Liz and Richard's 2007 Adventures

We've arrived in Hong Kong!

Five and a half hours in steerage to San Francisco from Toronto.....of course the crying children were next to Richard.  It is his doom to fly with children.  Why can't they travel with the dogs and cats in luggage?

Then..........Heaven..........15 hours in Business Class on Singapore Airlines. Yes, Virginia, there is a Travel God.  We were ensconced in the upper deck of a 747 - 28 passengers and 4 attendants and they really all do look like Balinese Dancers with an attitude that went out of fashion elsewhere with the Raj.

Wonderful food, beverages and 100 channels of current movies, top TV shows and news......all in TIVO on demand configuration so you can pause, speed or repeat. 

Did we mention the food?  Braised scallops, Korean spiced shortribs, grilled jumbo shrimps, dim sum.....and when you woke up with your internal clock ajar they were thrilled to hand make a foccacio with tuna and grilled vegetables sandwich.

A few pix:

But then, there were the seats.  La-Z-Boy eat your heart out.  The seats reclined; they extended; they squeezed and cuddled.  We not only slept, we dreamed.  Never dreamed on a plane before........had nightmares......but never dreamed. See this bad photo of Dickie in his airline bathtub.

Richard inevitably had to climb under the seat to find out how they did it and discovered more technology than a space shuttle launch.

Wonderful flight - when in doubt do fly Singapore Airlines Biz Class.  PS - there is a First Class - there the seats are Roman recliners with orgies and the attendants chew your food for you.

It's Fun to Stay at the YMCA!

Arrived in Hong Kong rested, relaxed, far better read and ready to dine.

Surprise..... Hong Kong is incredibly clean; we came in at rush hour and traffic wasn't in the Gardiner at dawn category; taxis are inexpensive, available and know where are are going; locals have a wonderful sense of personal space as they move down a sidewalk (unlike NYC on a bad day) and politeness is the national ethos.

When you travel with Elizabeth, the travel afficianado, you actually expect not the unexpected, but the expected.....top quality,usually at a great rate; but in   Hong Kong, we're actually staying at the YMCA.  Now we understand why those guys dressed up in Indian headdresses and hardhats.  The YMCA - believe it or not - is Hong Kong's best value, best attributes hotel.  Our room, with its rock solid bed, mini bar (beer at $3 CAD versus $12 in the Peninsula hotel bar!), personal safe, room service, high speed internet & a terrific breakfast buffet, plus other functional services costs $160 CAD versus $400 - $700 at high profile hotels.

Plus at the YMCA you get a National Geographic grade view of Downtown Hong Kong and the evening light show - this is the view from our room

We're in residence for 6 days.  Have a list of restaurants to experience and off to Macau for a day.

Visited the flower market and bird (caged pets) market this first afternoon (incredible availability of high end fowl - mynahs, African Grays, love bird variants and other parrots) plus the flower market (multiple orchids).  Thinking of renting a boat for a day to explore the harbour - the container port is awesome in scale.

Following are pics from the markets - we especially liked the 'rose condoms" - each bloom carefully protected!

So far not the sense of a "world class city" but we're in Kowloon, tomorrow we ferry across the harbor to explore Hong Kong city.

But there is much to see and do - we'll go back to the bird and flower markets and want to see the (no kidding) goldfish market, plus whole streets of esoteric specialities - herbalists, dried fish, jade market, ladies fashions, etc.

So far - and it is very early days - Hong Kong is not what we expected.  All positive - very clean, no chaotic congestion, very polite and efficient, but smog that you can cut with a knife - probably too much information here - after 26 hours on planes and in airports we're certainly over exuberant about having arrived.  Some recent pundits have suggested that the objective of a blog is to bridge the personal and the general with the inclusion of response - we'll see how we do this time around after our South American venture. Clearly need to up our picture count.

 

Hong Kong City Light Show - Video and pix

It's glitzy, so very Las Vegas and we love it.  Every night at 8:00pm for 15 minutes, downtown Hong Kong transforms itself into the world's largest light show.  The architecture is already spectacular, but when it illuminates with lasers and strobes dancing over the 60+ story towers, it is amazing.  Many of the buildings are covered in coloured lights and become structural chameleons in a mating dance frenzy.

We tried with partial success to capture the impact using the movie option on our still camera below.  Surprised more cities haven't duplicated the Hong Kong pyrotechnics.

Theme Streets - Flowers, Birds, Goldfish!

One charming sight is the Chinese taking their pet birds for a walk.  They congregate and chat like dog owners, without the necessity to stoop and scoop!

Bird Market

The Goldfish Market is a street with hundreds of stores dedicated to aquarium fish.  There are goldfish, tropical fish, saltwater fish and all the equipment required to maintain them.  Many of the stores are packed with people buying - so we have to assume there are some major home aquaria crowding out the humans in very tiny apartments!  Unfortunately tank glare makes photography difficult.

Many of the fish are pre packed in plastic bags (above) - the death rate must be tragic

That's a weird fish!

Flower Market

A Cultural Interlude at the Hong Kong Art Museum

Can you spot the original Auguste Chaboud "Yvette or Checkered Dress"?

   

Hong Kong - more theme streets - Herbal Medicines, Dried/smoked Fish and Meat

The herbal markets (ginseng, reindeer antler, etc) merge into the dried fish markets (shark's fin, dried scallops, etc) which blends into the smoked/preserved meat markets.

The upscale ginseng emporia are the most impressive - glass fronted, bank like establishments with comfy chairs and consulting rooms where you can develop your customized regimen.....presuming you can afford it - the prices are numbing.

The dried fish stores are a tour de force of colours, shapes and packaging.  If it ever swam, floated, crawled or burrowed in the ocean it's here in preserved form.  The stores are immaculate, with geometric displays reminiscent of the jars of peppers in a Montreal deli.  Sharks fin, dried fish stomach, sea cucumbers, a hundred grades of scallops, squid, octopus, sea horses, little fish, parts of bigger fish and a lot of things we didn't recognize!

By the preserved meat neighbourhood, medicine has clearly evolved into food.  Our favourite was whole smoked geese (bills still on)

Eating in Hong Kong - 1

We were very excited about eating in Hong Kong - Liz had reams of recommendations and we had only 6 potential occasions (we extreme dine only once a day on holidays....usually trying to eat one of everything on the menu).

Day One - tired after 26 hours of travel and in the wrong time zone we ate at a nearby restaurant (behind the YMCA on Ashley Road) that was incredibly busy, filled with students and served good basic food.  Our assumption is that it is hard to find bad food in Hong Kong.

Sea bass and vegetables, stir fried shrimp and an exceptionally flavourful Yong Chow rice

Day Two - into Liz's list.  We love Sichuan and she had a recommendation - the Yellow Door.  Good things are often hard to find.  The Yellow Door is a sign over an obscure doorway, then down a dark hallway and you enter an elevator that should have been long ago condemned and lurch up to the 6th floor

All was well.  A charming dining room, welcoming staff and a fish eye view of the density that is Hong Kong - including (below) an overhead shot of "the escalator" (more about it later)......plus some wonderful, incredibly flavourful food.......here's the view and the escalator

Onto the food - deep fried stuffed eggplant with sour/spicy sauce cleared the sinuses in a very flavourful way!

Fried cod fillet with mushrooms in spicy sauce - perfectly done fish in a very aggressive sauce 

Then stir fried chicken with pickled chilies (below).  Again, wonderful flavours but we'll never get used to how the chinese macro chop  chicken.  The french fillet method that deletes backbones and cartilage is far more dental friendly!

We liked Yellow Door so much (and were fascinated by what the people at the next table were having) we went back again.....and to another restaurant owned by the same people......following is Round 2 at Yellow Door.

Exquisite dumplings in chili sauce.  We are big dumpling fans.  Not a complex dish, but one that defines a chef.  These were ethereal wrappings made of air, a succulent filling and a hot sauce that crept up on you and kept on creeping.

Sauteed garlic stems with shredded pork.  A new form of garlic could not be denied.  We loved it.  Where do all the North American garlic stems go???......we want them

Then deep fried fish with chili bean paste.  Crispy skin, moist flesh all bathed in a sauce that combined heat and depth of flavour.  The fish was great, but they should bottle and sell the sauce! 

And then the killer - a dish to make grown men weep....from every pore.  Richard consumed a box of kleenex mopping the sweat from his bald head:

"Boiled Pork in Chili Soup"

and they aren't kidding about the chilis - all those red things are sichuan chilis.  Great flavours and incredible heat - a dish to remember.

We had to try the owner's other restaurant - Kin's Kitchen...............see Eating in Hong Kong - 2

Eating in Hong Kong - 2

We went to Kin's Kitchen in the Causeway Bay area - far more sophisticated and upscale, serving Cantonese food in an emerging SoHo like neighbourhood.  The owner sat with us for much of the meal.  She and her husband (an art critic) entertained alot and friends urged her to open a restaurant.  Not a usual story, but in this case she actually did open not one, but two locations - both of which are prospering.

We opened with Smoked Chicken - wonderful flavour and skin to die for ... but we dislike eating fowl backbones......but this flavour on a french filletted bird would be incredible.

Then, meaty spareribs in sweet and sour sauce.  Fall off the bone meat and subtle layers of flavour....

Followed up with steamed fish and vegetables - a deceptively simple dish that highlights the chef's fine touch.  Perfectly done fish with very subtle flavours that let the fish shine through. 

The finale was one of the great dishes of our lives - stuffed roasted duck.  Skin that shattered and exploded with flavour when you bit in; moist, buttery flesh permeated with exotic flavours - all wrapped around a stuffing that we need desperately to replicte - except our charming host was annoyingly vague about just what was in the stuffing!

Overall we had much fun at Kin's Kitchen and highly recommend both it and the Yellow Door.

Now - something simpler.

We believe that the basic foods define a cuisine.  For Chinese, a basic is noodles and broth.  In Hong Kong there is a street of noodle bars and the one that wins Hong Kong's awards is Mak's Noodles.  It's Ben's Deli (in Montreal) revisited.  Been here a hundred years, glaring fluorescent lights, uncomfortable seating, a staff that turns tables over at blazing speed and delightful food.

A bowl of noodles, plump shrimp wontons, stir fried greens and a side of melt in your mouth brisket flavoured with tangerine and star anise.  We could get cravings for this food

One day we took a ferry to a local fishing village - Cheung Chau - on one of the outer islands in the Hong Kong Harbour.  No cars - rustic and touristy.  Enjoyed a basic meal of sauteed shrimps, lobster in black bean sauce and deep fried port at La Baccarat.  Following photos - the meal, the view and us becoming part of some film crew's commercial or documentary - no releases were offered or signed!

Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign

One of the things we love about traveling is signs; some well intentioned but semantically mangled, others just symptoms of cultural differences.  Here are a few to date.

Hong Kong is very clean - not much litter, no cigarette butts on the streets, etc.  Below are two reasons why ...... and they aren't kidding.  Perhaps we should consider such draconian measures in an increasingly littered Toronto:

The following sign on a beach in the Hong Kong harbour may be our all time favourite sign.....depending on how you define "Inconvenience":

One of those charming verbal juxtapositions:

This sign brings new meaning to the threat of PMS:

Just in case you didn't know, carrying a gun when you come to visit the Thai King is discouraged.  The NRA must be appalled.

The following is self explanatory ......... sort of:

One is expected to remove one's shoes on entering a Thai temple.  They provide racks at the larger sites.  The Thais are incredibly polite, so we were perplexed to find separate Thai and Foreigner shoe racks.   Our guide explained that the intent was to make clear that any thefts of Foreigner shoes was due to other foreigners, and not the Thais:

We're always on the look out for more - will add them as we collect them!

You Eat well at the YMCA!

Some quick food shots of just part of the amazing dinner buffet at the Hong Kong Y.  We call it "putting on the feedbag" with its panoply of Asian and Western dishes (about $28 CDN per person - very reasonable for HK)