Hong Kong Trip 2008

It’s been almost 2 weeks since we come back from our Hong Kong trip. Off course everybody has seen the album on my photo gallery, right? The number of pics taken shows how much we had fun there. Since the pics is quite random, let me do the chronological order of the things that we’ve done in there J

Day 1 – Singapore – Hong Kong
Being kiasu *shy*, we took the very first flight to Hong Kong. Basically we just slept through the flight since we only slept for 2 hours and had to be in airport by 5am (it’s amazing that we could even wake up). We reached Hong Kong at10am and never thought that the custom queue would be incredibly long that when we were out of it, it’s lunch time already. So, we quickly hit the recommended sushi restaurant, Itamae Sushi at T2 6th floor, and had fantastic sushi. I liked their squid (it’s because they torched the squid before serving so that it looks like cactus) and their roasted salmon (the meat so thick it satisfied you with just 1 piece, *actually we ordered again haha*). Later on the trip we found the branch in Tsim Tsa Tsui,
With filled stomach, we finally arrived at our hotel, YMCA Yau Ma Tei (very decent hotel considering the rate compared to other hotels). After having a good nap, we hit Shatin for its Snoopy World and the gigantic big mall. Snoopy World is fun, full of cute Snoopy & Woodstock and it’s FREE *grin*. Then back to the mall. It’s HUGE and it has my fave shop, PIT, no matter how you see it, their stuff is the cutest and definitely wearable and most of all, affordable, even for me. Off course there’re a whole lots of other stores (I wouldn’t be raving about this mall here for nothing). Another fantastic thing about this mall is that it has a huge terrace on its highest floor (either 6th or 7th floor) and it’s super romantic and cozy with the view of housing buildings. Lots of couples are cozying up there and honestly it makes me jealous *shy* haha. To close the 1st day fun, we have a mango dessert with pamello and tofu pudding on dessert stall upstair. It’s nice and soothing, perfect to end the day.

Day 2 – Hong Kong
Day 2 was actually a food fiesta. We met my ex-boss for lunch. He brought us to this Yue Kee Roasted Goose. The place is located in the middle of nowhere. Somewhere along the highway, there’s this small road path and when you see the place (it’s a rundown small 2 storey building), you’ll wonder what makes this place famous (mind you, they have valet parking haha). But don’t let the appearance fools you. Inside that small building there’s a huge kitchen and lots of big tables, which made us wonder how they did that. Never mind about the place, now let’s talk about the food. The food is… superb! The goose skin is so crisp and yes, it’s oily, but it’s crisp and tasty and the meat is so tender and easily chewed on. Apart from that, the fried shrimp is divine, they marinated them in some old soy sauce, deep fry and sauté with garlic and green chili. The highlight of my lunch is the fried tofu. It’s so soft and it feels like you’re eating soya milk. Those tofu bits melt immediately in your mouth. After a very joyful lunch, we went to the sights where we can see all Hong Kong bridges (you won’t find it in tourist guides since it’s in the middle of NOWHERE). Fantastic views. By this time, we’re keep giddily happy and busy taking pictures and off course thanking my ex-boss for his kind generosity.
Then, there we were stranded in Tsim Tsa Tsui roaming blindly with no direction in hope of looking for cute stores and alas, it’s very hard to find. Tsim Tsa Tsui is not like malls where you can find everything in 1 place. Bet all those cute stores surely have 1 small stall there but where are they? So after walking here and there for about 2 hours, it’s time for… high tea at Peninsula. Peninsula is one of the most expensive hotels in Hong Kong and it lives up to its standard. It’s arcade is filled with Dior, Hermes and the rest are jewelry store. I like the high tea set here because: 1. it has lots of variety of food for you to sample 2. the scones are to die for (slap on some butter and you’ll have wings on your back) 3. use your imagination, you’re dead tired from shopping and there you are sitting on the cozy sofa, sipping tea, and your ears are indulged with the sound of classical music. No wonder we have to queue to sip the tea there. Apart from the scones and butter, another highlight is the lavender scented white chocolate. The taste is unforgettable. My highlight from 2005 trip is the tiramisu, but this time they change the tiramisu using green tea instead of ice coffee.
** Extra: One highlight from Hong Kong’s 7-11 stores. They have the Nestle yogurt drinks which taste very very refreshing. I tried the pear/peach and berry flavor. They’re not too sweet but also not sour. Just nice to cool your body off after gulping all those hitty things.

Day 3 – Hong Kong – Macao – Hong Kong
We went to Macao for day 3 to visit Feli’s aunt and grandma. After the heartfelt family reunion, we ventured Macao with Feli’s aunt as our guide. We visited St Paulo’s Church, St Dominic Cathedral, Senado Square, Macao-China border, and off course, the casinos (Sands, Wynn and Venetian are the ones that we visited). The casinos are more like miniature version of the ones in Las Vegas, literally copied over from the original. We spent the rest of the afternoon taking pictures in Venetian until it’s time for us to go back. One thing about Macao is that it gives out a romantic air almost everywhere. You can easily note couple spots here and there.
FYI, all the places mentioned earlier is not located in the same area. We go merry go round literally walk across Macao. And we climb up to the top of the fortress next to St Paulo’s Church where you can view 360 degree of Macao. Macao’s famous snacks are Portuguese egg tarts which is rich in custard with succulent pie shell, almond biscuits (very nice when warm), and wife biscuits.
Yes folks, it’s miracle that me and Feli can survive the whole Macao experience without any food review. Off course we did sample this and that but that’s about it. That’s why by the time we’re back in Hong Kong, we’re starving. But, here’s the catch, after all day walking, we off course would like to indulge ourselves in good food. So we turn ourselves to the HK food guidelines that we grabbed in the airport. I grabbed the English and Japanese one. If you think that it’s just a matter of translation between the English and Jap one, you’re very wrong! The Jap one is all about award winning food and restaurant, they have the complete direction of the place (so basically you just point at whatever is written there to the taxi driver, since you can’t speak Cantonese and Mandarin) and they have at least 2-3 items of what’s good there. So, we finally arrived at Tsui Hang Village at Miramar Shopping Center (how did we know that we’re going to the correct one? We matched the Chinese character hahaa). There’s a wedding going on when we reached and luckily the waitress was kind enough to notice these 2 tourists looked clueless and hungry in front of her and ushered us to the upper storey. We ordered the award winning Shark fin soup, Yam fried balls and Steam tofu. The soup is divine, the steamed egg below the soup is so subtle and it’s like unison inside your mouth. The yam ball is scrumptious, just nice. The tofu, it’s so cute! They make it into flower shaped and shower it with the sauce. I like the sauce, it reminds me of one of my mom’s home cooking. So that’s how day 3 ends, 2 happy girls with go back to the hotel after a long day in Macao.

Day 4 – Hong Kong – Lantao Island
As tourists, we must go sight seeing. So, we picked Lantao Island to visit the famous Giant Buddha. Yes we like sight seeing but we, city girls, don’t like the long journey to reach the place. Initially, we need to take a 4+hour ride on buss to reach there (from our hotel to the top of that mountain). The good thing about Hong Kong is they understand us. So we cut short by 20 min MTR to Tung Chung and another 20 min by cable car to reach the top. One miscalculation from our part is that because we’re dead tired from Macao trip, we woke up late and ended up queuing for quite amount of time for the cable car. When we reached the top, we still needed to walk to be able to see the Buddha. Lots of people climb the long inclining stairs to reach the Buddha. We both stared at each other and say, there’s no way we’re gonna climb up there. So that concluded our Lantao Island trip.
We then went to Tsing Yi and discovered another fantastic mall. It has the Very shop. Also have cute stuffs but a slightly different style from PIT. Another shop to be noticed is the Simple Dress. It features Korean brand dresses. Lots of them are for office wear. The point is that you also can look cute, stylish yet professional in the office. I like Tsing Yi mall because apart from it has cute stores, it also has the mango dessert place which is NICE.
After Tsing Yi, we ventured to Olympic. It also has a shopping center there but we found that it’s not as exciting as the one in Tsing Yi. So, we went straight back and decided to have dinner at Tsim Tsa Tsui. But it turned out that it’s not that easy to find suitable eating place there. Reason #1: We can’t read Chinese. We certainly didn’t want to eat sushi so we’re thinking of something local. Then we came across 1 stall along Granville Rd with quite enticing pictures and it looked full. So we bravely went inside. The waiter couldn’t speak either Mandarin or English and obviously no English menu. So we just picked from the ones on the picture. We’re a bit puzzled when the guy kept mentioning it’s spicy. Since when is wonton soup spicy? So we opted for medium. We only knew what he meant when the food came out. They’re looked good, honestly with curry like soup. We only realized that we made a wrong choice when we gulped the soup. It’s freaking HOT and SPICY and that guy called it medium. Feli couldn’t finish her food, poor girl, she couldn’t stand the spiciness. The food actually tastes good when the soup cools down a bit. And then I spot something mortifying to us. A guy slurping the soup from the bowl like it’s nothing. If you really like spicy food, you’ll love this joint, which that’s why lots of local people going there. And it’s damn CHEAP considering their portion is quite big. We had 4 dishes total and it cost us less than 100HKD total. So our last night in Hong Kong will be remembered for a long time by super spicy noodle soup.

Day 5 – Hong Kong – Singapore
Hong Kong trip will not be complete without the famous Yam Cha. So we had yam cha for our last breakfast at Chao In (Tsim Tsa Tsui branch). The restaurant view was splendid for morning breakfast. Ordering was not a problem until the waitress told us that they’re only using Chinese menu. Luckily she’s kind enough to translate for us. The dishes are nice and on par for standard good dim sum. One thing I didn’t really like was they could have duplicate orders so you need to keep track on what you’ve been eating.
Being almost broke from shopping and the need to walk off our breakfast spoil, we decided to venture Sheng Wan district in search for the yummy bird nest soup that I had during my 2005 trip. After hours of walking up and down on Wing Lock Street we gave up. In deed Wing Lock Street has tons of bird nest shop but none of them seems to serve the cooked ones aka like dessert shop or something (the one that I went to last time look like a run down shop but it actually serves bird nest dessert).
So, sadly we went back to Yau Ma Tei area to spend our hours in Hong Kong land before back to the airport. While strolling, we came across Yee Shun Milk Company. We’re so happy to see the picture of milk pudding and most of all, the English menu. So, we went in and had a nice rest and enjoyed the delightful milky desserts. And thus this concludes our Hong Kong trip.

One more experience that I extremely feel the need to highlight is the standard of service. Hong Kong now is much better than in 2005. Now most of the shop assistants are able to speak English, eliminating the language barrier. Even though they couldn’t really speak English, they make lots of efforts to understand you and take extra miles to literally make you happy. Simple things like not frowning or making face when you don’t like their products and walk of the store, initiatively offering bigger shopping bags to combine your small ones, translating the Chinese menu (when you’re in the restaurant), always approach you with a smile, attend to your questions with no sign of complains, or make an effort to speak in English so that you can understand them, really make the difference for customers. And most of all, their intentions of service felt genuine, not in the sense that ‘I speak nicely therefore you must buy, else I make face’.
Overall, I like Hong Kong, and will be very happy to make another trip there. *grin*