Picture updates of Hong Kong!

I haven't been taking a WHOLE lot of pictures in Hong Kong, mostly because we're from here and have been back many times.  So for us, its mostly shopping, meeting up with friends and family, and of course, eating.

We were actually in Mong Kok before 11am one day, and discovered that apparently the street lined stalls that are there daily are dismantled and reassembled every day!  Here, we have a picture of those labouring away putting the stands back together.

One of our nights, we met up with Freddy for some shopping, desserts, and club hopping.  Freddy's quite the dancer!  Too bad I didn't get those pics though, they're on Sunny's camera.  Below, we have Freddy feeding Sunny some mango dessert at his favourite place, Hui Lau Shan (許留山).

A day or so after, Kel and I visited our favourite HK cafe, Phoenix (金鳳茶餐廳) in Wan Chai.  They have my favourite chicken pies and serve a mean milk tea and coffee!  We got up late that day and by the time we got there it was close to 4pm.  Despite our dinner plans at 7pm that night, we each had: 1chicken pie, 1 egg tart, 1 yin-yeung (milk tea coffee mix), and shared a "pineapple bun" with butter!  But at the end of all that, we both still wanted ONE MORE chicken pie! :P  

Below you can see how busy the cafe is even during its off hours; Kel lining up at the door trying to get us seats; Kel excited and can't wait for me to finish taking the picture so he can get started on his pie; and our feast before the extra pie.

Oh, and here's a picture of me with my cousin's son Anton. We got him a toque from the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics featuring Quatchi the sasquatch.  Isn't he a cutie?  (both Anton and Quatchi that is!)

Kel and I also went up to Chung-Shan (中山), China with his god dads last Sunday and Monday for more foods.  We hit the Guduo hot springs (古兜温泉) in nearby JianMen (江門新會) as well.  On the way out, Kel's god dads stopped to purchase some dried seafoods.. Below you can see Kel having fun with their various products...

Left: Kel under giant dried starfishes.. apparently we make soup out of these?  (By the way, keep in mind that if they're this big dried, they'd be HUGE before...

Right: Kel pointing at a bag of dried porcupine fishes... maybe we make soup out of them too?

Left: Kel staring at a REALLY long fishy..

Right: Kel posing.. using two huge fish spines as horns..

Left: Kel posing with the smaller starfishes as ninja stars

Right: Kel staring and mesmerized by the giant squid... his favourite!

That night after dinner, we also went to a foot massage place... 70min for $50RMB!! That's like less than $10CAD!  We ended our trip the next day to a local restaurant for lunch where we had hot pot with congee. Yummm..

The Super Condensed Post I've promised...

It's been almost a week since my last post, and I've been getting quite a bit of online inquiries as to "What's going on?", "What have you guys been eating?", and the like.  Well, I can explain.  The day after our last post, we went club hopping around Shanghai so we didn't get back til late and I was super tired... The day after, we flew to HK, and Internet's been a bit wonky, so I haven't bothered uploading pics (and we've been going out late in HK, too, so that didn't help either).  In any case, here's the "Super Condensed Post"...
The day after our trip to Suzou, we woke up and headed back to our local noodle shop as I needed another steamed bun (xiaolongbao) fix.  After that, we walked around Nanjing Road and instead of Haagen Dazs, we decided to switch it up and headed to Cold Stone Cremery :)  Then we walked around People's Square and spotted a China "Starbucks" less than a block from the real Starbucks, called ecoffee... the logo, cups, decor... everything looked exact, so I couldn't help but take a picture!  We saw a similar copycat earlier in the week.. instead of L'Occitane, they had Occitown, with the same colour schemes!

The boys wanted to go check out the Shanghai Urban Planning Museum, but when we got there, we realized we just missed the last entry and they weren't allowing any more people in. :(  So instead, we found the underground shops there and checked that out instead.  The place was set up to look like what Shanghai used to be in the 1930s, so that was interesting.  You can see below the entry, as well as the boys trying to blend in with the display of people lining up for the tram.

That night, we had dinner at Jade Garden (苏浙汇) with Jas' dad to thank him for the hotel arrangements, bringing us out to karoake, etc.  We got there a little early, and remembered there was a bakery nearby famous for it's egg tarts, so of course we had to try one!  We were good though, Kel and I shared!  However, I still don't know how Kel managed to eat it without burning himself as it was fresh out of the oven and when I bit down, the egg part would cling to to roof of my mouth.. :(  It was awesome nonetheless.  Below, are the pics of us at dinner.

We went club hopping that night, from Mint, (which was mostly caucasians and expats,) to Guandii, (which was all locals,) to Park 97 (, which was more locals, some caucasians).  We didn't get home until late late that night and decided to sleep in the next day and grab some food (or not) before our flight to Hong Kong.  We were flying separately, so Sunny's flight was at 3pm, while ours was at 7pm.  Uncle Tong had advised Sunny to leave the hotel around 1pm to allow time to get to the airport and such.  Kel and I didn't get up until close to 1pm and were packing, but we haven't heard from Sunny, so I told Kel to give him a call "just in case".  Kel figured Sunny should have left or close to leaving, but gave him a call anyways.... well, seems like he didn't quite get up til we called and rushed out of the hotel soon after.  By the time he got to the airport, he had already missed his baggage check-in time, so he had to deposit his lugguage at the airport and called us to help bring it back for him!  Another ten minutes or so later, we got another call from him... and apparently, he was in such a rush to the boarding gate, he had forgotten one piece of handcarry lugguage on the belt at security!  So Kel and I left for the airport a little earlier to try to locate Sunny's various pieces... Uncle Tong had suggested we take the cab to a certain Maglev station and try out the high speed train to the airport, which was exactly what Kel's been wanting to do all this time.  Below, we've documented Kel's Maglev adventure. :)

From Kel at the machine, purchasing our tickets... to Kel posing with the blue Expo guy by the train.. to him boarding the train...

to... us on the train... to "OMG we're travelling at 431km/h!!".. to Kel taking his last picture with the train after it was over

Luckily, we were able to locate Sunny's piece of deposited lugguage with no problems.  However, the lost and found did not have his handcarry... we later found it by asking the security people after passing through ourselves.  There were some issues though, as there was no ID on his handcarry, and we had no idea what he packed in it.  At the same time,  Sunny was already in the air and there was no way to reach him!  Fortunately, after the security people searched through his bag and found nothing of value, they did release it to us after jotting down our information.  This did take a while though, as they've never had this situation before, and they would call more of their colleagues over to deliberate whether to release it or not.  That night, after arriving in Hong Kong, with the help of Kel's god dads, we dropped off Sunny's lugguage to him before heading to our regular wonton noodle place before heading home.

Day Trip to Suzhou

We woke up early to take the day trip to Suzhou (蘇州) today.  Our first stop was at the Lingering Garden (留園), which is regarded to be one of the four best gardens in the world.  Below, you'll see some parts of it.. now, if only we can get our gardens to look like that!  There's actually a girl on a boat playing the "Pi Pa" (琵琶) when we first arrived.

The gardens were beautiful, but what was bad about the experience was that the place was rampant with different tour groups and the bigger groups would have guides talking through a microphone!  We realize this was popular no matter where you went, but it totally killed the tranquility of the gardens.  When we were leaving, there was a guy and a girl playing the traditional instruments and singing.  Apparently, this is where people would gather for the storytelling.  Our guide told us that Suzhou opera was must like this, mostly soft, flowy songs, unlike the more well known Beijing opera.

Next, we went on to an old bridge over a canal, before heading to the "No. 1 Silk Factory".

We got a tour at the silk factory as they explained to us the life cycle of the silk worm, how to differentiate real versus fake silk, as well as how they gather and process the silk.  After that, it was all gift shops of the different products they have made from silk; a total tourist trap!

Below: a closeup of the baby silk worms; the conveyor belt a local worked the cocoons off of; part of the cooking process of the cocoons to release the silk from the pupa.

Here, you can see Sunny working with the locals, trying to pull the silk outwards.  Doing this repeatedly layering on, would form the inner of the silk duvet.

We went for lunch after that, which consisted of a buffet of really bad "western" food.  I sure hope the locals don't think that this is what we eat daily!  The next stop after that was the famous Zhouzhuang Water Village (周庄).  It is regarded as the Venice of the East, since it is an ancient village built on canals.

Below, you can see us riding the boats down the canal.  It's pretty nice, but the day was really gloomy and it was getting nippy... which is why we all have our hoods on.

Before we left Zhouzhuang, Sunny wanted to show how much he missed Jas at the water village... so here's a picture of him pluckering up to a pack of "Jasmine" scented Tempo!  (And he explicitly said, can't post on FB, so.... anyone else want to? :)

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Warning: a lot of food pictures of street food today

We started out the day on foot, in search of QiPu Road, but before we got there, we stumbled upon some local markets with fruits and street food!

Below, you can see the stores we went through, as well as the boys already having these pancake wraps in their hands!

Not much further down, we came upon a shop with skewers!  Of course, we had to have that, too, so we got a skewer of chicken, one of beef, and one of squid (Kel's fav).

After that, we crossed the road to QiPu Road and roamed the local shops.  We didn't have much luck seeing things we were interested in bargaining for.  Our first attempt came when Kel came upon a pair of jeans.  The tag was set at $268RMB and we've been told the max to ever pay for anything was 50%, (which would put it at $134RMB,) and if you're real good, you should be able to talk them down to 30%.  So we figured we'd start at $100RMB and set a max of $150RMB... what we didn't realize was that, the tag was the retail price and this was a distributor building?!  The shop owner started his price at $120RMB, which we couldn't help but show a funny look...so we lost that battle and just paid the $120RMB...  We had better luck later on, scoring a messenger bag for Sunny.  We were able to talk the girl down from $380RMB to $170RMB, so we were happy with that.  (Did we pass Jas? :)  We got wary of looking through the shops after a while, and went back outside to hit the street food.  We gave the chinese version of tacoyaki balls a try, which weren't that great.. it was just gooey in the middle with nothing but dough.  And to top it off, they put ketchup on it as a dressing!  We ended up throwing the rest of it out.  Next, we tried a bowl of sour and spicy noodles, which weren't bad. :)

After that, we decided to hit the Chenghuang Miao (Temple of the Town Gods), but before we started walking, Sunny said he could use a snack... so they boys got the two flavours of wings at McDs and I tried their red bean pie.

The trek to the temple was slightly confusing as it was surrounded by more shops and street food.  We actually located another Starbucks, Dairy Queen, and Haagen Dazs, before finding the temple.

And inside...  you can see Sunny tried to take a picture with one of the "monks" (for lack of a better word)..

And here we have Sunny pointing to a statue inside the temple (I find that he likes to do that.. :P) and Kel hiding under the bell..  (I was sure we'd get kicked out soon..)

After that, what did we do?  More street food!  These crabs caught our eye... We thought they'd be similar to soft shell crabs being on a stick and all, but no.  The shells were quite hard, so we ended up giving up on them after a bit.

After wandering around a bit, we found the gardens Jas' dad recommended to us and we ventured into the Yuyuan Gardens. It was actually a pretty nicely structured garden and well worth the $40RMB/person admission.  Below are a few pictures from there.  And of course, we'll start off with one of Sunny sneaking into the displays and posing on the chairs.

After that, we headed to XinTianDi for.. another Starbucks and tried to get our bearings, before deciding to go locate the massage place to book an appointment for later that night, and then went for peking duck for dinner.  We had time to spare between dinner and our massage appointments, so we headed back to XinTianDi to look around.  We found the Haagen Dazs Jas noted there :) and wow, that one served wine, too!  We each had a scoop of ice cream, but that wasn't enough for Sunny!  He had a slice of cheesecake, too!  We dropped by the DR Bar that Jas' dad recommended as well for drinks, before heading for our massages.

And now, I'm way tired after this long post so I'm signing out!  We have an early day tomorrow as we've signed up for a tour to Suzou! Can't wait!