Confusion in Sha Tin – Day 182 – Mar 3, 2026

It’s Tuesday, and it’s another drizzly day! Nevertheless, we’ve finished our breakfast, our blogging, our working and our school work. It doesn’t look very wet out there by the time we’re ready to go on a hunt for lunch, so we decide to walk down instead of taking the minibus.

We get to Wong Tai Sin, expecting it now to be back to quiet, but it’s bustling! Tour buses line the access road, people are still lining up. The massive fenced queue systems are empty though, so it’s tapering off.

We were aiming for lunch somewhere close, before heading out to explore. We took our time deciding, partly because it’s actually lunchtime, a weekday and lots of people looking for a quick and comforting plate of food. All the tea restaurants are full.

We end up going to a Japanese restaurant, but with a Western atmosphere and varied menu items, and ordered two meals to share. Sometimes two meals have us all rolling out of there complaining about how full we are. Today was not that day.

After lunch, Joe convinced us we should head back out to the mall at Sha Tin, where we went on New Year’s Day and most stores were closed. Joe and I need pants still, and for some reason, we always end up with new stuff for the kids instead…

This mall is not just one mall. It’s also not just New Town Plaza building I, II and III, but it’s also connected to the Citylink mall, hotels, bus terminals, civic buildings, supermarkets, and oy, my head is spinning. We walk for what seems like forever, and then finally find the shiny and bright mall that we recognize.

The shiny part of the mall houses all the shiny stores. You know, the shiny stores with the shiny wares and the shiny price tags. The shiny stores that we have no business going into, like Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Rolex, Vivienne Westwood, etc. Not exactly the kind of pants we’re looking for!

Good thing we found some cuteness along the way! The Totoro store, or rather the Studio Ghibli store, can make all four of us smile, the girls and I love seeing all the merchandise, and Joe is just relieved that he knows where we’ll be for the next 10 minutes? Or maybe he likes Totoro as well.

After an exhausting walk through SO MUCH MALL, longingly looking outside at the Snoopy play area all drenched in wetness, we’re ready for a snack. We walk and walk and walk some more, looking for the perfect snack, when I finally spot IT. As in Bakehouse. A famous Hong Kong bakery, sometimes with connected dining room, which this one luckily has! There’s no lineup, and we’re invited in with a warning about minimum spend per person.

Bakehouse is famous in part for their sourdough egg tarts, which Joe tested out today. It left him rather underwhelmed, not worthy of the hype, in his opinion. I loved my almond danish, Maylin adored her enormous cinnamon roll with plenty of pecans, and Téa actually liked her scone, which shocked me, I find them way too dry. I would have needed the offered mountain of cream and jam to make it palatable…

We decided to head home after our snack, once we realized we weren’t likely to find our favourite shops in any of the corridors of the New Town Plaza and attached corridors. In fact, we got so turned around that by the time we got to an exterior street level, Joe opened up the Uber app and used a 70% discount he had saved. We paid less to have a personal driver take us all the way from Sha Tin to Chuk Yuen than we would have paid in combined bus tickets…

We get home, ready to have another relaxing evening. Joe puts together a meal of rice, steamed veg and a can of dace. Dace is a canned, salted fish mixed with black beans. It’s a flavour bomb in every bite, and due to it being so very salty, we have it with plenty of white rice and steamed vegetables to dilute the salt.

The night ends with a couple of video calls and the girls play. I blog and Joe works on his latest video. The usual, in other words!