[AI generated not reviewed yet]

Certain dense Asian cities occupy a specific place in my mental geography: vertical, humid, operating on different spatial logic than Western cities. Going back isn't about tourism—it's about experiencing a different mode of urban living.

The List

Night Photo Tour: The city looks completely different at night. Neon, crowds, the way vertical architecture frames light. Want to actually take the time to photograph it properly rather than just experiencing it in passing.

Walking the Island: With people. Not efficiently, but wandering. The kind of walk where you stop when something looks interesting rather than optimizing for distance.

Dense Retail Districts: Not luxury shopping, but the dense street-level retail that certain cities do better than anywhere else. Six floors of random stuff in buildings that would never pass Western building codes.

Public Pool: Public pool culture. Somehow feels more authentic than hotel pools or fancy clubs.

The Ferry: Simple, cheap, iconic. The best tourist experience that locals also genuinely use.

Tailored Clothes: Getting a suit made in cities with strong tailoring cultures is worth doing. Quality, price, and turnaround time all beat Western options.

Back Alleys: The parts that don't make it into tourist guides. Small shops selling equipment or materials you didn't know existed. The kind of density that only works in a city with cheap rent in vertical space.

The Coordination Challenge

The harder part: inviting friends. When you're coordinating across time zones and schedules, how do you make it feel inclusive rather than logistically burdensome?

Some ideas:

  • Flexible dates: "I'll be there these two weeks, come for any subset of days"
  • Specific offers: Not "want to visit?" but "want to do the night photo walk on the 15th?"
  • Anchor activities: Plan 2-3 specific things that sound appealing, let people opt into those rather than trying to coordinate the whole trip
  • Low-pressure framing: "I'm going anyway, would love company for parts of it" rather than "planning a group trip"

The goal is making it easy to say yes to parts without feeling obligated to commit to the whole thing.

Why This City?

Western and Asian megacities share density but solve it differently. One goes vertical, the other horizontal. One embraces humidity and chaos, the other fights both. Street food, public transit, the relationship between indoor and outdoor space—all different.

Experiencing that difference recalibrates your sense of what cities can be. It's harder to take your home city's specific solutions for granted when you've seen a different set of solutions work in a different context.

Plus: the food is exceptional, the public transit actually works, and the density creates a specific kind of urban energy that's hard to find elsewhere.