Ho Ho Hong Kong

With HK gov insisting on chasing "zero Covid" policy no matter how unrealistic it is and how devastating it has been to the local businesses, we are seeing so many of our favorite businesses and venues disappear. Too many to count at this point. We decided to do everything we could to save our most favorite venue in Hong Kong, The Aftermath.  The Aftermath is an awesome live music/performance spac...

Happy Year of The Tiger everyone! We're taking a break from having guests on this week and we do the long awaited Ask Us Anything episode. We asked our listeners on social media and on the podcast WhatsApp group to submit any questions they want to us to answer and we got many interesting questions. We answered them all, ran long had a lot of fun.  We answer questions like: How do we get along and...

Another one bites the dust. La Rotisserie, a staple of the Hong Kong F&B scene since 2012, decided to pull the plug on all its branches on Jan 7, 2022. La Rotisserie was famous for its moderately priced roast chicken – a staple family-style dish in France. We sit down co-founder with Jerome Carlier to talk about the decision to shut La Rotisserie down, the challenges facing the F&B business in Hon...

In December 2019, American Lawyer Samuel Bickett was leaving Causeway Bay MTR station when he saw a couple of older men in plain civilian clothes beating up a teenager with a baton. He tried to stop them and ended up getting arrested and charged with assaulting a police officer despite the men repeatedly saying that they're not police officers. He ended up spending over 2 months in a Hong Kong max...

Comedian Drew Fralick was among the first wave of the OG China-based standup comedians. He performed standup comedy all over mainland China in both mandarin and English! Drew is still the only comedian to win both of Asia's biggest standup comedy festivals, China and Hong Kong! Drew moved back to his home state of Detroit a few years back but his passion for comedy has never changed. He recently b...

Bugs Harpley and John Buckman have a true success story. They are the power couple behind Decent Espresso , over the years, John has founded multiple companies including Magnatune online music service supporting independent musicians get their revenue share, BookMooch : An online community for exchanging used books. John is also a Member of the Advisory Council for the Open Rights Group and he is...

It's a new year folks! Happy 2022! For the first episode of the year, we decided to make it a thing and have comedian Garron Chiu back on for the new year's episode! If you remember last year Garron was also on for the 2021 NYE special !  This time we chat about how much has the holiday traditions changed over the years in Hong Kong, from Hong Kongers' favorite holiday destinations back in the day...

For Christmas this year, we have Icelandic comedian Kári Gunnarsson on, we chat about "Icelandic Santa" , how we celebrate Christmas in our respective cultures and we make very poor attempts at pronouncing "Eyjafjallajokull"   Facebook group for Bohol Typhoon Relief: https://www.facebook.com/groups/boholtyphoonrelief To donate to Bohol Relief Operations from Supertyphoon Odette: https://donorbox.o...

Harry Harrsion needs no introduction, if you have been in Hong Kong for more than a couple of months, you must have come across one of his drawings. Harry is the principal cartoonist for the South China Morning Post, his work appearing six days a week. We chat with Harry about his new book "Add Ink : Cartoon Chronicles of Life in Hong Kong ", his beginnings, his influences, his "sketchy" office an...

On this very special episode, Mohammed's voice is suspiciously different, Vivek chats with "Mohammeded" on how comedians like any performers need to sometimes do shows when they're not feeling 100% but unfortunately, they cant have an "under study" or have a "substitute"... unlike other artforms, they are the art itself.   Leave us a review: (please!) https://www.ratethispodcast.com/hohohkpod Foll...

Vivek has a big announcement to make regarding his ongoing Facebook page saga, then we delve into part 2 of the "Before Comedy" series. This time it's Mohammed's turn. What was life like in Egypt when he was growing up? Way before the 2011 revolution, the move to China and taking up a career in comedy? Leave us a review: (please!) https://www.ratethispodcast.com/hohohkpod Follow Mohammed on Instag...

"All comedians are depressed", "Good comedy has to come from a dark place", "tragedy+time=comedy" are among some of the most common phrases you hear thrown around in the comedy world, but are any of them actually true? And why does it seem to be a pretty common narrative in the comedy world? We ask our guest: psychotherapist and one of Hong Kong's top mental health counselors, Tim Hoffman.  Check...

At nearly 5am on Tuesday October 12, 2021 a taxi carrying a foreign passenger drove along Queen’s Road West and the 50-year-old taxi driver in the vehicle was suspected of arguing with the passenger for some reason. The foreign passenger then used a hard object to hit the neck of the driver which resulted in injuries. In order to escape, he got off the car and fled. The passenger then got off the...

Conspiracy Chocolate makes high quality small batch craft chocolate from bean to bar. They use cacao beans from a single farm in Vietnam and process slowly and manually over 5 days to retain the natural health benefits and flavor of the cacao. We chat with its founders Celine Herren and Amit Oz. They are a Swiss and Israeli couple who met in Hong Kong with a passion for creating food and discoveri...

Vivek has a huge announcement to make then we get to our guest Ivan Leung. Ivan is the co-founder and GM of Aloha Online, one of Asia's leading SEO solutions and digital marketing technology providers. Ivan gives us a crash course on what SEOs really mean and how any business could improve its Google ranking by following very simple steps. We go into the "science" of Google rankings, what you're r...

We take a break from having guests on this week and we fly solo. The original idea was for us to talk about what our lives were like B.C. (Before Comedy). We started with Vivek and boy did he have a lot to say. Vivek has had a pretty wild journey even before ever doing standup. In fact he has had so much happen that we didn't have time to share Mohammed's B.C. stories, we will definitely get into...

Cassi Thomas AKA Chaotic Cassi is proper "HK famous", she runs a massive Facebook group called " Chaotic Hong Kong Expats " with more than 18000 members. We catch up with her about her recent trip to Thailand, spending time in Phuket's "sandbox" and traveling to Chiang Mai, her 21 days quarantine and her fascination with the book "The Expatriates" on which Nicole Kidman's controversial show is bas...

Sai Kung Stray Friends Foundation (SKSFF) is consisted of a group of volunteers who rescue stray, abandoned, sick and injured dogs to provide them with medical care and rehabilitation. Every dog that is rescued is health checked, de-sexed, vaccinated and given flea, tick and heartworm prevention. They also try to provide any necessary treatment and emergency surgery that may be needed. The aim is...

Stuart Palm is an international psychic entertainer, artist, hypnotist, illustrator, seer, reader, mentalist and father. He joins us to talk about his upcoming show “World of Wonders,” his new tarot cards “Palm’s Oracle”; the amazing variety of uses for Hypnosis, and performing Mentalism in Hong Kong and around the world. This episode was aired live on Shopstream. Get the Shopstream app here: http...

( aka Rock Mum, Goddess of Rock and even “Godmother of Rock”) The driving force behind The Underground ( https://undergroundhk.com/ ). Described by  Time Magazine  as “Chris B—the tattooed fairy godmother of the Hong Kong scene. ”  The ‘face’ of The Underground. Born & raised in Hong Kong, with a Chinese mother and English father. Involved in the HK live music scene since 1990, as a performer, son...

Comedian Jordan Leung (better known by his online alias 69ranch) moved back to HK from the US when Covid hit, then he started hitting up the comedy circuits here, then he blew up on social media. His IG account amassed thousands of followers in a short period of time, making him by far the biggest draw in the current English-speaking standup comedy scene in HK. He sits down with us to talk about h...

Ben Quinlan is the Chairman of Fintech Association of Hong Kong, CEO and Managing Partner of Quinlan & Associates, Adjunct Professor at AIT School of Management, Conference Ambassador for Hong Kong Tourism Board, and somehow he's also one of Asia's most successful standup comedians.  We talk about the current political and economic climate in HK, the drastic measures some industries had to underta...

We continue on our journey of catching up with the city's top standup comedians, and this week we have Chris Musni on. Chris is Hong Kong's most prolific standup writer, one of the OGs of the standup comedy scene in HK, the original found of comedy.hk, yet, he has had a very turbulent relationship with standup throughout the years, falling in and out of love with it, the politics and the bookers p...

We are flying solo this week with no guests and a whole lot of nerding out on comedy. From our different processes of writing jokes to refining bits at open mics and how we come up with ideas for jokes, then we bust out our notebooks and run our very new and super old bits past each other, add tags and share a lot of laughs. This one is for the hardcore comedy folks so, strap in! Follow Mohammed o...

This week we're back on the comedy train, with one of Asia's top comics and comedy powerhouse Garron Chiu. We discuss the recent talk of the town in Hong Kong: Nicole Kidman skipping HK quarantine to film her new show "The Expats", as well as the chaotic way the quarantine rules in HK keep changing last minute and Phuket's Sandbox updates (where Garron's wife Cassi is currently "stuck") Follow Moh...