Category: Hong Kong

Total Miles Traveled: 43,699

Hello again, Hong Kong – we’ve missed you, your cosmopolitan flare, and your delicious food.  It’s good to be back!

We were excited when we were invited to my friend’s wedding in Hong Kong over the New Year’s holiday.  Mike and I were dormmates in high school and have kept in touch over the 16 years since we graduated.  SIXTEEN YEARS?!  I’m kind of regretting that I did the math.

Anyway, many of our other high school classmates have also kept in touch and so the wedding became a mini reunion for us.  Some of us hadn’t seen each other in over 10 years! Here’s a photo of all of us Webster boys.  Mike’s the one in the second row, middle.

Happy New Year everyone!  We celebrated with other wedding guests in the IFC building on the Hong Kong island.

As we headed back to our hotel, we could see the remnants of the celebration… like a half-drunk wine bottle left in the subway station.   I’d like to say we were firing it up, but no, it wasn’t ours.  🙂

On New Year’s Day, we celebrated Mike and Erica’s wedding.   The ceremony and reception were exquisite – we were pampered guests.  By the way, check out the videographer with the steady cam in the photo below to the right.   Impressive.

Here we are with the bride and groom, and my cousin Jeff.

The reception had over 300 people in the grand ballroom of the Island Shangri La.  Apparently it was a see and be seen event, because the HK paparazzi showed up to photograph a famous Hong Kong pop star.

Here’s a nice photo of some of us high school classmates.  We came from near and far for the event:  Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Taipei, Beijing, Tokyo, Boston, and New York.

Well, Hong Kong, it was great to see you, but now we must move on because you are quite an expensive city.  Now, we’re headed off to Chiang Mai, Thailand – back to warmer weather.  So, we mailed home all of our cold weather clothes from Beijing/Taipei and retired some others, like my formerly white and now very gray and frayed dri-fit t-shirt that I’d worn every few days over the past 9 months.

Have a look at all of our photos from Hong Kong and stay tuned for our adventures in Chiang Mai.

[flickrslideshow acct_name=”tony-chen” id=”72157625776942772″]

Let’s be honest, food was probably the thing we were most looking forward to in Hong Kong.  The city is a melting pot of different kinds of Asian and western cuisines, some of which isn’t easy to find in the States.

We were fortunate enough to have friends in Hong Kong (thanks Alvin, Mike, Christine, and Erica!) who guided us to great restaurants.   Alvin (pictured above), Lisa’s friend from business school, spent a day showing us the essence of Hong Kong city and took us to City Hall Maxim’s Palace dim sum restaurant.   We owe Alvin a BIG thank you for showing us around!  In fact, he was such a great host, that Lisa was very tempted to pimp him out when 2 Korean tourists approached us as Alvin was explaining the significance of a local landmark.  If ever you find yourself in HK, you should look up Alvin!

But let’s get back to the food… Tasty treats were brought out, cart after cart:

This is pretty cool – a dim sum cart with a built in TV demo’ing how to make barbecued pork bun.  Mmmmm…

Here’s a prawn stir-fry dish from Lei’s Garden in the IFC Mall:

On Mike and Erica’s suggestion, we visited Yung Kee in Lan Kwai Fong for some roasted goose and preserved egg.  We ended up getting much more with a set dinner for 2:

Speaking of Lan Kwai Fong, as part of the beer fest, they had a lot of special promotions, including this massive burger, which was probably mostly for show, but impressive nonetheless.  It has to be at LEAST 5 lbs:

Another thing to try is the egg custard/tart.  This treat is best had hot when the custard is bordering between jelly and gooey:

Funky Fashion

There is definitely a distinct fashion sense in Hong Kong.  The young hipsters seem to prefer 70s style glasses and threads (not yet 80s like in the states), but there are a couple of other standouts.  Here’s cougar fashion in Hong Kong – yes, it attracts a lot of attention and something tells me that’s what she wants:

Here’s the equivalent, but 50 years younger.  Not sure who she’s influenced by, but this girl likes to match her spongy pink high tops with her pink tote.

Fun Photos

Here are some fun photos I took in Hong Kong.   This little girl was having a blast at the Toy Story 3 promotion in the mall:

Here’s a Disney knockoff product we found in the Ladies Market.  “but he hac on outside his pants!!” – what the…?  “hac” probably should be “had”, but the whole thing still doesn’t make sense, does it?

This photo is called “Seeing eye to eye” for obvious reasons…

Here’s Lisa pretending to be Asian.  Not bad, not bad.

I liked this shot of a building in Central:

Last but not least, this was seen in the Temple Street night market – a “Sexy Shrilling Lady”?  Who buys this stuff?!?  and behind that a “Shrilling Dolphin”?  Panda anyone?

Hope you enjoyed the pics.  For all of our Hong Kong photos, check out the slideshow on Flickr:

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/tony-chen/sets/72157624537062572/show/

Total Miles Traveled: 29,002

Ask Lisa what she thinks about Hong Kong.  (Lisa: I love Hong Kong!!)

For those who haven’t been, Hong Kong is a bit like New York but in Asia – it’s a melting pot of people from Asia and the western world.  You can find many different types of cuisine including delicious Asian food, high-end shopping featuring all of the top brands you’ve heard of (and ones you haven’t), nd its super crowded – every square inch of land that can support a building is claimed, and it’s unusual to find a building less than 20 stories tall.  In fact, over the years, Hong Kong has expanded, but not up the steep hillsides it’s built on – it’s expanded in to the water, yes, the water, on artificial (aka reclaimed) land.  No worries about earthquakes here though, there are none.  Phew, right?

To start, take a look at the view from Victoria’s peak, a required (and worthwhile) tourist stop for a visit to Hong Kong.

So when we asked ourselves how do we describe Hong Kong?  We came up with a few words: crowds, consumption, and cuisine.

Maybe it was because we were there on a weekend and everyone was out and about, but there are a TON of people in Hong Kong.   I guess since homes are so small, it just feels good to get out, much like it works in New York. Here’s the crush of people going in and out of the Times Square Building in Causeway Bay.

Here are some shots that give you an idea of how big and how crowded some of the shopping centers were – shop till you drop baby! Just about every brand you know is in every mall. How this is sustainable, I have no idea. Sorry Hong Kong friends, it feels like a bubble just waiting to burst to the lay visitor.

You don’t have to be shopping to find a crowd though. On Sundays in the Central business district, you’ll find crowds of (mostly) Filipino women sitting in groups on the floor anywhere there is shade provided by the concrete jungle. During the week, they help Hong Kong families cook and clean and on the weekends, this is the way they relax.  Below is a photo of women sitting in the middle of what is normally a busy street on a weekday, taking advantage of every inch of shade available and the natural breeze cause by the gap in between the tall buildings.

Fortunately, even though Hong Kong is a crowded city, the public transportation system is awesome, modern and efficient (one of the reasons why Lisa is in love with HK.)  In fact, they have what might be the world’s longest escalator that carries people up the hill in to a residential area called the “Mid Levels”. Streets with bars, restaurants, and stores intersperse each escalator segment which makes for fun exploration.

And if shopping during the day wasn’t enough, there’s the Temple Street night market where you can find knockoff brands like “Praga” and “Goach” and straight-up (bad) counterfeits of D&G and Jimmy Choo.

Then, to grab a drink, you head over to Lan Kwai Fong (pictured below) or SoHo to hang out and mix with the locals as well as ex-pats, of which there are many.  Here’s a beerfest celebration:

Next up, we’ll get to the food and other fun photos — sorry you’re just going to have to wait!

For now, good night from Hong Kong:

And we’re off again!  Today, we’re flying to Hong Kong to begin the second – and longest leg – of our adventure, through Asia.

Here are a couple of pics that we secretly snapped (shh!) upon takeoff from LAX – Cathay Pacific installed a frontal view camera below the plane behind the wheel well.  Neato.

For those of you who are cruising by our travel blog for the first time, welcome!   You can catch up on our whereabouts by diving in and out of some of what we’ve done to date – here are some bookmarks in chronological order :

• Buenos Aires: Part 1
• Southern Patagonia
• Lakes District in Chile and Argentina
• Mendoza and Argentine wines
• Central Chile and Chilean wines
• Salta
• Iguazu
• Buenos Aires: Part 2
• Texas
• San Diego

Now that you’re caught up, here’s what we are planning for the next couple of months.  After Hong Kong, we’ll be exploring Malaysia from the east to the west, starting in Kota Kinabalu on the island of Borneo, then south to north on peninsular Malaysia crossing over in to Thailand.

Most of these travels will be new to us and very different from what we’ve seen so far.  We’ll be relying mostly on English and a bit of Mandarin. It will be hot and humid with loads of mosquitoes, BUT, there will be beautiful beaches and delicious (and odd) food.

Anyway, we welcome you to follow along, send us a note from time to time, or look us up on Skype (tony_d_chen or leastpond).  We’d love to hear what’s going on with you!

Stay tuned to hear about our time in Hong Kong!