The cast: Nick, Forest, and Amelia are three of my friends from Stanford who graduated with me in the same program. Many a night was wasted trying to plan this trip without getting anywhere, but we made it work! Also, Jasper (my roommate) and his cousin Matt joined us for the Hong Kong leg of our journey.
June 19th/20th
Nick, Amelia, Forest and I flew out together from San Francisco early on the 19th via United Airlines.
We got the cheapo tickets which meant we had a 24h journey to Hong Kong with stops in Seattle and Incheon (Seoul). The long leg went by pretty quickly, Forest and I were sitting directly behind Nick and Amelia. Each pair worked on the same crossword and tried to see who finished first, we played lots of liars poker, and the complimentary alcohol helped the flight go a little faster.
In Incheon airport, we had a few hours to kill so we went to a couple lounges (everyone but me has lounge access through Chase) and walked around a bit.
By the time our final flight got us to Hong Kong, it was pretty late so we withdrew some money (meaning I withdrew, and shared the love, since I am the only one who isn’t hit with ATM fees internationally) and got a cab to our Airbnb, where Jasper and Matt were getting settled in.
Friday, June 21st
We got up early (jetlag) and rolled out to some nearby breakfast shop, where I’m sure we annoyed the locals by how clueless we were. They use these cards called “Octopus” cards for getting around on public transport, and it even works in some convenience stores! We bought our octopus (octopi?) cards and took a heavily air conditioned metro train over to Launtau Island.
Here we are on day one of our trip, when we still had some spunk in the mornings.
We caught the glass-bottomed gondola lift towards the Big Buddha (Tian Tan).
It’s pretty strange to see 7-11, Starbucks, and Subway in the little area between the end of the gondola and the stairs leading up to Tian Tan
It lives up to it’s name, it really is a Big Buddha!
Afterwards, we went to the adjacent Po Lin monastery. Some of the rooms inside were super ornate but pictures weren’t allowed. There was a tour guide telling people they could take pictures of the inside from just outside the threshold, but it seemed disrespectful nonetheless. There was one room with 10,000 small golden Buddhas engraved in the walls of the room. Super stuff!
I even ran into someone who is on the team I interned for years ago at Intel. Apparently he always spends a day in Hong Kong on his way to Bangalore!
We had an amazing lunch at the monastery, it was all vegetarian! It’s almost as if I, the only vegetarian in the group, had plotted this ahead of time…
According to Nick and Jasper, the meal was traditional enough! Everyone was quite happy with it.
Taking the gondola back, we started waving to the groups coming the other way. Some people smiled and waved back, some just laughed at us! Harumph.
Back in Tung Chung (the station where we got the gondola) we went into the mall, which had a huge grocery store inside. We got a bunch of random stuff, like yakult, oranges, rice wine (baiju?), etc.
We took a break at our airbnb to cool off since it’s like 90 degrees and 90% humidity. Insane stuff, I think many of us took a second shower.
We started playing a lot of ‘contact’ (a word game) on the trains and as we walked around. Oh and at some point in a subway station I saw this beautiful specimen:
On our way to the bird market, we passed a street absolutely packed with plants! A lot had beautiful orchids, some had the tiniest of cacti:
The bird market itself was depressing. The birds were all being sold in small cages. Also there were lots of insects being sold in tubs, YUCK!
At some point Matt was walking through an area with a lot of pigeons, and took out his umbrella to protect himself from bombardment. He’s a funny guy.
In the evening, we went on a food spree to a bunch of Michelin recommended places. Of course, all of them were meat-centric. There was octopus at the first stall, then dumplings at the next. I was just there to look pretty, not to eat. I later dragged us to a place that I knew had vegetarian food, and Indian restaurant! I was content with my chole batture. In the restaurant and even outside on the streets, all of the AC units seem to drip what I hope is water everywhere. Any time we felt a drop when walking around, we knew it wasn’t rain, it was something worse.
Saturday, June 22nd
We went to some famous dim sum place (Tim Ho Wan?) by like 9 am. I couldn’t eat much, but the others enjoyed themselves quite thoroughly. I subsided on some plain rice noodles with soy sauce and steamed cabbage.
Afterwards, we went to one of those exercise parks for elderly people, since we had no idea what to do anyways.
On the way back to the airbnb, we got these insanely refreshing watermelon drinks. I think its literally just juiced watermelon, but oh man that hit the spot on another sweltering day. We sat at our airbnb for a few hours and played cards to avoid the heat. Although things did end up getting a bit heated during those card games! We played liar’s poker and then variants of Big 2. Cards were intermingled with sips of rice wine that we had to drink out of bowls. That stuff was real pungent but went down ok.
Around 2pm, we ventured out to another Michelin recommended place called Mammy Pancakes. We walked past the shop a couple times before we realized that it was just a 8 or so foot wide place. It was impressively narrow. We got that egg-shell waffle thing, not really sure how to describe it and I can’t seem to find any pictures we took of the food.
We went to Hong Kong Island (there were no protests going on that day) and wandered around this super fancy mall
There was a really nice garden outside with lots of fountains, streams, ponds and the like. For some reason, near one of the ponds, Matt was teaching Jasper and Nick to floss (the dance, not the dental routine). Our little crew must have been an interesting site for the locals.
Afterwards, we went to a fancy tea place and got, well, fancy teas! And they even had VEGETARIAN DIMSUM
We had a lot of fun steeping our various teas and sharing them. It was a really peaceful experience! I got chrysanthemum tea, so thankfully there was no caffeine overload on my end.
They had this really delicious ginger dessert! Definitely something I want to try again wherever I can find it stateside.
We got to see a stamp exhibition upstairs, where they had a bunch of royal stamps (for sealing letters, not for mail!) from throughout history. Some of them were so large that they needed a special instrument to handle.
We ordered an uber all the way up to “The Peak”. Unfortunately the cable car was under repair. Also unfortunate was that we took the uber wayyy too far up. We went to the end of the road, rather than to the touristy vista point. The view we had looked like this:
So we sheepishly walked past the very uber driver who had dropped us off at the top, and was now waiting for a ride back, and went down about 15 minutes to the touristy area.
If you know Nick, then you know he’s been waiting to eat some authentic Dofuhua (a tofu pudding) for a few months now. What we ate at the nearby dessert shop was decidedly not authentic. It was especially disappointing since Nick was hyping it so much.
While Forest and I were waiting for the others to use the restroom, we saw this girl taking a photo of the ceiling. She literally took a photo of the plain ceiling. It’s probably one of the most confusing photos I’ve ever seen taken. Neither Forest nor I could explain the motivation behind it. Life truly is full of mysteries.
We took an uber down to a happening place to eat. It was overwhelming, with people in front of every restaurant begging us to come in. “Happy hour! Free beer!” blah blah blah I was so annoyed I made us go down the street to a relatively sane area. The others went to a Michelin recommended noodle place that doesn’t serve my kind (vegetarians), so I brought over a wrap from next door and ate it beside the others. There was an expat at our table telling us about how he moved here 15 years ago, and what places he recommended for us to visit. Sadly this was our last night in Hong Kong, so we couldn’t make good on his recommendations.
After dinner, we went to a fancy-ish place for drinks. They almost didn’t let us in since none of us were dressed according to the dress code. The place was called Iron Faires, and they had these paper butterflies hanging from the ceiling that really tip-toed the line between tasteful and creepy
We didn’t stay for long, since they started turning the bar into a dance club, which we took as our cue to leave. We just barreled on home.
Sunday, June 23rd
I made the bizarre decision to go on a run in the morning, since I was up early enough. It was the sweatiest 2 mile run I’ve ever attempted in my life. But at least I saw the beautiful waterfront near our airbnb.
Oh and I also got to witness this marvel: I think its a clothing brand?
We had another dimsum breakfast, where I could actually eat a decent amount! There were lots of mushroom based things. Thankfully I ate my fill before the oh-so-appetizing chicken feet were brought out. Afterwards, we cashed out our octopus cards and Nick, Amelia, Forest and I headed to the airport. This is where we part ways with Jasper and Matt, who would go on to explore parts of China. We hurried around the airport so Amelia and Nick could fill out some stupid form that Eva air required for later in the trip (or so we thought [f o r e s h a d o w i n g]) and rushed over to our gate. We flew Hong Kong Express, which was pretty good for a budget airline. Again, we played liar’s poker to kill some time.
Suds in Asia 