Hong Kong With Strangers

I think Amy is harder to disgruntle than Candace and Ann...

Let's see...Similar to Shanghai, Amy, Ann, and Candace's trip in Hong Kong consisted mostly of shopping and eating. I'm sad that we did almost no sightseeing (we even opted out of going to Macau in favor of...more shopping...) but I'm still here forever so, no big deal. HAHA.

Yeah, to further illustrate that point, I'm finished with my finals on May 12th, and my flight back to San Francisco is on the 24th...

ANYWAY. On Tuesday afternoon we all flew out of Shanghai. I flew out of the international airport while the rest of the kiddies made a local flight to Shenzhen (to take the MTR to Hong Kong). OH YEAH. I took the Maglev (magnetic levitation?) train thingy to the airport, which was a new experience since we decided to take a SUPER crowded bus to the subway when we first got to Shanghai. Not such a great idea. The bus ride was an hour long while the Maglev was 7 minutes (reaching speeds up to 430 km/hr). So yeah, I guess that was kind of cool.

They were pretty tired when they got to Hong Kong, so all we did was have hot pot for dinner. We ordered WAY too much because we weren't really sure how big the portions were and we were pretty hungry. But we managed to finish most of it. We finished the important stuff, anyway, like the meats and seafood. Hot pot makes you smell like Top Ramen.

On Wednesday I met up with them after class and we went to search for Hong Kong Park. Directions to get there are very vague, and when we finally made it there it wasn't that big and the tea museum was pretty small too. But check out my awesome tea pot design:

After that we had British high tea at the Mandarin Oriental. This was way too expensive for how little enjoyment we got out of it. British high tea consists of paying a crudload of money to get your own pot of tea and to share a bunch of little pastries with somebody. It's mostly for rich people who have nothing to do except to sit around and eat lots of small things and drink weird flavored teas. I hope having high tea never becomes part of my normal routine.





Surprisingly, high tea was much more filling than the hot pot of the previous night, so our dinner was pretty small. We decided to go to Langham Place, a mall in Mong Kok. Mostly window shopping and checking out these horoscopes that tell you how certain aspects of your life will turn out. I think Ann's life in general is "OK" (sounds about right)? All I remember is that my love life will be "Excellent".

Oh yeah, dinner consisted of Spanish Tapas.




That night we also had Hui Lau Shan, a huge fruit dessert chain in Hong Kong. These guys are seriously everywhere. Kind of like how 7 Eleven is on every corner, but not as widespread.



On Thursday I met up with them for lunch and we had 68 HKD all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ. I've had this twice before, so nothing very exciting there. I had class again at 4, so I couldn't hang around (and I already forgot what they spent their time doing while I was gone - probably shopping), but we went to get dinner at the cheapest Michelin rated restaurant EVER (???). I guess.


Tim Ho Wan is a dim sum restaurant in Mong Kok. I've also already been here before. Supposedly they're known for their totally awesome baked BBQ pork buns, but I've already had them before so I wasn't blown away. Super cheap though (~5 dollars/person).




Afterwards we went right next door for this bean-curd looking shaved ice:

On Friday I went to Central after class to pick them up from the Central MTR and take them to HKU. The campus is pretty small so there wasn't much to show them and we ended up sitting around doing nothing for half an hour before they decided they wanted to leave.



I had class again from 2-6 that day, so I met up with them again at 7ish (they went shopping). We had dinner with Allen's friend Felicia, and she took us to a da pai dang in Jordan. It was nice to have a place to eat that I haven't been to before. And I kinda love da pai dangs. The atmosphere is very casual and the food is usually pretty good.

We karaoke'd that night into the wee hours of the morning (4 AM) at the Red Box above their hotel (Mong Kok East - Grand Century Place) so I stayed over. We were supposed to go to Macau, but we opted out of that because of how late we stayed up that morning. So we had a sushi lunch instead, and then we shopped some more? I don't remember...

We had dinner with Amy's friend at a Sichuan style hot pot restaurant. I guess we could've gone anywhere though, since we didn't even order a spicy soup or anything. There were some WEIRD things ordered that night, that I would like to forget ASAP.

We were planning on going to the TST waterfront to see it during Earth Hour (where most of the commercial buildings turn off their lights for one hour to conserve energy, I guess) because I saw it in Vegas last year and thought it'd be pretty cool this time. Too bad we missed it...Instead me and Amy went back to my dorm so I could pack up some clothes to send home. That means only Amy got to see my ghetto dorm...

I stayed over in their hotel that night too, mostly because they have a TV.

It was way nice to have family in Hong Kong. I've been having fun regardless with new buddies, but having people from home to share it with is a different kind of fun. Curiously, having them here made me more homesick than I've been since coming; the original idea was that having them come in the middle of my trip would offset any accumulating homesickness (I was fine before they came). But I found myself wanting to take the plane back to LA with them as we were going our separate ways on the MTR. :( Also, I want some freaking In-N-Out.

I'll probably get some slack for all the people pictures I posted (HAHA), but I figure Mommy and Ba would like to see pictures of their children.

That is all.