Hong Kong Day 2

The classic dilemma returns. I finally have something to write about, but there's no time to write it. I've got a ton of Hong Kong pictures and a couple of videos to post, so I will let them speak for themselves and fill in the blanks as needed. And we're off!

My first full day in Hong Kong was a Saturday, so Mike and Allison were off of work and available to show us around. We went to a local dim sum place for brunch, knocking an important line off of the "must try" food list in my book.

Here's one of the cooks doing his thing behind glass. I thought it was cool that they had the ducks and other meats hanging in the window. Many places have these hanging around and they looked delicious. There weren't ever any dogs or rabbits sleeping upside down though, thankfully.

Allison doing her English lady tea thing. Tea is very widely available, as expected. It feels a bit more English than elsewhere in Asia I've seen though, no doubt an echo of colonial days.

I took a bit of video of traffic while I waited for the food. Not many private cars on the street.

So dim sum is meat and or vegetable mixture encased in various doughs, which is usually steamed. Some doughs were white and fluffy, others were brown and crispy, but they were all pretty darn good.






Mike doesn't eat fish("nothing that lives in the water") and Allison is a vegetarian, making ordering food a bit more complex for them. I just bounced from plate to plate trying everything, though.

This was the happy accident dish on the table. Somewhere in Mike's confusing "we don't eat animals" conversation with the waitress, this got ordered by mistake. We think its just the shell part of some other dish. Sort of a big slimy pile of starch with some soy sauce. It wasn't real popular with our group.

Next we headed over to the Lady's market via subway.

The market is composed of a few intersecting streets filled with goods to buy. There is plenty of stuff for both sexes, so I think the "lady" bit is probably historical. Haggling isn't just possible, its really necessary. The stall owners like to throw out laughably high prices at tourists just to see if they'll stick. I like to bargain, but here it was a process consuming time and energy that left me drained. If I decided to try and get a better price at a different stall, I had to start all over again. I bought a few things, all for other people(so spoiled).

Everything was tall and narrow. A tunnel of treasures.


Mike giving Clarence some fashion advice.

The two little words I heard the most were "copy watch". As in "hello, you want copy watch?" One in six little storefronts had a display or simply a catalogue displaying a bounty of fake name brand watches. I almost wanted to buy one so that I could end the hounding.


Here are a few more lively city shots I snapped walking to and from the market.








A trip to a park(in Kowloon) gave us a chance to rest and leave the stress of the city behind.








Just a short walk from the park landed us next to the ocean with Hong Kong Island's impressive skyline in view.

Hong Kong's favorite picture of itself seems to be the old junk with the gleaming city in the background. Its pretty neat looking as well as symbolic. I'm not sure that the junks have any real use anymore. The only ones I ever saw were for tourists to ride on.


Not only are there double-decker buses in Hong Kong, but there are double street cars as well.


A bit of Hong Kong life from the window of a street car.


Dinner was soup. Very, very spicy soup.