Hong Kong's Clever

Some things require no interpretation

And They Are Off!

After breakfast, Gill and I joined 89,998 other people in Hong Kong and headed north to the races. I guess racing is a big deal in Hong Kong and the first races of the new year is particularly popular. Getting tickets was an issue, but Gill found a 'tour' where the transportation and tickets were included. We took the metro a couple of stops down and waited at another hotel for pickup.  

This essentially went as planned and soon we were picking up another group across the harbor and then a 30 minutes drive north. It was a huge venue, and we had a box with 'free food.' Everyone else in our group pretty much did nothing but eat for the next 4 hours.  

We put together a kitty and some rules and proceeded to bet on the races. We won the first race and this was exciting and got us off to a great start. However, we then went on to lose the next 9 races. We even tried leaving the box and going down track side to change our luck, but this didn't work.  

The lower levels were very interesting, as when you looked over the side there really weren't that many people out by the track, but on each level there were thousands sitting on chairs and steps, betting and watching on TV.  There were lots of break away horses and at least 4 got scratched in 4 different races for running off before the race. This delayed everything, but was very funny. Sometimes they looked crazy as they ran off, sometimes exhilarated, but mostly they just looked put out.

We decided to make our own way back as there was a metro stop next to the track and we were going to have to metro anyway. When we got over there, we realized we were going to have to change 3 times, and we agreed no matter what we were getting on the trains. The first train came and we pushed our way on. This turned out to be the most difficult part of the journey, because it thinned out every time we changed. We got back to the hotel in around 30 minutes.

When we came out of the metro station, we saw hundreds of mostly women sitting around the sidewalks - on blankets and cardboard. There were some guys, but they were mostly selling things, like clothing. We had seen the women sitting in the tunnels and had assumed they were 'camping out' for the fireworks. And then when we left this morning we saw lots of women with big sacks streaming out of the metro. They were even line dancing in the street. Now, you have to imagine that along these streets are Prada, Cartier, and Louis Vuitton, so it was an interesting scene. We have also seen lots of signs about littering and fines for spitting, and the streets have been pristine, so this just seemed like anarchy.

We changed for dinner and then headed out for our Peking duck - we still hadn't had that yet. The concierge had made us reservations, and we managed to walk it without going outside and crossing two streets - Gill's got this town.  

The restaurant was very nice and the food was excellent, but our service was lacking. They seemed a bit put off that we were there; again, the tables were mostly filled with families. We started with vegetable dumpling and green beans with pork and then finished with our duck.  

The pancakes that came with the duck made you realize you never actually had the right kind of pancakes. In the middle of dinner, a chef came out and demonstrated how to hand pull noodles. Then a little guy came along and hoovered up the mess.

On the way back, most of the ladies had gone, and there was a crew out with a power washer cleaning the streets and the sidewalks. We googled this strange scene and found that these women are the Hong Kong 'helpers,' mostly Indonesian and Filipinos that work as domestics. The law demands a good wage and indicates that they must have 12 consecutive hours off on Sunday. Since they must live with their employer, they have no place to meet, so they converge on the streets to talk, eat, play games and line dance. We had seen a campaign in the metro about treating your 'helpers' as family. Bit sad really.

New Year, New Day

It's now officially the year of the horse. I'd read somewhere that people don't like to work on the first day of the new year because they think it means they are going to have to work all year, so Gill and I decided not to take any chances and made this our inside day - as in not leaving the hotel. We had breakfast in bed, which involved a lovely guy rolling a large table to the end of our beds. I had Eggs Benedict and a breakfast tiramisu, which is the lovely whipped yogurt layered with granola and blueberries. Gill had corned beef hash and a bread basket. It was all pretty tasty.  

After this, we went back to bed and watched a movie on TV. I eventually got up and went to the gym, and then it was time to go to the spa. I had a Chinese jade treatment and an Eve Lom facial and Gill had a 4 hand treatment and a fancy facial. My treatment involved a Chinese massage, which is just the acupressure pressure points - ouch - then she rubbed me with sesame oil and ground rice and then applied a tea mask to my legs and stomach. The massage was not traditional and she did not shy away from the areas that hurt. After a shower, I had my facial, which was deep cleansing and felt necessary after all of my travels.

When I was done, I found Gill in the lounge looking a bit sleepy and out of it - but with glowing skin. There was a guy in the lounge at the same time who had originally waited with us and either didn't know or didn't care that you shouldn't sit with your legs splayed open when wearing a robe in mixed company.

After all of this, it was time to get ready for dinner, which we did pretty quickly and then went upstairs for a drink. We really like the bar on the 25th floor as it is completely manned by women and they are really wonderful. Tonight, I had a foam cosmopolitan, which was vodka, cranberry foam and laughing gas - seriously, that is what it said: best Cosmo ever, not sweet at all.  

After our drink, we went into Man Wah, which is the Michelin starred Chinese restaurant in the hotel. We were having the set menu and Gill had sorted us the best table to also enjoy the fireworks. We had some discussion about the set menu as there were two courses where we had no interest, at least I had no interest - it was the soup course and the dessert, but we went for it anyway.

Course 1. Shanghai style smoked codfish with five spices, roast suckling pig, pickled baby cucumber with yuzu vinegar. This was all very lovely and the wonderful man that delivered it explained how he thought we should eat it and it what order.

Course 2. Soup with see conch or abalone. We had one of each, mine being double boiled sea conch soup with bamboo pith, and matsuke mushrooms. Gill's was a bit gelatinous, but she seemed to like it. Mine was okay, I ate the broth, a bit like oyster stew on Christmas Eve.

Course 3. Steamed fillet of spotted grouper, crispy ginger, crabmeat and egg white sauce. This was amazing. The fish was perfectly cooked and the sauce was lovely, like a really thick egg drop soup and the crispy ginger was an absolute revelation.

Then we had a bit of a food break for the fireworks show, which went on for 20 minutes. The fireworks were set off from several boats in the middle of the harbor. It went on and on and on.

Back to dinner: Course 4. Stewed chicken and eggplant. We had to be given a knife and fork for this course, which was too bad because we had been doing so well, but it was going to end badly and they were very attentive the utensils suddenly appeared.

Course 5. Stir fried prawn, pea sprout, and chili sauce. The shrimps were big and fat and succulent, and the greens were the same thing we had the night before, so they must be in season.

I didn't get a picture of course 6, which was braised noodles with crabmeat and crab coral sauce. It looked like a bowl of noodles with orange sauce, but they were so much more than that. We slurped and slurped them up. This destroyed the table cloth and their solution was to place a napkin over the offending area so that could serve the last course.

Final course: Course 7. Double boiled pear, birds nest, and tangerine tea. I had been dreading this because I really don't care for pear, much less twice boiled ones and then I had read about the birds nests and I didn't want to eat one. Gill was convinced that it wouldn't be an actual birds nest and instead would be a pile of noodles, but when they were delivered our lovely little man explained this was so special because the high volume of bird spit in the nest, which changes the texture of the pear. It certainly did -- inedible I say. The texture was like someone had already chewed it, but somehow left it in the shape of a pear. Our guy did seem a bit disappointed when we did not eat it.

We finished out meal with petit fours and one immediately squirted out of Gill's fingers and onto the floor. This was whisked away very discreetly by our fabulous waitstaff.

Lion Dancing and a Big Buddha

We sleep until 0730! I could not believe it when we woke up and the sun was peeking under the shade. Once we pulled ourselves together, we headed down to the buffet as Gill needed some more dim sum. We had roughly the same thing as the day before, but I switched up the order, having my dim sum last, there were some different ones this morning including a whole wheat vegetable one that was really delicious.  

While we were eating, we watched the big boss walk around and give all of the staff their New Years money envelopes; everyone looked happy.

Before noon, we went down to the lobby and found a seat. Then the eye dotting ceremony and lion dance was started to kick off the new year. The eye dotting ceremony is just someone wiping the eyes of the lion to 'light' them up. Then the lion dance started. Two tiny guys worked together to move that lion around the room and onto these tiny little pillars. They were fantastic!

Our plan for the day was to go out to Lateau Island, which is the same island that the airport is on. We headed toward the subway and noted that there were lots of people set up, we assume waiting for the fireworks the next night. The walking tunnels were filled with big groups sitting on cardboard playing games and eating.

The metro was easy as it was a different line that went from our location to the island, straight shot with no changes. When we got there we walked over to the cable car, which had this unbelievable line - like unbelievable. Gill had very smartly thought to ask the concierge for tickets and we purchased them at the hotel, this put us in a much shorter line, but it still took us over an hour to get into our cable car and then travel the 3 miles to the top of the mountain.

The line was filled with really horrible pushy people. The stop before the cable car stop was for Hong Kong Disneyland and Gill wondered if perhaps these were mainland Chinese come over for a holiday over the new year. Not really sure what the difference, but these were not the people that we have been interacting with for the last couple of days.  

For example, we finally get into our crystal bottom (glass) cable car so you can watch down as well as out and the family of four that was across from us immediately threw down a plastic bag filled with crap into the middle of the car and their fat little boy proceeded to eat the Chinese equivalent of Twinkies while throwing the wrappers on the ground. FYI: the box was empty when we stopped and 'mom' tucked the empty box between the seat instead of putting it in the trash. The old couple next to us shouted at me in Chinese the whole way and took dozens of pictures of us - mostly Gill because I kept putting my hand up.

All that said, the ride was spectacular. The cable car went from mountain to mountain - over the water and way way up into the air. Even with our horrible companions, I could not tell you how long it took us because I was completely mesmerized.

Once at the top we had to navigate a bunch of crowds and then head to the largest seated Buddha. There were people trying to worship, but it was mostly people taking very staged photographs. It was beautiful and the surrounding landscape was breathtaking.

We then walked the wisdom trail, which went through the forest a bit and then lead to this path lined with halved trees, placed in the shape of infinity. Each tree segment had lettering on it, which formed a Chinese poem about emptiness. The idea was that you walked along contemplating being empty. It was pretty cool, but again a bit overrun with morons.

Our final stop here was Po Lin monastery. This was a pretty big place where people mostly seemed to have come to eat at the vegetarian cafeteria, which seemed very complicated because you had to stand in line to get a ticket and then stand in line to get a table and then stand in line to get your food. We didn't do any of this, but we did enjoy these enormous incense sticks - like person sized, which were being lit in a bonfire creating big clouds of smoke.

We retraced our steps and the ride was a little better, and it seemed a bit quicker on the way down. We had some trouble at the metro stop because the machines were really fussy. Only one took bills - we didn't have enough change. The one that took bills, wouldn't take a 50, even though our fare was 46. Once we got change for the 50 and waited in line to use the one machine that took bills, we found out it would only take one 20 at a time. But never fear, we finally figured it out.

For dinner, we had left it with the concierge and told her roughly what we wanted and she had made us reservations at a place about 5 minutes away. Gill almost navigated us though several buildings, but in the end, we went down to the street. The restaurant was huge, and the internet said it would seat 300 people. Pretty much all the tables were filled with 3 generations and mostly groups over 8. We were given the regular menu, but everyone else had a yellow piece of paper and this caused lots of discussion at the other tables.  

We had a great guy help us, and he managed to sort out our order, which was suckling pig, spicy shrimp, braised greens with garlic, and a noodle cake with a meat sauce. We finished this amazing meal with custard dim sum, and the custard was sweet and runny inside - delicious! Watching the families was fun; there was a really big group that clapped and oohed and aahed in unison every time a course came.

We didn't even try to make it through the buildings and instead headed out into the streets and made our way home.