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Traveling with Friends: How to Avoid Disaster

A sunny day overlooking the sprawling city of Hong Kong, with lush greenery in the background

A few years ago, one night over dinner with some friends with whom I shared a love of gourmet food, sushi, great cocktails, politics, and movies, we realized that in all the years we’d known each other, we had never taken a trip together.

As we all had lots of points and miles saved, we thought about how fun it would be to go somewhere spontaneously.

“Let’s do it,” we all declared. So we found award tickets to Hong Kong for the following week.

Halfway around the world, we arrived at our hotel late in the evening. After a late dinner, we went back to the hotel, where I decided to go to sleep. As fun as Hong Kong is at night (and it is very wild), I wanted to try to adjust to the local time zone, so I could make the most of the rest of our trip.

My friends had other ideas: they were going to party. So I said good night and off they went.

When I woke up, it was still dark out. I looked at the time. It was 5:30am. I found two of my friends asleep; the third was apparently still out partying.

Letting them rest, I got ready and headed out to enjoy the city before the commuters rose and it became a maelstrom of noise, chaos, and crowds. Hong Kong is one of my favorite cities, and I love its peaceful calm in the morning. It’s all grandmothers and grandfathers out for walks, doing tai chi in parks, and eating dim sum.

With so much to do (and eat), I didn’t want to waste any time. After an early breakfast of dim sum, I wandered around, grabbed some tea, read a book, and took photos of empty streets.

It was midday when I finally heard from my friends. We met for lunch at a noodle shop and plotted our day.

Before we booked our trip, I had asked them what they wanted to do. Knowing them, I knew it would involve fancy dinners (Hong Kong has some really fine dining), but I emphasized that as a backpacker at heart, what I really love are hole-in-the-wall restaurants, cheap activities, wandering around, and just enjoying the day-to-day life of a place.

“No problem,” they said. They were travelers too, and they also wanted to get below the surface. The idea of dim sum, markets, and fun local bars appealed to them as much as it did to me.

But that was not what happened.

My friends stayed out late partying every night, slept in late, only wanted to eat at expensive restaurants, and didn’t want to do any sightseeing.

As the days ticked by, we were like ships in the night. Outside a few dinners, I didn’t see too much of them. But, being used…

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