Hanging Out in Hong Kong

More pictures for our trip are available in the album.

We arrived in Hong Kong at after 14 hours in the air. As an unfortunate quirk, we accidentally skipped my sister's birthday. We left San Francisco at 11pm on Dec 16 and arrived in Hong Kong at 6am on Dec 18. The 17th just went poof. Sorry Jill. 

The flight itself was ok and we got a decent amount of sleep. That's the nice thing about a long flight; it's possible to sleep enough hours. So, arriving in Hong Kong, the jet lag was manageable, but it was breakfast time. We decided to take the airport express train to Hong Kong Central and at the other end, right in the terminal complex, there is a Dim Sum place called Tim Ho Wan that's supposed to be the cheapest Michelin star restaurant in the world. We arrived before it opened, so we decided to wander for a bit and promptly got semi-lost. Navigating in that part of Hong Kong is 3 dimensional because there really isn't a good place to walk at street level, so the walking thoroughfares consists of sky bridges, escalators, and other indoor passages that snake their way through the lower levels of the local skyscrapers. Plus, the whole complex is really an extended mall for high end luxury goods. I've never seen a mini complex of Armani stores before.

After that quick introduction to the city, we managed to make our way back to the Dim Sum restaurant and managed to score the 3rd last table on the initial seating. We had a nice variety of dishes, a surprisingly large number of which Catherine could eat. I'd say that the best is the baked BBQ pork buns because the dough was flaky and sweat. It reminded me of the Saltenas we had in Sucre in Bolivia. We also tried the turnip cake (surprisingly complex), some rice steamed in a lotus leaf, and some rice wrapped dumplings. A great way to start the day.

After breakfast, we decided to walk off the food and headed for the peak. Being a little lazy, we took the tram up, which dumps you in a ridiculous tourist building full of cheap plastic crap and some restaurants. There's also an observation tower at the top, which you can pay extra for. To entice you to pay, they also make it impossible to get a clear view of the city anywhere else in the building even though there are windows. Those windows are usually just covered in ads though. Sneaky bastards. 

We wanted to walk down from the peak but first we had to figure out how to get out of the building. This is non-trivial. After wandering around for a while, we finally found an exit past the bathrooms, and through a few concrete hallways. The whole complex is designed to whisk you up the ridge, squeeze as much money out of you as possible, and then whisk you back down. Kind of silly.

Though the building at the top was ridiculous, once we finally got out, the walk down was fantastic. We had a great view of the city to start and then we quickly descended through a very steep, verdant, forest trail. It reminded me of the area around Machu Picchu, with its very sharp cliffs and copious amounts of vegetation clinging to the side. 

As we got lower, we tapped into the top of the midlevel escalators. It's the longest escalator chain in the world but when we were there, it wasn't going in our direction, so we just used the steps. We then spent some time exploring the area around Hollywood Rd., which has many antique shops and an interesting temple.

After exploring the markets, we hopped on the train out to the Chi Lin Nunnery and Nan Lian Garden. It is a buddhist complex consisting of an immaculately sculpted garden and a very large, ornate temple. It's a striking counterpoint to the forest of sky scrappers that is Hong Kong.

For an early dinner, we stopped by a roast meat and noodle shop that is very well regarded. There, we had roast goose and pig, which Catherine enjoyed on some rice and I enjoyed in a small bowl of noodle soup. The goose in particular was different, well, because it's goose and we don't normally eat that animal, but they brown the skin with a torch so it's very crispy and then hack it up with a cleaver. The resulting pieces of meat are fatty, crispy and flavorful, although you do need to watch out for the occasional bone fragment.

After dinner, we jumped back on the airport express train to get back to the airport and hoped on our 6 hour flight to Mumbai.