Just got back after spending a week in Hong Kong. This thread was very helpful in my planning of this trip - which I booked with points back in April - and in navigating while I was there, so fwiw, here are my experiences. For background, I'm an experienced traveler, but this was my first time in Hong Kong. I'm also a white male American with no ability to speak Cantonese.

I arrived the evening of Sunday, Nov. 10 and had booked a car from the airport to the Hilton Garden Inn in Mongkok. I'd considered switching hotels, but from everything I'd seen, the protests were limited to weekends so I figured I'd just be dealing with those this one night since I was leaving the following Saturday morning.

As we all saw, last week was essentially a week full of protests, and the HKmap.live app was very helpful in seeing where things were, as were the frequent SCMP live threads. The HGI was far enough from Nathan Road to have not been affected directly while I was there - it was a surreal oasis - so the biggest issue I faced was disruption to transportation. The frequent closure of Mong Kok (I never even used it), Yau Ma Tei and Prince Edward MTR stations did make the hotel less convenient to get to, but a little more walking to Olympic Station could get me to Hong Kong Station to connect on with no problems. The protests in Central meant some detours, too. I didn't take buses or taxis given the traffic - though my trips from and to the airport were just fine - and just walked a lot and took the ferry.

The second biggest issue was that I didn't get to do everything I wanted to do. After getting a couple of suits made, the #2 thing I wanted to do while in Hong Kong was go to the races at Happy Valley and they were called off on Nov. 13 (for good reason - getting back would have been a mess). The Hong Kong Museum of History was shut down the days I'd planned to go due to the PolyU / Cross Harbor Tunnel barricades nearby, and the Tung Chung station closures would have made getting to Tai O or the Big Buddha take a lot longer. Now, the places I did go were in many instances quite sparsely attended. No waiting for the Peak Tram, almost nobody else at the museums I did visit, and open seats at bars and restaurants that would normally be busy. (And I'm 100% with the folks who suggested excessive tipping - from my conversations with employees, places that normally see a lot of tourist business are hurting.)

I did get to witness to history in the making, both voluntarily and accidentally. I took a couple of walks over to Nathan Road around 6 a.m. and saw the then-abandoned roadblocks and even brick walls, as well as the crews out to try and clear them up. I saw protestors tearing the facade off of a Bank of China branch. And I got to smell tear gas after deciding to risk it and go to Prince Edward Station my last night because I was tired of walking, so I guess that's something I can cross off my bucket list.

Yet I also didn't get to do everything I'd hoped to do, and from this first-time visitor's experience, there was a pall cast over the city. I definitely felt more anxiety than I anticipated ("Where are the protests now?" "Will MTR shut down before I can get back?" "What's Carrie Lam going to announce at 7?") I went to Macau on Wednesday and to Cheung Chau (Thanks, Henry from 001, for the rec!) on Thursday morning to get a bit of a break from it, though only a handful of times did I feel any concern about my safety - trying to get out of a packed Yau Ma Tei station being one notable instance. There were days that I would go places and it didn't seem like anything was amiss, but then other places seemed half-deserted. I also found myself having a hard time enjoying my vacation knowing what was taking place not that far away. One night I was standing on the 30th floor at the Horizonte Lounge. To the south, I could see the Symphony of Lights. Turning the other direction, at about the same distance, I could see the lights of a convoy of police vehicles as they cleared Nathan Road yet again. That's a defining memory of Hong Kong for me.

Everyone needs to make their own decision on whether to go. I decided to keep my plans because they would have been hard to change and until the day I arrived things had mostly been confined to the weekends, but I personally wouldn't book another trip to Hong Kong until there's more clarity on where this is all heading.

And without going OMNI, I hope there's a peaceful way out of this crisis, but I fear for the city's future.