"You Can Sit With Us" Part 1 — The Beginning of Girls of LKF

Women of Hong Kong is a love letter to my mother, Agnes, who steadied me through every shifting current while navigating her own. To my sister, Reiane, who moved beside us wherever the waves chose to carry us. And to my late best friend, Marquise — the shore I still return to, again and again, in memory and in love.

The City That Raised Me

"Girls of Lan Kwai Fong" began as a loophole. It was my way of helping women enjoy the nightlife without becoming part of the scenery. It started with one table I asked for, a few girlfriends I trusted, and a simple plan that somehow turned into a ripple and eventually a movement. But before that ripple grew into what became Women of Hong Kong, you need to know where I came from and why any of this mattered in the first place.

A photo my mother took of me at a playground in Hong Kong — one last moment together before she headed to work.

I’m a Filipino woman born and raised in Hong Kong, a city that shaped me just as much as my own home did. I was the first in my entire family to be born outside the Philippines (there's a sense of pride writing this!). My parents took a chance and left everything they knew behind to build a life in Hong Kong, a foreign city they were discovering just as much as they were learning how to raise a family. From the start, we were all figuring things out together.

My mother and father wanted more out of life, so they left the Philippines and came to Hong Kong for work and built a life together from the ground up.

Growing up, I navigated two cultures at once, trying to find my place in a world that didn’t always know what to make of girls like me. I didn’t come from privilege, and nothing in my life was handed to me (or my parents) neatly. I left school early, and I was carrying real responsibilities long before most people my age even understood what responsibility meant.

Survival Mode with a Baby on My Hip

My teenage years were spent in a home full of love but also full of reality. My parents worked non-stop to keep us afloat, and eventually my father stepped away from the family for a few years. My mother raised us through that time, doing everything she could with what she had. I learned early on that survival and resilience weren’t concepts but were habits we had to live by to push through.

At 21, I became a single mother and decided to step into adulthood at full speed. In order to make this work for my son, I needed to find work, stability, and clarity fast. My mother and sister held me steady while I figured out how to make ends meet, and began my job hunt of sending out 50 CVs, one rejection after another until I landed a job at Armani Aqua as a "receptionist". Little did I know that meant holding doors open for 9 hours per 11 hour shift, 6 days a week but I was in no position to complain.

My time with my son came in small pockets — early mornings before my 10am shift, or late nights when I walked through the door at 11pm on weekdays, 1am on weekends.

Looking back, my sister ended up carrying more weight than she should have at the age of 14. She held both my challenges and my mother’s during my father’s absence. She was our lifeline — mine and my mother’s — and I’m endlessly grateful for her. I do wish I hadn’t leaned so heavily on my sister, but at that age I was navigating motherhood and adulthood all at once, with no guidebook — we both felt the weight of the world.. She deserves far more recognition than she ever asks for!

Watching what she carried helped me understand, later on, just how essential support systems like Women of Hong Kong truly are. Women like her, like my mother, and like myself needed that kind of community long before we knew how to ask for it.

Nightlife Became My Unlikely Teacher

In 2011, I landed a PR and Marketing Executive role at a Hong Kong F&B group. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was a door — and for people like me, sometimes a door is enough. I learned quickly, adapted fast, and paid attention to everything, even it meant choosing to pay the bills over bonding with my son. I'll never regret my time there, the lessons really prepared me for what was to come.

F&B was a shiny new world to me — full of things I had never tried before, like truffle, caviar, pâté, and dry‑aged beef. Nightlife, on the other hand, felt like the underground. And somehow, I ended up working in both.

This was a time when Instagram wasn’t a marketing tool; it was just a digital photo album. Facebook wasn’t a business engine yet. There were no ads, no analytics dashboards, no “content pillars.” We used these platforms the same way we used Xanga, Friendster, or MySpace — to air out thoughts, post candid photos without thinking too hard about who was watching.

There were no influencers, no reels, no content strategies. If you wanted a venue to stand out, you had to make sure the experience was worth talking about — because back then, word of mouth and newspaper clippings were the only algorithm and validity that mattered.

Because I was the youngest in the office, anything involving a screen somehow became my responsibility. Nobody called it “digital marketing.” They just said, “You’re young, you know Facebook right?” And that was that.

I ended up doing a lot more than what the job scope had written out — PR, marketing, events, design, partnerships, guest engagement, promoter relations, retention — all while figuring out how to be a mother. It was messy and exhausting, but I learned more there than any classroom could’ve taught me.

The environment wasn’t easy. I was overworked, underpaid, and boundaries were questionable. There were moments of favoritism, blurred lines, and behaviors that were normalized because “that’s just how F&B and nightlife is.” but more on that another time!

But even in that setting, there were people who shaped me in ways I’m genuinely grateful for. One of them was someone I worked closely with in the early days of building events. I consider him a mentor because he pushed my creativity in ways I didn’t fully understand until much later.

He constantly told me to “think outside the box,” and he said it so often that it became part of my internal script. He taught me to trust my ideas and to challenge the limits — to not be afraid of what people will think. If it makes them look twice, then that’s marketing.

He probably has no idea how much that guidance stayed with me! That simple phrase built the audacity I carry today — the belief and confidence that I can create something from nothing, imagine experiences that don’t exist yet, and allow myself to take up space inside my own ideas.

So, Mr. M.R. — thank you for the memories.

“Thank F*ck It’s Thursday” — my most loved event series. Flip Cup tournaments, early crowds, and wild sponsor nights. These nights filled the club before midnight.

The Champagne Table That Started It All

By 2014, one of my responsibilities was to keep the rooms looking full — not because we weren’t busy (trust me, we were always full) but because optics matter. Back then, a Facebook album could determine your whole weekend turnout.

There was also a leftover industry tactic from around 2012 to 2015: paying models to attend to boost the “visual appeal” of the room. The photos were gorgeous, but the energy didn’t always match. It created ambience, but not warmth.

One night, I looked at the model tables and thought, What if we did this differently?

So I told my boss, “Give me one of those tables, and I’ll bring my friends.”

And I did. Ten friends came to a night out, and we had our own table.

Ten real, vibey, unapologetic women.

Women had so many unspoken frustrations about nightlife — the dismissive attitudes, the unsolicited behaviors, the discomfort we didn’t yet have vocabulary for. I wanted that to disappear, at least for my circle. So I created the kind of table we wished existed.

And it worked! We had fun, we felt safe, we made friends and the energy was real.

We did it again.

And again.

And more women wanted in because when women find something good, we talk. Word-of- mouth became our biggest ally! Soon, my inbox was overwhelmed, so I created a Facebook group where friends could invite friends. I called it Girls of LKF.

Proof of Concept, Heart First

The intention was simple: give women a place to enjoy a night out without being watched or judged. A place where we could just be ourselves.

As Girls of LKF grew, it truly took on a life of its own — and I didn’t do it by myself. Women in the group started inviting others to join, and one person who really deserves a shoutout is my friend Linda E. She was trusted and organized beautiful burlesque shows in the nightlife scene, and because she advocated for the chat group, other women trusted it and joined too. Before we knew it, we had 500 members in the Facebook group within six months and about 80 women chatting in the WhatsApp group!

What began as a simple WhatsApp chat and Facebook group for night‑out meetups slowly turned into a place women turned to when they needed advice, support, a recommendation, or just someone to listen. It became a little pocket of the city where women felt understood, even if they had never met in person.

In the Facebook group, women were sharing business recommendations, self‑care spots, hairdressers, brunch places, new parties to check out, and experiences they thought other women would enjoy. In the WhatsApp chats, the conversations were lighter — daily chatter, inside jokes, random updates, quick questions, and the kind of small, comforting talk that makes you feel less alone in the city.

I watched women who had never met become actual friends.

I watched them show up for each other in ways that felt so natural.

I saw job referrals, business referrals, nail salon referrals — all the little lifelines women trade to make life easier.

There were birthdays celebrated, heartbreaks softened, and new opportunities shared.But most importantly, the sense of safety traveled with us wherever we went.

Different pockets of women gathered in different places, and respect was something we didn’t have to keep repeating — it was carried quietly, naturally, by everyone who joined.

Marquise Fong — my best friend and the sassiest frontline in the game. No one worked a reception like her.

Girls of LKF became proof that when women are given a safe, supportive, and genuine environment, we gravitate toward one another almost instinctively. We were helping each other destress, try new things, explore the city in new ways, and find comfort in shared experiences.

I didn’t realize it then, but this was the early blueprint for Women of Hong Kong — built not by strategy, but by heart, connection, and the simple human need to belong.

But every story has a turning point. And ours was already on its way. It arrived quietly, like a nudge — the kind that shifts you into your next chapter before you even realize you’ve stepped into it.

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This story is Part 1 of a multi‑chapter, behind‑the‑scenes founder series I’m sharing in honor of our 5th anniversary of Women of Hong Kong on January 28, 2026 — a look back at where we came from, how we grew, and the unexpected turns that shaped this community into what it is today.

Stay tuned for part 2!