Padel Playing Foreigner

For those that know me, know that when planning travel - a deciding factor of where I travel isn’t whether I can play Padel there or not, but I also cannot deny that if I can get a game in while there - I will.  So when the first Padel club in Hong Kong, Padel+ opened it's doors in September 2023 and offered free matches during a limited promotional 'soft launch' period - it was kind of a no brainer to visit my mate John in Hong Kong to test it out.  I decided to book a flight from Thursday - Sunday and chose to stay at the  Jen Hong Kong by Shangri-La   near Kennedy Town, which is where John was living at the time. Having not seen my friend in a few months, and this being only my second time to Honkers (and the first since COVID), I was of course looking forward to seeing if much had changed in the 5 years since visiting. John and Anna were nice enough to meet me at the express train station and escorted me to my hotel.  After dropping off my bags, and having a quick &quo

                                                                                                                  Earlier  in January  this year, I was fortunate enough to visit some of my team in Jakarta. I currently work at a startup where b usiness travel is a rare occurrence given how responsible you have to be with budgets, but if you plan ahead (and make sure to spend the company’s money as if it’s your own), it’s definitely achievable. Not only would this be my first trip to Jakarta, it would be the first time I was meeting my extended team in person. Needless to say, being able to see firsthand how things are run locally , seeing the team face to face, being able to have work (and non-work) conversations around the desks and spending time together outside of the office over a delicious meal was an invaluable experience. Outside of office hours, though - the team had commitments which meant most of my nights would be free, so instead of being cooped up in my hotel room all nigh