Feb 4

Hong Kong: Sleeper Awesome

Archive - Northern ExposureAuthor: Luke Meeker

We’ve been planning this trip for a long time. And for a lot of us, this trip is not really “all about the coasters.” I mean, coasters and parks are great, but for me, the best park about a new city and a new culture is walking around, exploring, and trying the food. After arriving in Hong Kong yesterday afternoon at like 2 PM, I rested, drank some water and shook off my post-flying-headache (I don’t know if any of you get those pounding headaches after a flight, but I do and it takes a couple hours to shake it). I cranked a couple Aleve, and I was on my way.

View across Canal Road East. Times Square is the big building in the right of the frame.

We’re staying in a Holiday Inn Express in the Causeway Bay district of Hong Kong, which is about three districts away from Central, the meat of downtown on the northside of Hong Kong Island. Directly across the street from our hotel is Times Square, which is like a vertical shopping mall, 40 or so stories tall. We have some small markets near us, and some good little restuarants and clothes shops. In general, we have a pretty good location.

Best. Lingerie Store. Name. Ever.

Ever since I’ve landed, I’ve spent the bulk of my time just walking around the city exploring. I’m a firm believer that the best way to experience any new city is to just walk around, eat the food, and people watch. It’s also the best way to find the best bars. Ian and I spotted blablabra yesterday, just north of SOGO.

In the market across Canal Road East.

Across Canal Road East from our hotel is an awesome little street market and one of Hong Kong’s Cooked Food Centers, more or less a giant food court of little restaurants that share a giant common dining area. Once you sit down at one of the tables, you order your food and pick a beer. The beer is sold/brought to you by a girl who works for the beer company you decided to drink, and she more or less is like a second waitress for your beer exclusively. No matter what company it is, however, all the beer girls wear a uniform that is their own variation of yellow and white leather jacket/skirt combos. It’s pretty hilarious. In the market, there are a lot of butchers, seafood vendors and vegetable/fruit vendors. The seafood here is amazing. Abalone, Geoducks, Mantis prawn, all sorts of fish, live and dead, prawns jumping out of bins, lobsters and crabs crawling around, razor clams, normal clams, conch, sea snails, just everything, multiple kinds and speces and animals I’ve never even seen before let alone dreamt of eating. Most of it still alive, and all of it bright, vibrant, and insanely crazy looking. There’s pretty much nothing else to say about it except “wow.”

Delicious sea creatures.

My first day here I walked around and stumbled on Jardine’s Bazaar, a small market/restaurant street over by Victoria Park. As I walked down the street I found a pretty kickass little noodle joint that looked legit. I went inside, ordered some hand-made eggnoodles with beef brisket and shrimp wonton, and pretty much had a kick ass meal. I should also mention that this cost me about HK$40, or about $5.50. On my way out, I read their bulletin board, which pointed out that they had been well reviewed all over the world (the reviews are under the glass on the tables too): Sunday New York Times, Fodor’s, Anthony Bourdain in A Cook’s Tour, etc. The place is called Mak’s Stingy Noodle, and it’s awesome. It’s also in wikipedia, no joke: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mak%27s_Noodle

This would not be the last kick-ass meal in Hong Kong.

The next morning Ian showed up at the hotel from his flight in from Kuala Lumpur. Yes, he did ride Supersonic Odyssey and he said it kicked ass. You’ll see pictures from there too.

Some good graf I saw over near Lockhart Rd.

I spotted this graf on my first walk around, and it sheds some light on the one main negative I have so far about this city. Hong Kong is awesome, it has a heartbeat and a pace and a feeling that’s in general pretty awesome. But with that there is a sort of super-materialistic sense that comes from all the damn money flowing through this city. You’ll notice that the skeleton in the graffiti above has a dollar sign on his skull and on his crotch. It doesn’t seem to be far from the truth, if you catch my drift. Everyone here is all about the Gucci handbags and the designer everything, even though at the same time there’s thousands of little clothing shops that are cool and funky and either non-designer or local designers trying to make their name, so with the whole big money designer thing, it’s also cool that a lot of little indie designers are carving out their corners. It’s very much all about Get Money, Get Ahead, Get A Mercedes. It’s really amazing how many people here are dressed so well, how many watch stores selling thousand dollar watches are full, how many designer stores there are in every department store all over the city. There is a lot of money here, and that makes a lot of the culture very money oriented and expensive. Not shocking considering the skyline. It looks like money grows on trees here, if not skyscrapers.

Some of the Skyline during the Symphony of Lights show. Bad picture, better will come from the DSLR later. (Yeah, that's the Batman building on the right)

That photo was taken during the Symphony of Lights laser/light show that all the big buildings in Hong Kong take part in, and you watch it from across the harbour on the Avenue of Stars. It’s cool, but nothing to write home about. Ian got some sweet shots of it, and we’ll put those up later.

Before the laser show last night, Ian and I went on a pilgrimage out to Tai Po, a suburb of Hong Kong out in the New Territories. I have to admit some nerdiness here… I went solely because I saw this BBQ place on Anthony Bourdain No Reservations. I tracked this place down, and it was awesome. Not just the food, but actually seeing a market out in a suburb that isn’t all flash and big department stores.

Tai Po Market Cooked Foods Building

Yat Lok BBQ Restuarant is in the Tai Po Market, near the Tai Po Cooked Foods Building, another one of the big restaurant malls.

Tai Po Market

This was pretty much amazing. The goose was definitely better than the pig, and by better, I mean one of the best things I’ve ever put in my mouth. Like seriously. The one catch was that nobody spoke English, there was no English menu, and we were pretty stumped until the owner showed up. He speaks English, and he hooked it up big time with some goose leg and suckling pig. Holy eff dude. This stuff was ridiculous. It was so, so, so good, and if we have more meals as good as this and Mak’s Stingy Noodle, then this is going to be the best trip ever (I’m foreseeing the answer to this proposition as yes.

Tasty BBQ.

Sweet delicious goose.

After finishing up at Yat Lok and getting some photos, we headed back into the city. Opted agains going to the horse races because apparently Ian has bad luck and a gambling problem or something. Sissy. We went back to Avenue of Stars, where the Tsimshatsui ferry let us off and took some photos and waited for the laser light show. I’ll post more pictures of that later today along with some photos from today. But it was pretty awesome, and people are not kidding when they say that the Hong Kong city skyline seen from Kowloon is one of the most amazing sights you’ll ever see. It’s crazy impressive. But I should point out that AIG has a big pretty building that’s all decofated for the light show. I call shens, my bailout tax dollars shouldn’t be paying for a stupid light show (actually, it looks pretty cool, so whatever). Here’s some more pictures from the day, and more will come later. But the basic run down here is that Hong Kong is a lot more awesome than I expected, and I had some pretty high expectations. Alright, time to head out and check this awesome city out more.