The name of this island is Hong Kong. After a long day of travel - six hours on a plan that was supposed to be a 4 hour flight - Lauren and I arrived and I made my first new friend. In Hong Kong we stayed with a friend of Lauren's from college named Becky. Becky has been living in Hong Kong since January as a temporary transfer for the law firm she works for in Chicago. In short, I really loved Becky. She is funny and easy going and really generous to have let us crash in her place for a few days.
April 30th was our first day of touring, so Lauren and I got up pretty early and set out on what proved to be a really great adventure and vacation. Becky had to work that first day, so Lauren and I were on our own. Luckily Lauren is the queen of research for new hot spots and great places to see when traveling, so she had everything all mapped out. First we went for breakfast at a great place that Becky recommended called The Flying Pan. We had been warned that the portions were large, so we split one eggs Benedict meal that was incredible. It was served Greek-style with feta cheese and spinach.
After breakfast we walked around the streets of the Wan Chai district where Becky lived. There are so many luxury shops and incredible malls here that Lauren and I got lost a bit and just let the time slip by. Once we realized that the afternoon was fast approaching, we got a move on and found the ferry boat that takes people to Kowloon. Once off the ferry we grabbed a taxi to the Temple of 10,000 Buddhas. The temple itself is on the top of a huge hill and leading up the hill is a path lined with larger than life Buddha statues. According to the Hong Kong image of Buddha, he was a fun guy! All the statues are hilarious, but when you get to the top, you realize where the 10,000 Buddhas come into play. There are different buildings at the top built very close together that each have one large statue in the center of the room, but along the walls are very small Buddha statues packed into little cubby holes covering all the walls. The sheer enormity of it all is overwhelming. And I did wonder whose job it was to dust the top shelves!
After our Buddha adventure, Lauren and I hurried back over to the Hong Kong via the ferry and met up with Becky and some of her coworkers for dinner. They had chosen quite a nice Chinese restaurant. We all ended up getting a 10 course meal with Peking Duck and a Beggar's Chicken. Now, Beggar's Chicken has a cool little story to go along with it. In ancient China, a beggar stole a chicken from the Emperor's estate and quickly took it away to be cooked in the nearby village. So as to keep the chicken from emitting a savory aroma as it cooked and giving him away, he first plucked the chicken and wrapped the meat in lotus leaves for flavoring. Next he slathered the lotus leaves in a thick layer of mud to seal in the flavors and smells. Once the chicken had been cooked, he had to use a hammer to beat his way through the hardened mud case to unwrap the lotus leaves and finally eat the cooked chicken. In this particular restaurant, they let the customers use a hammer and crack the outer shell and then they give you a little souvenir hammer. They took our picture and put it in a nice little frame with the story printed on it as well.
After our decadent dinner, we ventured on to a wine bar that was owned by friends of Becky's coworkers. Did you follow that? The wine bar has a simple loungy atmosphere and was a really nice place to hang out and chat with our little group. Lauren and I also met the owners of the bar and spoke to them a bit. Shortly after that, Lauren and I crashed back at Becky's.
The next day was a holiday in Hong Kong, so Becky was able to go with us touring! The first thing we did was to buy some fresh egg tarts at the bakery below Becky's apartment building. They were hot and really delicious! After that we went for a real breakfast at the Flying Pan again! Once we really got on the road we headed over to the cable car station to take a car up to the top of Victoria's Peak. It was a really great view of Hong Kong, the surrounding islands, and all the wide open mountainous land that Hong Kong has. Also at the top of Victoria's Peak, there is a Madam Tussuad's Wax Museum!! After my excursion last July at the new Madam Tussuad's in D.C., I really wanted to go to the one in Hong Kong! Turns out Becky had never been to one and Lauren had gone many years ago to the one in New York. We had such a blast there, and I am forever amazed by the incredible likeness they are able to achieve to the actual subject. We dressed up in certain areas and Lauren decided to wear a pink tutu around the whole museum!
Victoria's Peak and the museum were a bit tiring so we cooled off a bit with some quality ice cream and homemade waffle cones. Afterwards, we took the cable car back down the mountain and caught a bus for Stanley - another town down by the ocean. There was a market in Stanley and a crazy number of restaurants lining the street. After walking through the market a bit, it began to close, but Lauren and I were on a mission. Lauren really wanted a silk robe and I wanted a Chinese dress and in the end we both came away happy. We found one little shop that was still open with two very nice women working inside, they helped us with styles and colors and sizes and at the end Lauren tried her hand at bargaining and got us a nice discount on our respective souvenirs. Through the trip Lauren turned into a master haggler and we walked away with some great deals and nice keepsakes. After our shopping adventure, we got a table at an Asian/Western fusion restaurant and all enjoyed some curry.
After the bus ride home from Stanley, the three of us got all dressed up again and went out to a bar that Lauren had been dying to try called Felix bar. As I said, Lauren loves her research and found great reviews and good word of mouth feedback about this particular bar. Once we got there, we all decided that it was a nice place, but all the hype was a bit much. One thing however was incredibly confusing....the bathroom situation. When you got off the elevator for this bar, to the left looked like double doors into another hallway and to the right was the large seating area and wine room. After being showed to our seats and chatting a while, I got up to use the restroom. I asked one of the hostesses where the restroom was and she pointed me down the hall to the double doors I mentioned. I walked down and instinctively took the door on the right into what I thought was another hallway. Turns out, I just about walked into the mens' bathroom! I then shifted to the left door and was in the right place. The bathroom was beautifully decorated and very chic. When I came out again, I looked at the doors to see where the markings were to signify men and women. Looking very closely, I saw that there was a small bronze disk on either door and a light shining from the ceiling at an angle reflecting on the disk a small M or F. It kind of made me laugh out loud how minimalistic this place was to make the bathrooms so inconspicuous!
The next day we got up early and headed out to the airport to fly our way onto mainland China and Shanghai.
1 comment:
Wows, Hong Kong sounds great! I would love to see the Temple of 10000 Buddhas! Now I'm hungry for peking duck; maybe I'll go get some this week. If not, I'll just take some food I have here and wrap it up then slop mud all over it and put it on the grill. I wonder how that will end up!
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