OMG I FAIL. FAIL FAIL. THIS THING IS SO BEHIND AHHH. Let’s just pretend this is still happening in the present.

Reading Week is coming up in the next three weeks, which means I get a week off! Since HKU is a school that emphasizes independent study, the students get a week in the middle of the semester before midterms to “study.” Obviously, since I’m an exchange student, I’m going to “study” by travelling and playing my brains out.

The plan: Taiwan from Oct 14-Oct 19 & Japan from Oct 19-Oct 24. I get to turn 21 in freaking Japan!

Who: Peter, Chin, Leanne, and Me. Our friends Jordan and Vivien were maybes, and Will decided not to go anymore because he was on a budget.

Peter was smart and found a website called agoda.com that listed hotel rooms for bargain prices, and since he was picky enough to demand for a nice place to stay in instead of a hostel, we ended up booking five star hotels for both countries. Yes, we are high rollers to the extent that we wanted something comfortable for the four of us. It didn’t turn out to be that expensive either, since we found hotel rooms in the five star range going for the same price as rooms in the three star hotels. Let’s just say it came out to be around US$20-30 per night.

We basically spent the day planning for Reading Week and budgeting, but first we ate dinner at the ShangShang LaMien restaurant in Langham Plaza that we can’t seem to get enough of, because we have no place else to eat good xiaolongbao. And while I was there, I broke a spoon. I tried to be very discreet and put the spoon under my table mat, hoping that nobody would notice even after it shattered on the floor and made a noise loud enough for peoples’ heads to turn. I guess my hopes of turning ninja didn’t work very well, because the waitress came and cleaned up the leftover pieces on the floor and I guiltily presented the rest of the spoon (not before Leanne was able to snap a picture of it).

It makes me sad that I’m a hot mess when I’m 100% sober. But the delicious dinner made up for it, and I made sure not to break anything else the rest of the night.

I love these handmade lamien. 

We moved to McDonalds afterwards to use internet, and ended up booking the hotels first. Flight tickets were still up in the air, but losing US$1,000+ on my credit card to the Japan hotel was enough to make me very depressed.

This was our estimated budget at the end of the night (for all four of us):

Freaking Japan is so expensive. :( Poor Chin has to pay an extra US$300+ because he has to fly back to Hong Kong after Taiwan in order to take a JAPANESE exam, and then meet up with us afterwards in Japan. 

Regardless of the heartbreaking prices, I’m sure this trip will be SUGOI!