparently has been "temporary" for over 30 years. We ended up in a bustling enclave of small stands and plastic tables and stools where we were shuffled to a small table and had a menu shoved in our face. We were very clearly the only non-locals in the place which we thought was a good sign. The food was quite good, although quite greasy. We were thrilled to experience a part of the city away from the bright signs that line the streets. It felt like a more genuine part of Hong Kong.

Anyway, time is very confusing right now and all I know is I haven't slept in a long, long time. We have lots of things we want to see and do as well as festival events to attend. It's only 4:07 pm but I'm about to crash. So I will leave you with a panorama of the view from our hotel room.

Victoria Harbor from our hotel