Last Shebang

We are leaving fairly early tomorrow (Thanksgiving) so I am considering this to be the last day of our trip.  We didn't really do much of anything today except have a lavish lunch.  We spent the morning packing, trying to figure out whether all of the souvenirs we bought would fit in our luggage.  For the most part we were successful and only a couple bulky, odd-shaped things will have to be mailed back.  No, I didn't buy a rickshaw even though I would have liked to.

Around 12:00 Charlie and I had coffee across the street from the U.S. Consulate building.  My seemingly plastic cup claimed to be made of corn.


We then met Tony on his lunch break and walked to a nearby Peking restaurant where we met up with Mr. Lee, Tony and Charlie's Mandarin teacher from 20 years ago.

Just looking at it, one could tell that the restaurant was pretty upscale.  I was surprised when we were greeted by a hostess wearing a dress with two very high slits up the sides (a couple inches at most from showing her butt) and a fur shawl.

The view from our table:


Mr. Lee is a very sweet, friendly and talkative older gentleman who was very excited to see Charlie and Tony, and just as excited about introducing us to more exquisite Chinese foods.  Over the course of the meal he was kind enough to tell us about his flight from China following the Cultural Revolution.  It was an extremely interesting conversation.  He later won my affection completely when he leaned over to Tony to ask in a Mandarin whisper whether it was rude to tell me I looked like a movie star.  Then he addressed Charlie and I, asking us if we had seen Titanic.  He apparently thought I looked like Kate Winslet and, although I don't really see the resemblance, took it as a complement.

Now on to the meal, which was one of the best I have had here.  Mr. Lee did all of the ordering.  Tony has also done a lot of ordering for us since we have been here.  I like this because all the meals are family style so I get to try a lot of new things that I otherwise wouldn't think to select off the menu.

When we got to the table we were greeted by a lovely table setting and there were already some preliminary hors d'oeuvres of tofu, cucumber, garlic and what I think was some kind of sweet pepper.


Our first course were these tasty dumplings, the first containing greens and the second containing pork.  When I took a bite out of the pork, juice shot a good 6 inches from it and onto the table cloth just beyond my plate.  Luckily, no one noticed.


We also had jellyfish.  I have tried jellyfish at least 3 times now just to make sure that I'm not just hallucinating the fact that I do not like it.  After today, I am convinced that it's not for me.  It's not a taste thing, but rather a texture thing.  It reminds me of eating rubber bands with salt.  Also, it's one of those "weird" foods that I just feel uncomfortable about consuming.


Next the table was set with the accessories for the second course, Peking Duck.  We were provided with thin wheat-flour "tortillas", plum sauce, and a bowl of cucumbers and scallions.


Then the waiter brought out the actual duck.  The whole thing.


Mr. Lee asked them to slice it up, so they took it away and brought it back on this duck-shaped plate.  It kind of looked like the duck was offering you its guts... and I guess it kind of was.


Mr. Lee and Charlie instructed me on how to eat Peking Duck:  You take one of the "tortillas", smear a little plum sauce on it, then add a couple pieces each of cucumber and scallion, top it off with two to three slices of duck, then roll it up and eat it.  Let me tell you, this is one of the best things I have ever tasted!


By this time we were already getting full and I thought we were done.  But then three other dishes arrived.

Gigantic sweet and sour shrimp.  By the way, real Chinese sweet and sour is WAY better than what you can get in the States.


Breaded tofu topped with shrimp roe.  The texture was great but the roe was a little too fishy for me.


Pea vines with garlic.


Just when I thought we were done, Mr. Lee insisted on dessert.  So he ordered us this sort of sweet rice pudding in a rice wine with little dumplings containing red bean paste.  It was a rare treat.


By this time we were so full we could barely walk.  Here is a shots of the boys conversing and enjoying tea after the meal, as well as a nice photo that the waiter took.




We said our goodbyes and I dashed into the ladies room for a second time so that I could take a picture of the beautiful sinks.


After lunch we went to Oliver's to do some grocery shopping for Tony and Elena's upcoming Thanksgiving party.  We returned home and just loafed around and did a little more packing until both parents came home from work.  When we discovered we didn't have enough leftovers for everyone to eat at home, we opted to go out to eat yet again.

On the way to the restaurant, I saw the sign for this other restaurant that made me laugh out loud.  What was even funnier was that it was all chic-looking as if putting Canadian food on par with some haughty French gourmet.  What exactly is Canadian cuisine anyway?  Moose?


This time we elected a very classy Middle Eastern and Greek restaurant called Olive.  The presentation alone was impressive enough, and the flavors were even more so.  Sorry if this is turning into more of a food blog than anything, but Hong Kong is really a gastronomy Mecca for many types of cuisine, not just Chinese.  I wouldn't do the place justice if I didn't discuss that aspect of it at length.

This was an appetizer sampler of hummus, baba ghanouj, pita, olives and other nibbles, cucumbers and "Fatima fingers".


We also had this exquisitely grilled calamari on a garlic/almond mayonnaise paste.  Sorry, the picture is blurry.  I must have been shivering with anticip...


Then there was the melt-in-your-mouth spanikopita.


Onto the main courses:

Charlie had rib-eye steak on potatoes with a tomato-olive sauce and a dollop of aioli on top.


I had Moroccan spiced mushrooms in a goat cheese bath.


Tony had lamb on a bed of greens.


And Elena had the potato kibbeh.


We ate almost every last bite and then for some insane reason decided to order dessert.

Warm lemon semolina in a grapefruit sauce and topped with gelato.


Tiramisu to die for!


As you can imagine, this was the second meal of the day that needed walking off.  So we headed over to Charlie's favorite cigar shop and he treated Tony and I to a couple of nice smokes.  We were beckoned into the bar across the street by some friendly Filipina waitresses who teased Charlie about whether he was old enough.  We sat for a while, laughed at the bad music that was playing loudly, and in general had a really nice time.

Now it is time for bed and we fly out tomorrow.  Stay tuned for a final account of the trip tomorrow.

Nine [Sleazy] Dragons

Charlie and I hopped on a Star Ferry today and crossed Victoria Harbor to Tsim Sha Tsui, the southernmost district of Kowloon.  "Nine Dragons" is what Kowloon is supposed to mean, by the way.  The Star Ferry ride was the nicest I have had since I have been here because it went slowly and didn't terrify me (I don't really do boats).

Another Star Ferry crossing the harbor.


The spacious and open interior of the ferry.


One cool thing about the seats in the ferry was that you could flip the backs of them so that you could face the direction that the ferry was going.

This is the largest hole I have seen in a building yet.  Gotta appease the dragons.


When we stepped off the ferry there were only a couple blocks that we walked through that were lined with the usual Armani, Gucci and other such stores that you see frequently on Hong Kong Island.  After that, it was all Kowloon: a dingy, purse-clutching sin hole... and this was the mild district.

I only took a couple pictures of the "scenery" because, frankly, I was afraid someone would run by and grab my camera out of my hand if I gawked too long.  But this is pretty much what all of the Tsim Sha Tsui district looked like.


Charlie and I entered Kowloon Park, which was pretty enough but never really wowed me into taking a picture.  The park contained an aviary with geese, ducks and some not-so-pink flamingos.  We also strolled through the very boring sculpture garden.

Exiting the park, we continued to just wander.  The umpteenth man in a row approached us and asked whether we wanted to buy some designer copies of watches.  We said no but he persisted.  Finally, Charlie said to him, "We don't break laws" and the man promptly turned and nonchalantly walked away as if to pretend that he had never even been talking to us.  We walked on and ducked down into a little alley to do some trinket shopping and basically found ourselves in a piracy mall, full of the kinds of people who had been accosting us on every corner with offers of suits and knock-off watches.  We quickly left after I noticed we were being sized up by a group of ne'er-do-wells.

On our way to our only real planned destination, the Hong Kong Museum of History, we stopped on a bench to munch on sheets of Chinese pork jerky.  I noticed people staring at us from bus windows.  Moving on, we arrived at the museum to find that it is closed on Tuesdays.  Who the hell is closed on Tuesdays?

Luckily, the Science Museum was just across the plaza so we went there instead.  It was sort of a place designed for kids, where you learn about everything in a hands-on manner.  We did just that, pushing all the buttons and having our minds blown like children would.

Here is Charlie, looking wizardly as we learn about electricity.


Then we went to the life sciences section where we did a sort of fitness obstacle course in which you measured everything from blood pressure, hearing, and eyesight, to how high you could jump.  It was silly and fun.  I couldn't help but laugh at this ripped man in a Speedo illustrating what exercises you should do for the different muscles in the body.  The music is the best.


My favorite part of all was the mirror exhibit:

Jeez, people will eat anything in Hong Kong!




Charlie was able to fulfill his lifelong dreams of being a body builder AND a munchkin.


If you give two mature adults a venue to act childish, they will.  We couldn't resist.  ;)


Clone army.


A three-story marble maze!  I loved these when I was a kid (and still do).  Unfortunately, it was under construction so we couldn't see it in action.




And this was just creepy.


After the museum, we wandered back toward the ferry terminal looking for a place to eat.  This is always a little scary because, even though there are pictures of the food, it doesn't mean that's exactly what you're going to get (especially with our level of Cantonese).  Plus, the fact that it looks good in the picture is not necessarily an indication that it will actually be good.

We walked into a place that looked pseudo-classy Japanese with black and white decor and square plates.  They brought us tea which was just molecules away from being hot water and we examined the menu for a few minutes.  None of it looked great, but we managed to pick out a couple things that seemed palatable.  They were apparently a "world" cuisine restaurant because they had things like grilled cheese sandwiches and omelettes on the menu.  While waiting for the waiter we noticed that almost all of the people in the restaurant were bizarrely dressed teenagers.  There was also one older European-looking woman who didn't seem to know any better than to be there.  We waited several minutes for someone to come back and take our order but no one ever came.  So we got up and left before subjecting ourselves to any more of what this place might have to offer.

We walked another block or so and way up high on a building saw a sign for a Chou Zhou restaurant.  We weren't sure what that meant, but figured it was a type of region-specific Chinese cuisine.  The restaurant was on the third floor and as we approached the entrance the hostess informed us that they were serving dim sum.  We didn't really want dim sum so I asked her if we could order from the menu, to which she replied that they were serving dim sum.  Language barrier.

So we sat down and looked through the regular menu and what I think was the only extant English copy of the dim sum options list.  While trying to place our order we asked questions that the waitress couldn't understand so she flagged down a second waitress who knew some English.  This waitress seemed to know the same amount of English as the first, just with a different vocabulary, so she flagged down a third "English-speaking" waitress.  We realized that pointing to what we wanted on the menu would be easiest when we asked for "lotus leaf" and she repeated "spring roll" back to us.  Finally, we just fingered a couple of decent-looking items on the menus and enjoyed a more molecularly rich tea while we waited for whatever it was we ordered to arrive.  During the wait, they came back twice to tell us certain things weren't available, so we just pointed to some others and waited some more.

At this point I was really wishing that I had studied more Cantonese.

Fortunately, it was a fairly decent restaurant and the food we got was just fine, although it was very shrimp-heavy.  And, um, we sort of devoured half of it before I remembered to take pictures.  But here goes:

Rice noodle-wrapped shrimp something-or-other with what might be fish eggs on top.  


Half-eaten rice noodles with beef, broccoli, and some kind of mild peanut/curry-ish flavored sauce.


Mostly-eaten shrimp wrapped in something fried.


Shrimp (sigh) wrapped in a steamed rice noodle sheet that fell off when we picked it up with our chopsticks.  I'm pretty sure that's not supposed to happen.


Broccoli with dried fish (I'm talking jerky) with a garnish of carrot slices cut into flower shapes... but for some reason the garnish was hidden about halfway down in bowl.


At some point today we had planned to visit a neighborhood of Kowloon called Mong Kok.  Besides having a fun name, it is supposed to be the sort of red-light district and is laden with Triads (Chinese gangsters).  Charlie was more interested in this activity than I was and lucky for me, it was getting late and there was a possibility that we had dinner plans back on Hong Kong Island.  Frankly, I was already worried enough about being robbed and had seen my fair share of titty bars and "massage" parlors in this somewhat tame part of Kowloon.  So we headed back to the ferry pier, making one more stop into a chintz store to finish up our souvenir shopping.

The ride back to Hong Kong was only a little bit rocky but still managed to be relaxingly slow.  When we came out of the ferry terminal my eyes lit up at the sight of a rickshaw sale!  Charlie threw me a look and simply said, "No."




Rickshaws are no longer used here, so I assume these would just be collectors' items.  The sign said that all you had to do was contact the fortunately named Mr. Hung at the number printed on the sign.

We grabbed a taxi from the ferry terminal and hung out at home until Tony got off work.  Then we went back to the Szechuan restaurant that is a block away from the apartment.  It was an extremely successful meal in terms of both taste and variety.

Entrance to the restaurant.


Appetizers!  Zucchini with garlic and smoked fish.




This is not just a decorative candle designed to bring ambiance to your table.


It is an ingenious way of keeping your tea warm!


Green beans with crumbled pork.


Yu Zhou, a cold noodle dish with a sesame tahini flavor.  This was one of my favorites.


Ma Po Tofu, a kind of tofu stew that employs a large quantity of numbing Szechuan peppercorns.


The BEST eggplant I have ever eaten.  It also has green onions in it.


Hot and sour soup.  They serve it not-so-sour and give you a side of vinegar so that you can make it to your liking.


Cashew chicken with red chilis and green onions.


The four of us ate every last bit of this meal, including the entire plate of fresh fruit that they served us for dessert.  I told Charlie that I wished I could have this food every day.

Bloated, we hobbled up the hill back to the apartment where Tony showed me one of his treasures that I had heard about but never seen:


This human skull belonged to a West African man that died from being struck by lightning.  It was given to Tony as a sign of trust by a voodoo priest in Benin where the Hutchinson family was once posted with the foreign service.  In this picture it is surrounded by various other voodoo implements.  This was the first time I had ever handled a human skull and found it fascinating.

Then it was bed time.  Tomorrow is our last day here and we don't have anything planned.  At some point we need to figure out whether all of our souvenirs are going to fit in our luggage.  Ug.