Hong Kong Day 3 and 4: Distended bowels and fond farewells

After Macau, I knew (much to my chagrin) that things are going to get worse before it got better. This rather hideous prophecy was fulfilled when my cousin, Dorothy (yes Dorothy) picked us up from Wan Chai. Incidentally, we went to the Wan Chai PC centre where I picked up 2 more microSD cards for my phone, because the ones I had bought on ebay arrived at home, in Sydney, on the same day that I left. That balances out with the fact that Bink's BritRail pass arrived on the day that she left, oh the bitter irony. Anyway, having been picked up in a wonderfull airconned car, it's mid spring in HK meaning that the temp is already climbing its way through the mid 20s and the humidity hit 95% so virtually every particle of dust that you walk past/through, can and will stick to you and there are plenty of those. So anyway, Dorothy took us to Kowloon to eat at a muslim restaurant which was big shit because it featured on a TV special, and celebrities ate there and gave it the thumbs up.

That's something you gotta understand about the hongkies. If your favourite celebrity goes to a restaurant, your brain is automatically wired to do the same thereby fulfilling your fan's duty of following your idol slavishly.

In any case, that meal was massive by my standards now. Also it involved sharing the table with 5 other people, a couple and 3 girls. I gotta say that the meal was damned good, again pics will be forthcoming. Unfortunately, the meal was at 3:30pm after which we went to Hiram district. A coastal suburb well known for being a tourist haunt where there is a whole stretch along the waterfront devoted entirely to seafood restaurants each with an aquarium display out the front, albeit one where you can eat the inhabitants. Tanks filled with mantis prawns, horseshoe crabs (never knew they were edible, confirms that cantonese will work out a way to cook just about anything), cuttlefish, eels, groupers, urchins, tube shells, abalone, crabs, etc etc etc. All of the maitre d's at each restaurant we passed tried to get us to go in an eat, which of course if we had would probably have caused fatal food poisoning, not from bad food, but just from too much food, I'd have had sauces replacing my blood.

Dorothy managed to convince us to go eat some dessert with her at around 5, easily done, all she did was say the word "durian" and I followed like a brainwashed puppy. And as was the case, it was delicious. The only trouble was that at 8 we had dinner at a seafood restaurant in Kowloon with some aunts. Luckily it was seafood and I made it through without exploding. Anyway, somehow I managed not to lumber on the way back to the apartment.


Day 4
The final day of my stay in hong kong started off with some more shopping. Not that I really minded. My stay in HK was really just a readjustment in preparation for my next leg to Europe. I gotta say that I really enjoyed HK, it's strange how much I missed it. I think it has something to do with the fact that previously I was either staying at someone else's place or at a hotel, but this time it was with family and so HK got to feel a little like home I guess. Not to mention that I do find HK girls strangely appealing. Some guys like girls with serious curves and a massive rack. Personally I really like the slight willowy frames of HK girls, not to mention that they're a whole lot less annoying than mainlanders.

But anyway. towards the end of the afternoon, after much shopping as well as lunch at Spaghetti House. I must recommend this place. If you're craving something western, this is a damned good place for it. Steak is seriously expensive in HK because it is ALL imported, primarily from australia, which is quite simply the best there is. British beef, well all I have to say is mad cows. American beef, if you can call it that, is so sodden in steroids that the Health Department had to issue a warning that expectant mothers should not eat any significant quantities of it because of potential effects on the foetus. At the end of the night was another dinner, this time with Dorothy, her sister Eva and their parents who just returned from Singapore. They're a delightful family to hang around with. In a way, they're like extra sisters. The dinner was at one of the renowned BBQ geese joints in HK. Damned fine meal quite promptly followed by being dropped off at a nearby bus stop for the shuttle to the airport for a midnight flight to the UK.

This is where things started to go sour.

First off, the take off time was pushed back because another plane was delayed by a half hour and there were passengers from that flight that were joining my flight. So while we waited, Bink and I started up a game of scrabble, great time filler that. Then the next load of bad news arrived. The chinese government had decided that due to severe weather, they would close their airspace. All of it. So we ended up stuck at the terminal until 1:40 an hour later than initially scheduled. At least it was in one of the newer Cathay 747s which had those newfangled seat shells where the seat within would slide up and down without the whole seat moving. Excellent idea I must say; I had plenty of leg room, but that didn't stop my sciatica acting up, damned legs.
Following a 12 hour flight, with less than 6hours sleep, 3 and a bit movies (Cloverfield, Rambo, the Golden Companss and most of Aliens) the plane landed in the realm of the poms. That will be continued next time...