Ladies’ Market, Langham Place and more hair is cut! – Day 166 – Feb 15, 2026

When I wake up, the first thing I do is check on my blog. THANK GOODNESS most of it is back! The previously published posts look back to normal, the scheduled posts are there, and I don’t have to panic. Only one post is missing, completely gone, the Mong Kok one that I was in the middle of editing when they did an update on their back end, and uploaded an old backup of my posts. I dread having to rewrite the post, because I feel like once I’ve written it down, it’s on “paper” and out of my mind. But, that’ll have to be later. It is Sunday, the last weekend day before the New Year Holiday on Tuesday, and we’re headed to the Ladies’ Market. We may be crazy, but that won’t be proven until we get there. Maybe.

We have some breakfast while catching up on last night’s Olympic events, and then head on out. When we exit our building, I look up at the one opposite ours, and I snap this pic. Ever since my first visit to this area in 2013, I have marvelled at the itsy bitsy tiles that cover every surface on the outside, and all interior hallways up on the floors, as they are open to the elements as well. As you can see, any greyer areas on the building, the tiles have fallen off. The aunties complain that the tiles keep falling off, and yet they are still widely used for new buildings.

Anyways. We make our way down on the small bus to the subway, and get off at Mong Kok to walk over to the market. On our way through the subway, we have to stop and sniff the scents from the bakery, and marvel at the amazing creations they have for the New Year’s celebrations, like this one:

We’re out and about early today, in an attempt to try to beat the crowds. The only problem is, we’ve beaten many of the vendors as well! Half of the stalls are empty, no tarp to protect from the elements, no tables, no wares.

We decide we might as well go for an early lunch, and hop into a very traditional HK restaurant. I love these places, with an extra strong milk tea, a sweet treat and a meal. Joe’s order is the half coffee, half tea yin yang, mine is always milk tea. I’m currently working on a similar version at home, and while researching the recipe, I find out they usually use four different types of tea, and always the highly concentrated dust from the bottom of the barrel, the stuff that gets put into tea bags. I’m currently at 3 bags of black ceylon tea per cup, plus a generous pour of evaporated milk, and it’s not potent enough. But, it’s a decent at home version, for now.

The girls share a bowl of macaroni soup with a pork chop on top, and most HK diner combos come with buttered toast and your choice of egg. The girls chose scrambled, it’s easier to share that way.

After lunch, we go back to the market. I think we walked through two blocks of it before lunch, so this time around, we finish the stretch in the same direction, and then turn back around and do the whole market in one go on our way back out.

You can buy almost anything and everything at the Ladies’ Market, and we find a few things that we’ve been looking for. Like my purse hook that broke last summer and both girls cried because it was so pretty and it broke. When I start looking at them, the vendor confidently comes over and says, “Usually HK$60, but 50 for you.” Haggling is the name of the game at these markets, and by the time we’re done at the market, Joe and I have it down to an art. I start looking at something, the vendor sees an easy sale and dollar signs glow in their eyes. I ask Joe if he thinks the purse hook is worth 50, and he looks at the vendor and shocks her out of her shoes when he tells her in his most perfect Cantonese that this purse hook is not worth more than 20. We end up getting it for HK$30, and probably all walk away happy. The vendor might have bought it for 10, so she gets a profit, and we get to think we got it for half price, or close to it. Smiles all around.

Once we’ve seen and bought what we wanted at the market (still without having found a couple of key items, you may see us visit another market another day!), we head indoors, Langham Place to be exact. The one with that super long escalator, but today, we actually get to ride it!

We take the two long escalators, 4th to 8th floor and 8th to 12th floor, and find that the 12th floor has a LEGO store! We browse for a while, and then see that there’s a “make your own shirt” factory! We’ll come back and do this after checking out the rest of the mall.

We take the stairs down through the floors on the hunt for a place for a sweet treat, and end up finding a place called Beans. It wasn’t the place we were looking for, but I LOVE the “living room feel” of these booths! High backs and deep sides, two facing each other with a floor lamp – creating privacy and comfort!

After our treat, and after browsing lots of fun shops we haven’t seen in every other mall around, and admiring lots of tiny vendor tables along the hallways, we head back up to the LEGO store. We go to the cashier to buy boxes for their “design your own shirt” experience. The girls spend a long time creating their very Hong Kong characters, as some of these designs are available worldwide, and others are only available in Hong Kong. After they are all done designing, it takes about 10 minutes to print in this large printer:

Once our LEGO experience is over, we head back down the two impossibly long escalators, and then head for home. I’m still on the hunt for a good styling product for my newly short curls, and I stop by every drugstore/beauty store I see.

When we get back to our local market, Joe suggests I go ask the hairdressers if they have curl products. There are many hair salons at our local market, and I stop by a couple of them. They all shake their heads. Maylin is with me, and one lady thinks we’re coming in for a hair cut, she just shows us a chair. I say, no haircut today, thanks. The other stylist is running around the shop trying to find the one product he hopes they have in stock to sell me. While he takes forever to look for one thing, Maylin decides that she does want a haircut, after all!

I message Joe to say Maylin is getting a hair cut, and then I ask – does Téa want one too? She’s been talking about it lately, she did not get a trim in Thailand, so her ends need a little bit of attention. Once Joe walks her all the way back to the market so she can come in for a cut, she’s decided she’s chopping a few inches off! I guess none of us Cheng girls really subscribe to “just a trim” these days…

Did you know? In Chinese culture, you should never cut or wash your hair on New Years. The word for hair sounds too close to the word for “becoming wealthy”, and so to preserve your wealth, you protect your hair. Don’t wash your wealth away, and certainly don’t cut it away! Similar reasons for why you don’t sweep or vacuum your floors on New Year, the layers of potential wealth will be removed along with any debris.

We head home and take showers while Joe prepares dinner, then watch some Olympics while the girls play on the Switch to end the night. I check back on my blog, and find that the Mong Kok post is visible on the laptop, but not on the app, so I am still able to use it! Everything I wrote is there, I don’t need to recreate it, it just didn’t post when it was supposed to last night. Hence the one day gap, and my now 4 days delay in dates. Thank GOODNESS the blog fix was not as extensive as I feared…

Tomorrow is Monday, and the last “normal” day before the holiday madness starts!