If you want to join @galenkp's #weekend-engagement (week 145) topic you can find it here.

So, I just read a weekend engagement post by @dreemsteem and loved the topic she chose as I also have an item of clothing that I have kept over the years hehe... which brings back a really fun memory of a weekend I spent in HongKong with my hubby many years ago.

Now, I'm gonna have to go digging around in my hard drives to see what pics I can find from the evening... not sure we took many as we were having too much fun in the moment... but the pictures from that evening are firmly stored inside my head 😆

Right, let's go find them...

In the early noughties my hubby spent a few years contracting abroad. He was based in a development town about an hour outside Guangzhou city in SouthEast China and I joined him for his first 4-month stint. Once a month we booked a weekend away in Hong Kong so that we could go and renew my tourist visa... and I always looked forward to these trips as it meant I got to enjoy some Western delights again and stock up on more familiar treats for the next month. I love Chinese food but it was not very easy to get anything vegetarian, without cooking it myself!

Anyway... I digress... back to the story behind the piece of clothing I shall be showcasing haha...

On one such weekend trip away, in 2000, we stayed at the Royal Pacific in Tsim Sha Tsui district of Kowloon, with views to die for of Victoria Harbour. We went out for dinner and drinks at Planet Hollywood. The guys sitting at the table next to us were pretty loud and jovial... not obnoxious... just clearly having a fun evening out. And I remember thinking... they seem fun... but we didn't know them so we enjoyed our more sedate meal, and had a few quiet drinks.

After we had finished our meal, we decided to move on to the Hard Rock Cafe for a more upbeat vibe. A short 10-15 minute walk later we entered Hard Rock, found a table, and sat down with some cocktails. The place was rocking with some cool tunes. I could hear loud chatter and laughter coming from a few metres away, and having a good view, I noticed our erstwhile companions from Planet Hollywood now ensconced at the Hard Rock bar, downing whiskeys in mindless merriment.

One of them saw me looking up at them over the hubby's shoulder and called us over, saying something along the lines of...

hey friends, you guys were at the Planet too, right? what you drinkin?... Come on over and join us...

We were feeling the vibe, and they seemed harmless enough, so we got up and joined them at the bar.

Turns out they were a group of sailors from the United States Asiatic Fleet and their Naval War Ship had docked in Kowloon Bay for a short R&R break while on their Tour of Duty of the Far East.

One cocktail quickly turned to three or more. I lost count between the shots and the drinks. They refused to knowingly allow us to pay for any of the drinks, so we had to sneak in a couple of rounds on us.

At one point I remember one of them talking about their ship and I asked if they had a pic of it. He was like...

hey i can do one better. I can draw it for you... AND if you come by early tomorrow morning before we ship out, we can give you a tour! We do them for PR and to maintain good relations.

(ok so the tour never happened... although we did wave them off the next day - but their ship-out time was moved up by a few hours sadly).

Anyway, this guy asks the barman for a marker so he can draw and I think he's gonna draw on a piece of paper... nope! He wants to draw on the front of my shirt... a memento he says...so I can remember them... and they will all sign it 😂😂😂 I looked at the hubby and he simply shrugged his shoulders and was like...

sure why not if you want to...

So next thing I was holding my t-shirt taut, so a handful of drunken sailors could all leave their mark ROFLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL... 🤣🤣🤣Having said that, they were very respectful young blokes and we had a laugh at the extremely basic battleship sketch drawn in the centre of my shirt, with the number '33' in the middle, being the number of their frigate.

Needless to say, we had a blast that evening and the next day we woke early and made our way down to the Harbour to say goodbye.

Sadly, we didn't have smartphones at the time or a digital camera that day - although we did end up buying our first Sony digital camera while we were out there... with a massive (at the time hehe) 2.1-megapixel camera... and it was interpolated lol... So any pics I took were on my old school film zoom camera... and I can't locate the negative scans at the moment. As a result, the header image of this post is one taken from the public domain in Wikimedia commons and uses their correct citation. It is of the USS Jarrett, FFG-33. It looks like the frigate that we saw docked in the harbour and it has the frigate '33' designation which ties in with what the sailors told us at the time and drew on my shirt... so you never know... this could be it! At the very least, it gives an idea of the style of ship on which they sailed.

I still have that shirt...although the marker was not as permanent as I had originally thought and faded fast in a couple of washes before I put it away and kept it for posterity haha.

And here it is...faded in all its glory... it lives in a box of memories at the top of my cupboard and is a reminder when I see it of that awesome evening of friendship and fun shared with total strangers from across the pond.