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.

Can I Help?

Today, we planned to head to Kowloon. I slept a bit better, but Gill managed to say goodnight to the kids and was feeling manic about her loss of sleep. I headed down to the gym again, and it was fairly deserted, so perhaps the New Year is approaching. We ate in the other restaurant, and this one had a big buffet.  

We started with dim sum. All the little steamer baskets were piled on top of one another and each one you opened had something different in it. It was a fun game, opening and closing them until you had the baskets that you wanted. Not sure this was appropriate etiquette, but it is what we did: open - ooh - ahh - close. Back at the table, we trade for different dumplings.  

We easily could have stopped at this point, but instead, I went and had a ham and cheese omelet with bacon, some arugula, a bit of hash brown and an English muffin. My omelet as perfect - firm on the outside and squishy on the inside. Gill also had an omelet, but she had some noodles first. I finished off my breakfast with some fruit and homemade whipped yogurt. They had a honeycomb balanced at the toast table and I scooped off a spoonful to plop in the middle of the yogurt. It was all heaven.  

We knew we needed this sustenance because yesterday we walked 10 miles and today would probably be the same (turned out to be 9 - what slackers!). We started our day by heading out to the metro station. We were going to go to one as I thought we were equally between two, but a nice businessman getting out of taxi with his suitcase stopped and asked if he could help and gave us very good directions to a very close stop. The metro had everything in English and we were soon on a train. All the cars are connected and we were the only ones on this 9 car train - it was strange.  

It whisked us under the harbor and up to Mong Kok market. This is where several traditional markets are including the flower market and goldfish market. The stations are confusing but all have good maps that tell you what exit to take depending on where you want to go. Our book had a walk outlined and that was our plan, but this was completely abandoned when we got outside and saw a sign pointing to the flower market, so we just followed those; this lead us to a park, which was a bit like a carnival, but it hadn't opened yet.  

We were about to retrace our steps when a nice lady said, can I help you and then gave us very good directions to the flower market. She then followed us to make sure we got there. We wandered up and down the stalls, it was two streets of nothing but flower shops and they had displays out front. Everyone was making big purchases - I assume to decorate their house or to take to someone.  

As we were about to consult the map for the goldfish market, I heard a tiny voice next to me say, can I help you and there beside me was a little boy with his dad standing beside him with a big grin. We told him where we wanted to go and he gave us very good directions; he also said the bird market was good too, and we shouldn't miss it; we did miss it, but this was because I had recently read this really traumatic Vietnamese short story that involved a bird market.

The cool thing about Kowloon is that you can tell real people live here. There were lots of high rise buildings, but all the windows opened and everyone had their laundry hanging. People were doing actual shopping and standing around having a chat. In Hong Kong central, where we are staying, everything is very clean and crisp, but it doesn't look 'real.'

We walked up and down a regular market where they were mostly selling clothing and then we went down the goldfish market, which sold a lot more than goldfish and was really fish, and plants, and turtles and frogs. I really liked this street, and maybe could have stayed there all day.

We hopped back on the metro and went to harbor area, where we got horribly lost in this awful mall. All the malls are connected - much like they were in Bangkok - and finding something specific was very difficult. We went to a directory and our staring at the floorplan seemed to be bothering the lady minding the floorplan, and she pushed a button, which we thought might list the stores, but resulted in an actual lady coming up on the screen and saying, can I help? We really didn't know what we wanted, so no she couldn't help and this caused her and the minder some distress - so we left.

Gill found some great shoes, I got some great clips and we managed to find the bank, and I was happy to see that USAA unlocked my account. We wandered along the walk of stars and saw all the areas set up for the parade and watching the fireworks. There were lots of crowd control barriers and lots of signs saying - don't panic!

We hopped the metro for the last time and ended up on our side of Hong Kong. We hit the Chinese Arts and crafts shop and I was once again amazed at the cost of a jade bangle - for your information, diamonds are cheaper.

Back at the hotel, we read through our information on the hotel events for the new year, and we did some googling on dinner. In the end, we chose good and close, which turned out to be an Italian place - best in Hong Kong. We had a salad to start, Gill had seafood soup and I had 36 month aged ham. For dinner, Gill had a lamb bolognese, and I had homemade pasta with baby roasted artichokes. We also had a gorgeous bottle of crisp white wine. It was heaven.

On the way back, we realized that we could get to our hotel without going outside as much of Hong Kong is connected with these covered elevated walkways so you can go from one building to the next without going down to the street.

We picked up dessert at the bakery. I had a disgusting green tea cake and Gill had a gorgeous mandarin coconut cake. At least I know what that one tastes like now, I just wish I could erase it from my memory.

Day 1 Hong Kong Central

Well we both woke up at 2 am, I fell back asleep, but Gill didn't and at 0430, I gave up and turned on the light. This was unfortunate, but had some benefits. One of the benefits was that Gill could call Alex and Sarah before they went to sleep and the other benefit was that we were bound to be really tired tonight - right?

After some tea, I went off to check out the gym and then we got ready for breakfast. We had decided the night before which restaurant to eat in because you always have to plan one meal ahead. We headed down to the cafe where we could order off of the menu. The gal at the desk tried to talk us out of it, but we said we really wanted to eat there and so she begrudgingly seated us.  

We both ordered the Chinese breakfast, which was huge and included tea, warm soy milk; congee, which is soupy rice with chicken and condiments of chili, croutons, fried peanuts, abalone (sea snail) and shredded ginger. We also had a mini basket of dim sum with two steamed buns (pork and egg custard), spinach dumpling, shrimp dumpling, and two combo dumplings with pork, shrimp and mushroom. The abalone looked like grey marbled jello and I hid this from view with my excess bowls. It was all very tasty and very filling.

After breakfast, we walked up to the base of Victoria Peak and took the funicular to the top.  The funicular is about a 1.5 kilometers long with 400 feet in elevation change. It is really steep in places. Once at the top, we walked a circuit around the top of the peak and enjoyed the views. Back at the funicular, we braved the crowds and went to the top where the people watching was just as good as the views.

We headed back down and were amazed at the huge crowd waiting to go up, we seemed to have timed it perfectly. We walked through Hong Kong park, which has a huge aviary and a pond filled with catfish and turtles, we dawdled through here as it was really pretty, but our goal was the tea museum.

We found this pretty easy, and it was free. It boasted that it was disinfected 6 times per day. It smelled like it was disinfected 6 times per day and it took me a while to get used to it and decide I could stand it. The museum showed the history of tea and had a very cool pottery collection from very old to very new. It was extremely quiet in there and we were on our best behavior, but toward the end I couldn't take it any more and started laughing like a hyena with tears running down my face. It was weird, not in a bad way, but in a weird way that seems incongruent with silence. There was a round white board at the end of the tour, which asked you to write your comments. Gill wrote 'clean' and I wrote 'tea makes me pee.' Gill made me leave at this point.

We headed back toward the center of town and stopped for a Starbucks and a pee - no tea. In the toilet, we encountered something we hadn't seen before and it was that the toilets and sinks were assigned to each establishment. So, Starbucks had one toilet and one sink and you were only to use those and no one else was supposed to - since we technically hadn't been anywhere yet, we used whatever was open and then I took a picture of this very strange situation, which completely freaked this gal out - I guess she doesn't think cameras belong in the toilet.  

Our next stop was Happy Feet Reflexology and we both got a 75 minute foot rub. Gill's therapist kept clucking and telling her to relax. Mine didn't speak English. It was heaven and dirt cheap; I suspect we will be back there. Relaxed and starved we went into the first place we could find and it turned out to be a 3 story diner of sorts, and we were the only white people in the joint. I ordered chicken and rice, Gill had beef and noodles and we shared Chinese kale. It came out at three separate times and they only gave us one set of chopsticks, but we still ate everything - you can't deter us when it comes to food.

Blog note: In all our travels, Gill and I have never been into selfies; however, over the last 3 days we have taken several every day. We ALWAYS find this very funny and I suspect they will continue. We were taking one on Victoria Peak when a guy asked me if I wanted him to take a picture, I said yes and he did and then he asked if I would take one of him and his male friend and I said of course. His friend said should we use your camera or ours and then they laughed and said, we are from Bollywood, we have to say that.