Things to Do in Hong Kong

Here are some things that I did in Hong Kong that I very much enjoyed.

QB House
Because I kept on procrastinating when I was at home, I was in desperate need of a haircut by the time I got to Hong Kong. Since I only let Asian people cut my hair and there are lots of Asian people in Hong Kong, I figured that I might as well try to get a haircut in Hong Kong.

After Googling a little bit, I came across a chain called QB House. It’s a chain of barbershops that originated in Japan, and the idea is that you can get a fast, affordable haircut (QB stands for Quick Barber). They advertise that haircuts take only 10 minutes, prices are cheap, and that the chain has optimized the haircutting experience.

To get a haircut, you can pay with a 50 HKD bill or use your Octopus card with the ticket machine, and then you get a ticket that you then hand to a barber. As soon as a barber was free, I sat down in the chair, quickly explained what I wanted, and then the barber started cutting. They don’t use water or do any styling, and the haircut took about 10 minutes. At the end, the barber also used a vacuum on my head, which I always appreciate.

Overall, I thought it was a pretty good haircut, especially one that only cost 50 HKD (~$6.50). I would definitely go to QB House again if I were in need of a haircut, and they have locations in Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore

Dialogue in the Dark
Dialogue in the Dark is an exhibition where you go on a tour in a pitch black area to experience what it’s like to be visually impaired. The tours are led by people who are visually impaired themselves, and you engage in experiences that you might find in Hong Kong like trying to cross the street (don’t worry, there aren’t any actual cars).

I was a little bit skeptical of Dialogue in the Dark, since I’ve previously been to a restaurant called O.Noir in Montreal where you dine in the dark and all of the servers are visually impaired and did not think it was a great experience (well, largely because the food wasn’t very good), but Dialogue in the Dark blew me away. The tour guide was awesome, and the experience was–for lack of a better term–eye-opening. This was one of the best and most enjoyable exhibitions I’ve been to.

Wet Markets
I visited a wet market in Wan Chai, and it was kinda awesome in a horrific way. In the US, it’s common to be very disconnected from where our food comes from, but at a wet market, it’s extraordinarily clear that what you’re eating comes from a live animal that someone has to kill.

I spent quite a long time just staring at the myriad fish stalls. Some stalls had fish cut open where the fish were so freshly killed that the fish hearts just kept on beating. And as people were pointing at fish and buying them, the fishmonger would just grab the fish, put it on his stone slab, snap its spine, descale the fish as it was still wriggling around, then slice it open. Gory and bloody but so very real. I wonder how many people in the US would keep eating meat if they had to see the animals killed in front of them, or better yet, they had to kill the animals themselves.