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Before Wareka had ever seen a Hong Kong skyscraper, he lived deep in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Then an unexpected friendship took him thousands of miles from home and into one of the world’s busiest cities.
Wareka is an Indigenous Waorani man from eastern Ecuador. He met Arieh Smith, the language enthusiast and YouTuber known as Xiaoma, when Smith traveled to the Amazon and spent time with his community.
The two became friends, and Smith eventually wanted to return the hospitality. He planned to bring Wareka to New York City, but there was one problem: Wareka couldn’t get a U.S. visa.
So Smith found another destination.
After spending a year looking for an alternative, he discovered that Ecuadorian citizens can travel to Hong Kong without obtaining a visa in advance. The pair headed there, giving Wareka his first experience of the sprawling metropolis.
For someone accustomed to life in the Amazon, Hong Kong offered plenty of surprises. Smith filmed Wareka’s reactions along the way, capturing the moments when everyday urban experiences became something worth stopping to examine. A subway ride wasn’t simply transportation. A city block wasn’t simply a city block. Everything felt new because Wareka had never needed to see it as ordinary.
The trip also gave Smith a different perspective on his own surroundings. His trip with Wareka offered a particularly unusual reversal of roles. Smith had once traveled into Wareka’s world; now Wareka was stepping into his.
That perspective makes the Hong Kong trip more than an unusual vacation. Wareka’s reactions reveal how strange modern city life can look when you encounter it without years of familiarity. Trains arriving every few minutes, skyscrapers filling the horizon, and technology woven into nearly every part of daily life suddenly become worthy of attention.
Wareka may have arrived in Hong Kong as a visitor, but his presence gave Smith’s audience another way to look at the city.
Watch an Indigenous Waorani man named Wareka travel from his home in the Ecuadorian Amazon to Hong Kong, to experience the city’s skyscrapers, trains, food, and technology.
Xiaoma: Website | Instagram | YouTube
Wareka: Website | Instagram
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