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.