Last Day in Hong Kong

Hey internet!   Sorry for the delay in finishing up my posts about China!   When I got back from Hong Kong I lost the powers of uncensored internet and then once I got back I moved right into my new apartment and then headed straight to New York, which is where I still am.  Chad and I went to Toronto for few days and just got back.  I have been doing a lot of traveling but I'm actually stationary at the moment so I will update you on the rest of my stay in China. So back to our regularly scheduled broadcast:

My dad had to have a business meeting in the hotel so my family had lunch with him and the business people in the hotel's Chinese restaurant.  It was pretty fancy:

I was extremely excited to eat actual Chinese food in Hong Kong (my mom and sister had been demanding a lot of pizza and it is actually widely available here).  

It was a traditional lazy susan style meal.  What you see above is just cold snack type things that they put on the table in the beginning.  And of course, tea.  

Some of the dishes; super lightly fried fish (very tasty), fried pork, sweet and sour chicken, asparagus, wonton soup, and this weird noodle dish:

This is that noodle dish.  See that orange stuff?  I assumed it was like sweet potato or some seasoning or something.  I ate a lot of it and was then informed by one of the businessmen that the orange stuff is: THE CONTENTS OF CRAB OVARIES.  Yep.  Not even just eggs, the whole contents of the ovaries.  Yum. Yum. Yum. I must admit it didn't taste bad, it didn't really taste like anything but my overly sensitive Western food sensibilities won't stop saying "EW".

So after lunch we didn't have a super solid plan of what we wanted to do the rest of the day, and we had seen the hotel's tea buffet the day before and really wanted to try it.  

Yeah we ate a lot of food.  Chocolate mouse, creme brulee, chocolate bread pudding, chocolate chip scone.  NOM NOM NOM

Look at this adorable pineapple cake: 

They also had sushi and some cold cuts but we were only interested in dessert.  

Also I couldn't get over the cute pink meringue blob.  Okay, enough pictures of the crazy amounts of desert we ate...

After tea we hopped on the MTR to Central where my dad wanted to show us the Lan Kwai Fong area of downtown.

Above is what most of Central looks like, huge buildings, bright lights, swarms of people and stupidly large designer brand stores.  Below is what the side streets look like:

Crazily inclined on a mountain, super unsafe sidewalk, street vendorpalooza, wat.  This is seriously steps away from the bright lights and designer stores.  Hong Kong, you make no sense and I love it. 

Check out that incline on the street, it's nuts.  This isn't even a particularly steep section.  Around this area is where there longest escalator in the world is.  We went up and checked it out.  It's cool. Basically just a billion sections of up escalator right after one another.  But the cool part was the view: 

If and when I come back to Hong Kong I want to wander around this area for hours.  

  

Ocean Terminal

So our hotel changes the carpet in the elevators every single day.  How do I know this odd tidbit of information?  They freaking label the carpets so you KNOW that they change them every day. 

What is the purpose of this?  So you don't forget what day of the week it is while you are in the elevator?  So you can keep track of how may days you have left in the hotel?  Just for the hell of it?  

Our plan for the day was to go to the ICC Building's Sky100 deck so that we could see a cool view of the city.  But we got stuck in a mall all day instead.  This mall was so huge.  I might still be in that mall.  I'm not even sure.  

On the way to the mall we spotted this car:  

There are wedding ducks attached to the front. 

So we wandered around this seemingly endless mall for hours.  We were trying to get to Ocean Terminal, which is a really super huge mall with a Toys R Us in it (we were mainly going to for the Toys R Us)  but once we arrived in the vicinity of it we discovered that it is part of a super mall that is created by several huge malls conglomerating together to form a super mall.  It's kinda like those Power Rangers that morph into the big dude except in mall form.  

While wandering around the mall we ran into the is crazy Chinese Chuck E Cheese type place:

Pretty much all of the stores were stupidly expensive brands like Chanel, Gucci, Prada, etc.  My dad and I wandered into a clothing shop where we discovered a $1400 Hong Kong Dollar T-shirt (that's $200 US dollars.) and a hoodie that was about $400 US dollars.  

Back in the area by the Toys R Us there were about a billion designer kids brands.  Burberry Children, how absurd.  But we did wander into this Imagination toy store were we found this:

It's a bee evolution toy, kids!  Play with your bee from egg to larva to whatever else the stages are called.

After walking around several of these stores we can't afford anything in we all got super tired, fatigued and cranky.  So we went to Strawberry Forever, a dessert cafe to sit down and replenish our blood sugar.   

We eventually escaped Ocean terminal and headed back to some more normal type malls by our hotel.  To give you an idea of how big this crazy mall was:

This is just the Ocean Terminal part.  it takes up an entire freaking pier and there were at least 6 more buildings connected to it that were all MALL.

In one of the more normal malls by the hotel I did find this totally not normal thing:

It's the world's most giant soup bun.  And a spoon.  In a clothing shop.  What.

Also we found this lovely display.  Yay China!

Goldfish Market

We started off Boxing Day right by eating some super delicious tarts from the bakery across the street. 

The first thing we had planned was to go see the Goldfish Market because it is supposed to be a cool thing to see.  To get there we had to of course take the super convenient MTR. Wanna see what the subway system here looks like? 

This is a meer pebble in a sea of never ending hallways filled with moving walkways.   It's like a whole city under there.  And to the side there are tons of little tiny shops.  Some are fashion boutiques, some are 711.  Who knows.  

Shortly after emerging from the subway we stumbled across this shop:

Obviously, we had to go inside.   If you think the amount of inventory in this window is nuts, just hold your amazement until the actual store interior:

This is not a back storage closet that we snuck into, this is the ACTUAL STORE.  What?  How on earth do they keep track of inventory? How do people find what they are shopping for?   HOW DO PEOPLE WALK THROUGH THAT "WALKWAY"???  

After making some most excellent purchases we were on the way to the Goldfish Market.

The Goldfish Market is an entire street of little shops like this.  Not just fish stores.  Aquarium supplies, bunnies, puppies, kitties, random pet supplies, aquarium plants, basically this place was "Pet Store Street."   

My favorite thing here was the walls of bagged fish:

Shop after shop like this.   People holding fish bags in their hands and haggling a better price, it was madness.

We some some other weird things at the market:

Tub O' Albino Frogs, for all your Albino Frogs needs.   Also Tub O' Tiny Turtles, because heath codes aren't really a thing here.   

There were many tanks and displays on the street likes this with puppies, kittens, bunnies and other fluffy critters so people will be like AWW ADORABLE and then go in the shop.  Most of these displays had "no photo" signs up but apparently no one cares about the tortoises.  

After being fished out we headed back to the MTR to go to Central (downtown).  We popped out in some super fancy mall (Armani Junior and Gucci Baby are things that exist, people, I learned this)  which we immediately wanted to escape because seriously, Gucci Baby?   

There are many places in Central where you cross the street via an elevated walkway like above.  This particular one is crazy because there were several right by each out due to the all the offices and malls being connected by them.  They love making little hamster trails for themselves.  

Christmas in Hong Kong

On Christmas the first thing we decided to do was head to the Hong Kong Museum of Art.  On the way there we found this awesome shirt:

"A lion burger recipe"  there are arrows that point to all the parts of the burger.

As we were entering the museum we saw these itty bitty signs above all of the door handles:

"This handle is disinfected 8 times a day"  Overcautious much?  My mom loves it here.

The actual art museum was cool.  It was more ancient Chinese artifacts than fine art.  There was only one "fine art gallery".  There were 3 ancient artifact galleries.  One calligraphy gallery and one ink painting gallery, and that was it.  It was neat to see but there wasn't a whole lot of variety.  Kinda like you see one clay rice bowl and you've seen them all.

Here is a picture of a fancy crown:

This was one of the cooler artifacts because it was super unique and didn't look the same as 20 other artifacts.  See the way they space it out crazy far?  It's like one thing in a 4 ft radius and the whole place was like that.

When we came back to our hotel (after poking around in some shops and malls on the way home) we discovered this:

  This, my friends, is a chocolate ornament.   And guess what?  We got another one of those chocolate ball sculptures.  We have so much chocolate we don't even know what to do.

For Christmas dinner we went to a Japanese restaurant in a hotel down the street.  My dad and I ate a lot of sashimi and Mom and Liv had tempura shrimp.  

This bowl of ice was once full of delicious fishes.  

As we were finishing up dinner we heard a bell ringing and looked up to discover: 

Chinese Santa, handing out presents to all of the tables in the restaurant.  This was super surprising as no one informed us this would be happening.  It was super absurd and awesome all at the same time.  All of the presents were different chocolate sculpture type deals.  Ours is this:

A garden gnome sized chocolate Santa.  Who ends up looking like black Santa.  He's so magical. 

After dinner we headed outside to explore the area.  A lot of the buildings around here are super decked out for Christmas.

There are lots of dragons because 2012 is going to be the year of the dragon and this is apparently a Big Deal.  There are a bajillion people getting married in the spring because they all want to be married in the lucky year of the dragon.   

We walked down a street with some little shops and food places.  We found this place that is clearly supposed to be called "Holy Cow":

And we found some high quality bad T-shirts in little boutique nearby:

And possibly the best of the trip so far:

"Return of the Killer Bastard Shirts"  The shop keeper wondered why we were taking pictures of this and we told her that "bastard" is a bad word in English.  She said "Oh, shit!"and asked what the meaning was.  We did and she said "This is not a very nice shirt."  On the way out we noticed there was another one on a display mannequin near the entrance.  Excellent. 

Christmas Eve in Hong Kong

Before we all got in the car to head to Hong Kong city we had breakfast in the little counter service place in our hotel.  My dad had some orange juice.  Exhibit A:

That is in fact Minute Maid Orange juice, right?  Now check out the ingredients:

"(Contains fish product)"  What the hell?   There is absolutely no reason orange juice should contain "fish product".  And what is "Fish product" anyway? SERIOUSLY WTF CHINA

We are staying at the Kowloon Shangri-La.  It's kinda crazy super nice as you can see from the lobby above.

They really like curved walls in hotel rooms I guess.

Stupidly huge bathroom.   The shower is like it's own room it's so stupidly huge.

Our view of Hong Kong Island.   Hong Kong is a city that is divided onto several little islands and the Kowloon Peninsula (where we are staying).  The actual Hong Kong Island has the Central area, think Times Square.

This weird ball sculpture thing was on the table by the window.  We totally thought it was a metal sculpture until my dad poked it and discovered it is actually a chocolate sculpture.  Oh, and we broke it open to discover it was filled with chocolate truffles.  Yep.

The subway system here is really really awesome.   There are pedways under there street where you can walk underground to get places or walk underground to get to a specific subway line.   In these pedways there are 711s, Circle Ks and and many other convenience stores.  There are even bakeries!

Super cute Angry Birds cake!  

The MTR is crazy awesome.  To buy a single ride ticket they have these little machines.  You poke the stop you are going to on the machine and it pops up and tells you the price to get there.  How nice is that?  We are using Octopus cards, which is a plastic card that has money loaded onto it so you don't have to worry about buying a ticket every time.  

When we emerged from the very crowded subway this is what we saw.  Madness.   I directed us to the CTMA Center which has a Toymart floor.  The malls here are completely nuts.  I'm an idiot and haven't taken a picture that accurately depicts how crazy these places are yet.   It's like a never ending sea of closet sized shops.   So tiny that my family can't actually all fit in there at once.   I'll get a good picture later, I promise.

We went to Superman Toys.  Which is a pretty large toyshop that is well known by fellow nerd toy collectors like me on the internet.  This is why:

OMG stuff.  So much of it.  Wow.  And this isn't even the store, this is just their display window.   Liv and I got some cool things, like a tofu chopsticks practice game and some little silly plastic figures (including a Super Toast Man).  

A lot of the shops in theses malls have terrible English names because they are trying to be cool.  I liked this one:

Hipster Men's Fashion.  This might go over well if they put one on Wabash near Columbia.   

I was looking at some sweaters in this one little fashion boutique when my mother pointed out that this was right next to me:

This cat was so chill and calm about me being in the shop I didn't even notice it was there!   Also it's wearing a dress O_o

So overall we had a great time in Mong Kok (shopping area we were in).  It was awesome and not touristy because it is where the locals go shopping.  We will probably be headed back later in the week.  

Then we got on the subway back to Tsim Sha Tsui East (where our hotel is located).  Holy crap.  We thought it was crowded before?  We were wrong.   So very wrong.  

We got of the train and tried to walk towards the pedway area that would take us back to our hotel.  Nope.  There was a lady in a yellow shirt telling us we could not do just that.  We were ushered in the opposite direction and popped out of the Tsim Sha Tsui station.  There is a difference of several blocks between Tsim Sha Tsui East and just regular Tsim Sha Tsui and we had no idea how to get back to the hotel.  Also apparently Christmas Eve is kinda a big deal here.  Like such a big deal that they shut down ALL OF THE ROADS in Tsim Sha Tsui so we couldn't even get in a taxi because this is what the road looked like:

THOSE ARE PEOPLE NOT CARS. 

So we ended up having to ask several police man where the heck our hotel was from here and we went the wrong direction once but eventually got back to the hotel safe and sound.  

Lesson Learned: When you hear announcements in the subway saying "Due to the special event please do not try to meet your friends in the subway, and only use Octopus Cards for travel"  maybe we should have thought more about that being weird before we were trapped in a sea of millions of people.