It’s Saturday, and we’re having a relaxing morning. We’re eating lo bak go from one of the aunties, slicing it into thick slices as best as we can (it’s crumbly), and pan frying until crispy around the edges and warm throughout. We still need to buy something spicy, at least for us adults, we like a hit of chili with this.
Sam messages and asks if we want to come meet him for lunch in Causeway Bay on Hong Kong Island. This will be our last chance to see him before he and Monica leave on vacation on Tuesday, so of course we say yes! There’s a bus directly from our bus depot to the restaurant he has chosen, so we plan to leave shortly after 11am to get there on time.
BUT! The one aunty we haven’t seen yet, her husband is dropping off some stuff for us, and we have to wait until he gets here before we can leave. He arrives with bags full of food, snacks and small appliances! A larger rice cooker, seeing as we’re a family of four and this apartment is only used to housing one to two people. A larger kettle, same reason. Another enormous lo bak go, we’ll have food for the week! As he unpacks his bags, my eyes get larger and larger, we are truly so spoiled by all of Joe’s family members!
We hop on the bus from our bus depot, and once again have front row, top floor view of the city.
Sam is patiently waiting for us at a Japanese restaurant right across the busy traffic from the yacht club, in a building called World Trade Centre. Téa excitedly orders a kid’s meal, and Maylin decides to play it safe, ordering two onigiri consisting of only rice and sesame seeds. Joe decides to get an omurice, the restaurant’s specialty, Sam orders the deep fried pork cutlet bowl, and I opt for something called a sukiyaki don.
Téa’s meal arrives first. Then mine. Because the dishes are hot, we start carefully eating. In North America, we like waiting until everyone has their food, but here…
After another 10 minutes, Joe gets his omurice.
When everyone else is just about done, Sam gets his pork bowl. By now, the sukiyaki meat covering my bowl of rice is completely cold, and I really should have just eaten while it was hot. There goes my attempt at being polite!
After lunch, we take our time descending through the World Trade Centre building.
There are some really cool shops here, but we’re not really here to browse stores. Sam is bringing us to the Causeway Bay New Year market, similar to the one we went to with KC on Thursday. This one however, is PACKED. Not just “more people”, uncomfortably packed. The sort of packed that means little Maylin essentially disappears and sees nothing of what’s going on, just a whole lot of strangers’ torsos.
It’s also hot. As in roasting. Both girls start telling me the back of their calves feel hot so they may need to borrow my aloe vera gel when we get home. Nobody is getting sunburned while at the market today, we’re not staying long enough in the sun for that, but it sure is unimaginably hot. Much hotter than we’ve had in Hong Kong so far, unseasonably warm. There’s only one fix for overheating at a market like this, and that’s a frozen treat! Luckily, HK market style frozen treat is a frozen entire mango on a stick! Both girls dig in immediately to cool down, it’s such a refreshing and healthy snack. Us adults find a juice vendor, and we try a different juice which is tart and refreshing and fruity all at once, and not sweet at all.
We decide to aim for a mall to wait out the sun, maybe to return to the market later on. Sam brings us to the subway, and we head further east on HK Island. Over at Cityplaza, New Year is in full swing. There are large installations in the main areas of the mall, with stamping stations set up throughout the installation. Sam signs up for the mall’s customer app, and gets handed a blank postcard for each of the girls. Then follows two careful stamps at each of the four stations…
Before at last, they have the finished postcards! These are keepers, for sure!
This mall is enormous, especially compared to the largest one in our hometown of Windsor, Ontario. Devonshire Mall doesn’t exactly have a skating rink inside! If it wasn’t for us wearing shorts and t-shirts today, we might have taken a spin on the ice!
The girls are tired, and we decide to head home instead of going back to the New Year’s Market. Sam leads us through the area to another adventure, riding a “ding-ding”!
A “ding-ding” is a double-decker, skinny streetcar. We find seats towards the front on the upper level, and have a great view as we wind through the streets of Hong Kong Island.
The ding-ding takes us from one end to another, and we pass Times Square and other places we plan to take the girls to, but not today. We aim for the same bus that brought us here, but Sam brings us to a stop even earlier in the route, knowing that by the time we reach the New Year Market area, we may not even get seats. That’s how we end up getting on an almost empty bus, securing our seats, and settling in for a 45 minute ride. I much prefer relaxing in a seat and getting much closer to home when we get off, then the hustle and bustle of the subway system, which means we need to get on the minibus to get up the hill at the end anyways.
I nap the whole way home. It’s how I’ve combatted motion sickness my whole life, so why stop now? By the time we get off the bus at home, it’s dark outside and we’re all tired. We’ve been out for what feels like all day long, and we haven’t even had dinner. Joe just wants to go home, and claims not to need any food. Somehow his wife talks him into a fast food restaurant on our way home, because it’s a noodle soup restaurant.
Joe and the girls have a “clear broth” noodle soup, and I opt for the only other broth I know what is, which is the “hot and numbing” soup. It’s a risky move, Joe won’t touch the stuff because of the actual numbing that happens, but I want flavour tonight. This noodle soup chain lets you pick your broth, pick your toppings, pick your noodle, and pick your spice level. I order it mild, and it’s still numbing. I guess numbing doesn’t count as spicy? I also order it with ground beef instead of slices of ham, vegetables, tofu or fish. The ground beef comes in a spice oil on the side, and is absolutely delicious. Best decision ever, I’ll definitely try the meat again, but maybe with a different broth…
After dinner, we have a 5 minute walk home. Joe watches Olympics, the girls are playing, and I open my computer to blog a bit. But my blog is broken!! MY BLOG IS BROKEN! When I open my computer, the page I was last on, a post about Mong Kok, is open in my browser, but when I am asked to log back in, that post no longer exists. My scheduled posts do not exists. My last three posts are all mixed up, the last post is blank, and it’s telling me I’ve had zero views on some of my posts. (It’s never zero. Thank you readers!! <3) Joe emails the people in charge, and I go to bed depressed.
See? I told you (and my hairdresser) that my Saturday the 14th is always worse than my Friday the 13th!