Hong Kong is one of the places I will never forget.
I remember the skyline, the busy streets, the MTR, the food, and especially cheung fun, one of my favorite local dishes.
But my strongest memory of Hong Kong began with something completely unexpected.
A member of my family was injured during our stay.
An ambulance was called.
We went to the hospital.
Surgery became necessary.
What had started as an ordinary stay in Hong Kong suddenly turned into nearly a month of hospital life.
When English Became a Real-Life Tool
During that month, almost everything outside conversations with my family happened in English.
I spoke with doctors and nurses.
I listened to explanations about surgery.
I dealt with hospital procedures.
I communicated with the insurance company.
There was no time to worry about whether every sentence was grammatically perfect.
I simply needed to understand what was happening and communicate what needed to be said.
That experience completely changed the way I thought about English.
English was no longer something I studied.
It became a tool I actually needed.
A tool for asking questions.
A tool for finding information.
A tool for making decisions.
And sometimes, a tool for protecting the people you care about.
Then Came the Medical Bill
Near the end of the hospital stay, we learned how much the medical treatment had cost.
Nearly 10 million yen.
Seeing that amount was shocking.
Fortunately, we had purchased travel insurance before the trip.
Without it, dealing with such a large medical bill would have been extremely difficult.
Until then, travel insurance had simply been another item on my pre-travel checklist.
After Hong Kong, I never looked at it the same way again.
Travel is usually associated with exciting destinations, hotels, food, and sightseeing.
But an emergency can happen anywhere.
Sometimes everything changes in a matter of seconds.
Hong Kong Became the Beginning of Something Else
Strangely, this difficult experience did not make me afraid of traveling overseas.
It did the opposite.
After spending a month dealing with unfamiliar situations in another country, I realized that I could handle much more than I had previously imagined.
Later, I traveled independently to places such as Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, and the Philippines.
I began staying in Airbnb apartments and experiencing cities more like a temporary resident than a tourist.
When something went wrong, I learned to find information, ask questions, think for myself, and take action.
Looking back, Hong Kong was the starting point.
I Turned the Experience Into a Book
I have now written about the experience in my new Kindle book:
One Month in Hong Kong: How an Unexpected Crisis Changed My Life
It is not a conventional Hong Kong travel guide.
It is a true story about a family emergency, overseas medical care, travel insurance, using English in a real crisis, and how one unexpected month changed the way I travel.
If you are planning an overseas trip, studying English, or simply interested in what can happen when travel suddenly stops going according to plan, I hope you will enjoy the book.
And because this is still a story about Hong Kong, there is also room for the things I love about the city.
Including cheung fun.
Lots of cheung fun.
▶︎ Read One Month in Hong Kong: How an Unexpected Crisis Changed My Life on Amazon Kindle
Sometimes the journey you never planned becomes the one that changes you the most.
