Day 4 - Art museum and Happy Valley

After going to the grocery store in the morning (which is much similar to our US grocery stores and NOT the wet market), we took a ferry back to Kowloon to go to the art museum. Few art museums that I've been to have had much emphasis on eastern art so it was pretty interesting to see. Their modern art is fairly similar to what the US has to offer, such as a display of large chickens that were moved around the city previously. They also still create paintings very similar to the ones that have been done for hundreds of years. This one, for example was made some time before the year 300.

This one was made in the mid 1900's.

We were also fortunate to be there at the time of a free tour all about Chinese porcelain and pottery. The stuff that they displayed was really beautiful and intricate at times.

Then we met with Drew for dinner again at a burger place. It was hardly traditional American burgers - mine was soft shelled crab. And I mean the whole crab was just deep fried and put on a bun. Grandma felt tired so she went back with Drew to the apartment while he got some more work done while Mo and I went to the Happy Valley race track. We saw more expats there than anywhere else in the city thus far. We had some mulled wine and watched the horses warm up for the race. We picked our three favorites and bid. Somehow I got 2 out of the 3 winners right and doubled my money! 

After watching a couple more races (and losing most of the money I had won) we called it quits and headed back to the apartment. Can't wait to go back next Wednesday!

Day 3 - Dandan Noodles and the wet market

In the morning Mo and I exercised again and took Trig for another walk. She had to meet with her language partner to practice her Mandarin so she took us on the mini bus to Drew's office. The mini buses here are really cool forms of public transportation. They fit 16 passengers and everyone has a seat on them. They also come by every few minutes so it's no big deal if you don't fit on it right away. Plus they cost $4.50 HKD ($.60 USD). Drew took us to a tiny little Szechuan place for Dandan noodles. I have level 2 spiciness and Drew had 4. Mine was a very comfortable spice level while Drew was sweating at the end of it.

After lunch we got some macaroons and coffee. Mo met up with us back at the office building and took us to the wet market. It was down what seemed like a random side street in the city and had both indoor and outdoor sections. There were live fish, dried fish, butcher shops, and fresh produce. The seafood was so fresh we watched a shrimp escape from it's container onto the pavement.

The only thing that we bought were some tasty egg tarts at a bakery. We met up with Drew again later at a place in a different mall called SML, for small medium and large. After a walk back to the mini bus we made our way back to the apartment again.

Day 2 - Kowloon and Din Tai Fung

After another good nights sleep we woke up around 9am. Mo and I went and exercised in their gym and then took Trig for a walk. We saw the neighborhood down towards the city on our walk. Hong Kong is way more mountainous than I realized when I came here. The sides of the hills are covered in cement to keep from eroding, but they leave spaces for the trees to grow.

We stopped at a local temple so I could peak inside. It's a Daoist temple (or Taoist, apparently). Inside people could pray and ask questions. After that we went back and met up with grandma to cross the water to the other part of the city in Kowloon. The easiest way to get to the other side is by the famous Star Ferry.

Its been running since 1880 as a cheap way to get across the island ($2.50 in HKD, so about $.35 in USD). They're constantly running and are able to move both ways so the ferry captain doesn't even have to turn around on each side. Over on the boardwalk they have a walk of stars similar to our Hollywood one. We recognized Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, and Jet Li.

For dinner we walked to one of the many malls around here to go to a place called Din Tai Fung. Their specialty is dumplings with a very delicate casing that has a filling of your choice and soup broth. To eat it though you have to pick them up with your chop sticks and puncture the outside to let the soup drain out. If you try to just bite it then be prepared for some burns.

Dessert was more dumplings filled with a black sesame paste, which is way better than it sounds. Afterwards we made our way back near the boardwalk to watch the nightly light show at 9pm. It was actually very cool. Many of the big buildings back on the island take part in the show that is set to music.

 

Afterwards we went back on the Star Ferry to their apartment to play some cards and get some sleep.

Day 1 - The 4 hour brunch

So we had finally made it to Hong Kong and got some sleep. We were so tired that we actually slept through the night. After we woke up Drew and Mo took us to a brunch at a hotel. We took a cab there which was really very cheap. It's $7.75 in Hong Kong dollars to $1 in the US. Cab fare starts at $22 HKD and then goes up by $1.6. I think our first cab was around $50 HKD, which is a little over $6 in USD, and you don't tip. All in all a pretty good deal.

Brunch lasted from 11:30am to 3pm and included champagne, mimosas, and Bellini's. It was more of a Western style brunch so it had salads, raw seafood, grilled food like lamb and calamari, and lots of desserts. We ate and chatted for hours. The calamari was my favorite, followed by the lamb with a mint jelly sauce. They also had these Moreton Bay Bugs - they looked like little lobsters and tasted pretty similar.

After brunch we came back to their apartment and watched Avatar on Drew and Mo's 3D TV. We were so full from brunch we didn't eat for the rest of the day. After a few rounds of euchre we called it a day and went to sleep.

Travel

Let me just start by saying that I'm not the best writer, but I want to get all of our days down because I'm even worse at remembering things.

So we left for Hong Kong early on the morning of Thursday, January 9th. We got through security with relative ease and boarded our flight to Seattle. After an uneventful flight we landed and had to get to a different section of the airport, which required a tram. Of course things got interesting. Going down the narrow escalator to the tram I went first so grandma could follow. Her suitcase got stuck on the side and caused both her and the bag to swing around. She looked like she just sat down on the stair and was standing again before I even got up to her. We laughed about it, continued onto our gate and then got some lunch. As we were sitting there she noticed that she had blood on the back of her leg, and said she figured she must have just scraped her leg. An employee offered to bring her a bandaid so I pulled down her sock and was met with an inch and half wide hole in her leg.

I started crying and the employee went to flag someone down to call the fire department. EMS came and told us that they would have to take her to the hospital for stitches. One helped to walk me around to Delta to reschedule our flight. The Delta employee said the earliest we would be able to fly out was Saturday. When we went back to my grandma she was being put on a stretcher and a friendly man was promising that he would try to arrange our flights for us. We get to the hospital and 9 stitches later, we missed our flight by almost an hour. Fortunately that same man called us and said that he could get us a flight out to Tokyo, Japan (our original layover) that night, but we would have to switch airports and wouldn't be able to fly to Hong Kong until the night after. But, it would get us to Hong Kong a day earlier than staying in Seattle.

So we got back to the airport, and I insisted on grandma getting taken in a wheel chair. She was not pleased. Hey, better than a second hospital trip. Delta was a great help through it all and made sure we were taken care of. They assured that we would be assisted finding a hotel in Japan once we landed. They even gave us our economy comfort seats with an extra empty seat in the middle. Our 11  flight to Japan was pretty smooth.

After we landed in Haneda we collected our suitcases and made our way to the desk that said 'hotel reservations'. He spoke almost no English and handed us a sheet of paper with about 150 hotel names on it. Okay. We went to the help desk. She also spoke almost no English, but did circle a few hotels for us and pointed us to a pay phone. No Yen. I brought out my computer and guessed at how to join the wifi network on the all Japanese page so I could look up some of the hotels. I found one near the Narita airport that had 'international' in its name. So I called them with my phone (sorry for the international charge, mom and dad!) and by speaking slowly I got us a reservation.

Next was finding a cab. We followed the signs down and actually got one fairly easily. However once we got inside it was another story. I said the name of the hotel but the driver couldn't understand me at all. Fortunately I still had the webpage on my computer so I pulled it out and showed him. He said 'Oh, Narita airport!' and took off. Well, okay. Close.

So we're in the cab for what seems like forever and I ask him if he's taking us to the hotel. He seemed confused but kept going. Eventually he pulled over to the side and pointed at my computer bag. We had another stroke of luck with the google page being up where I found the hotel address on the side. Thankfully we make it to the hotel. Good thing it only cost us ¥30,000. Oh wait, that's $280.

We check in and get our room, which was another ¥12,000. So about $112. The room was small and the bed was low, but at least we got sweet pajamas and the bathroom had a bidet! We got a good nights sleep and left in the airport shuttle at 12:10pm.

We boarded our flight to Hong Kong and got there after a short 5 hour flight. Drew and Mo picked us up at the airport and drove us back to their apartment. It was a long 48 hours, but we made it!