Today we’re celebrating our newly built apartment and giving our ancestors their pocket money.

The Hong Kong metro trains are nicer and more spacious than the London Underground.
Air-conditioned too.

Breakfast at the Tai Po Market.

The top floor is one big food hall.

Obligatory. Gotta have this dish at least once every trip.
Noodles in fish stock soup and other fish related toppings. This is the only dish this stall sells.
Even the drinks have to be bought from their neighbours.

Next we headed down to the lower floors to pick up the pocket money for the ancestors.
Some of this stuff feels like you’ll be spoiling them though I do find the idea amusing that there are iOS vs Android wars even in heaven.

Can you even say you loved your grandparents if you don’t upgrade their TV to full HD?

Or buy them a yacht?

That doesn’t seem health and safety compliant.

Finally heading to the middle of nowhere, AKA the village where my dad grew up.
You can see the main city in the distance.

It’s so new and shiny. Someone has already moved in.
Though we only own the middle floor. My uncle owns the other two.
We could do this because the men of these villages got given the right to build their own building. This was to help combat the increasingly scarce housing, improve rural areas ᵃⁿᵈ ᵃˡˢᵒ ᵐᵃʸᵇᵉ ᵗᵒ ᵖᵒˢˢᶦᵇˡʸ ᵃᵖᵖᵉᵃˢᵉ ᵗʰᵉ ᵍʳᵒʷᶦⁿᵍ ᵈᶦˢˢᵉⁿᵗ ᵃⁿᵈ ʳᶦᵒᵗˢ ʷʰᵉⁿ ᵗʰᵉ ᴮʳᶦᵗᶦˢʰ ᵗᵒᵒᵏ ᵒᵛᵉʳ ᵃ ᵇᵘⁿᶜʰ ᵒᶠ ˡᵃⁿᵈ.

Some buildings aren’t so new and shiny.

The village courtyard is well maintained.

It has a koi pond and everything.

The way the light shines into the centre is cinematic af.
You can imagine the boss fight of a martial arts film happening here.

The inside looked like this.

Gotta fold all these paper into ingots.

To send the money/yachts to heaven: first, start a fire.

Then chuck in the Floo powder.

For food you leave it on the altar and for drinks you dump it on the ground.
Then we placed and lit a dozen incense candles to ask for good fortune because hey, this chicken and wine wasn’t free.
Don’t forget to pick up your food later otherwise that would be littering.

Now do it for the house too.

Aunt: Ok, stick this burning rod into the orange.
Me: Surrounding the orange with support oranges so it doesn’t topple over

What even is this light placement?

Nice place. L-Shaped living rooms are the worst though.

Energy drinks, juice, root beer, tea, soda.

How many people did they invite?

This is a lot of food. Not a single table finished their pot. They ended up dumping the leftovers on all the neighbours.

Banana trees.

Check out this leaf.

Doggo.

This car has like, no crumple zone.

Finally, time to leave.

Stop

Got a bit hungry at 11pm. Good thing there’s a McDonald’s near the hotel.

Really busy at this time. Partly due to the undertrained and understaffed kitchen with no manager in sight. This cost-cutting started happening after McDonald’s sold all their branches in Hong Kong and China to some Chinese conglomerate back in 2017.

Sweetcorn and chicken wings.

I swear this time it wasn’t me. The pie is part of the dessert. It was ok.