24 December, 2018
Hong Kong, China

Finally over jet lag, this was a Good Day.

Having my bakery good from the previous day (closing the loop on foreshadowing) and having discovered the water cooler in the common area of my hotel has hot water, and subsequently purchased instant coffee, breakfast was had in my room.  Dribbling crumbs on the bed, as there is nowhere else to sit.  

I followed this up by walking around the block to Pacific Coffee, a largish place where one can get a good cup of coffee and sit casually in a quiet place, relaxing.  This sort of place is uncommon here.

Then off to Hong Kong Island.  I was going to head out the Museum of Coastal Defense, but it seemed like a long walk after a long MTR ride, so changed my mind and went to the Hong Kong Maritime Museum, instead.  This was a wonderful place.  It started with the history of trade with the U.S. and moved on through various periods up to the modern age of container ship and automated port facilities.  Very nice and I spent almost three hours there.

Early in the exhibits they had a painting of King George III.

I found this amusing due to the inscription.

They also had a ship’s medicine chest.

The contents for which curiously contained nothing even remotely medicinal.

On the way to the museum I passed this by, then doubled back.  A monument to Chinese Comfort Women and a plea for an apology from Japan.  Which, it would seem, happened in 1994.

Leaving there late in the morning I decided to go back to the MTR and head for Wan Chai to try to pick up a couple of my misses from yesterday.  There is a rather huge series of elevated and covered walkways down near the harbor, all at the second floor level, that sort of weave in, around, and through buildings.  I followed one into a mall to find a large rather high-end grocery store.  I love grocery stores in other countries as they are a small window on the culture.  Maybe not so much this one, which had about ten times as many caucasian expats as anywhere else I’ve seen here, but it was fun to walk around, anyway.

One of my fun pastimes here is searching for the cheapest, oddest, hopefully nutritionally void, and ideally curiously gross snacks I can find.  Two neighbors are keeping an eye on my house and I intend to bring them back a gift bag of such stuff as a thank you.  I spotted some mini hot cheese fish rolls that don’t need refrigeration and simply had to buy them.  As I stood in line and listened to the eighth consecutive Christmas carol since entering the store I nearly dropped what I had and fled.  Call me a Scrooge, but the only thing worse than non-stop incessant Christmas carols in the U.S. is non-stop incessant Christmas carols in a place like Hong Kong.  Note to marketers and retailers:  YOU DON’T HAVE TO MAKE CHRISTMAS CAROLS THE *ONLY* MUSIC YOU PLAY IN THE PRE-CHRISTMAS PERIOD.  Rather than make me spend more, it likely makes me avoid your store and thus spend less.  Oy.

 

Next I hopped the MTR back to Wan Chai where I hope to pick up on a couple of misses from yesterday.  One was an eatery called Yau Wun Roast Meat.  How can you go wrong eating at a place with a name like that?  It had been closed when I went by yesterday.  It was 12:30 on a weekday and the usual thronging crowds were larger than ever.  Though some restaurants were empty, I walked by some that had a line of 30-40 people waiting to get in.

Forgive me for showing this many photos of what seems like a boring meal, but the whole experience was so comical I think it worth it.

There was a line of about ten people, so I queued up.  Almost immediately a diminutive woman came charging out, pointed at me and said “One?”  I hesitated and she said, louder, “One?”  Yes.  “Come!”  Then pointing in the door, “Go!  Back.  Left.”  She left no room for disobedience, so I squeezed my way to the back of this tiny, jam-packed place where I was seated at a tiny table with three others.  Less than 30 seconds later a man took my order.  There were no menus, and this wasn’t the kind of place to have a lengthy discussion with your waiter about the various possible things they offered, so I ordered roast pork, rice, and a Coke. Less than 60 seconds later I had my food.  I later saw one of my table-mates had order some steamed vegetable side dish (bok choy maybe?) that looked good and would have made my plate look a little less bland, but I didn’t imagine you got do-overs here.   The food was delicious.

The comical thing was that we were packed in there so tight that my right arm was hard against the wall and I could barely move it to operate  chopsticks.  I got to laughing so hard I nearly choked on my food.  Less than ten minutes from entering, I was leaving.

One curious thing I noticed is that space is so tight that they have nowhere to store supplies.  A minivan parked immediately in front served as their pantry.

Next up was a return to the stinky tofu place.  Which was closed.  Double Stinky Tofu fail!  I don’t know if he is closed for the holiday week or what, but this is the only place I know of here where one can get stinky tofu which is, in any case, apparently more popular as an oddity for tourists than it is with locals.  I’m coming back later in the week.  I’m gettin’ me some stinky tofu!

From there back to Central on the MTR and I found the Central-Mid Levels Escalator.  This is really a very cool solution to an urban planning problem.  The area immediately adjacent to the harbor is flat, but the island very quickly crawls up steep slopes.  The skyscrapers continue, to be sure, but most of the roads run east-west along the contours, the terrain making it difficult to create north-south roads.  So how do you get people from Central to the Mid-Levels?  You build a series of escalators, of course!

I took a time-lapsed video of the excursion up, but it failed to upload overnight.  Those dying to watch a 5-minute video of me climb stairs and ride escalators will have to wait upon my return to the U.S. and faster Internet.

So, here’s the thing:  If you ride a one-way series of escalators up for 20 minutes you then have to walk back down (or wait for the next morning, when they run the other way.)   That’s a lot of down.  I had noticed some really nice small restaurants on the way up, but was paying more attention to my camera.  On the way down I spotted a bar that served nothing but Belgian beer.  It was mid-afternoon, I was sweaty, tired, and my favorite beers in the world are Belgian Trappist Ales.  The bartender dude told me they didn’t open until 3.  It was 2:48, so I wandered up the street and found one after another really nice restaurants.  This was clearly an upscale neighborhood.  Within a single block I found:

Then, sadly, at the end of the block:

What I had discovered, without knowing it at the time, was Soho.  All those places (except 7-11) had wonderful menus, though I nearly choked at the average of about $50 for mains.

Retreating to my Belgian beer pub…

I relaxed with a Westmalte Belgian duppel.  It was excellent, as one would hope it would be at almost $15 with tip.

I beat a retreat back down the hill to Central and hopped the MTR back to Tsim Sha Tsui and my hotel where I edited a video that later failed to upload.  Oh, well.

Dinner was another interesting dining experience.  A slightly upscale (meaning not street food) place sporting a photo of Bruce Lee eating there sometime in the 70s.  A large menu, I narrowed it down to two choices and attempted to ask my server, who apparently spoke zero English, which one she recommended.  I pointed at one and she said “Yes.”  Or maybe this one (pointing at the other)?  “Yes.”  Okay, I said, realizing this wasn’t going to work, and pointed back at the first.  “Yes.”  As she left I had a vague feeling I was missing something and was soon proved correct when I was very promptly served both dishes.

Could have been worse.  The food was good and both dishes with a Tsingtao was only about $30.