Suckling Pig Barbecue

A few weeks back, Liz, Luke, and I went out for lunch down in Nanping (Southern Zhuhai) with our Chinese friend Josh. We went to a restaurant that specializes in whole roasted suckling pigs. Fifteen-day-old suckling pigs. Two weeks. Half a month. 1/26th of a year old. Less than the time it takes to play a best of seven series in basketball. Innocence has never tasted so delicious.

First, they take said pig (post butchering) and put it on giant fork. Kind of a pitchfork minus the inner tines. Then, they slowly roast the "skewer" by hand over an open charcoal pit.







After cooking, the pig is then sectioned up, put on a platter, and served with sugar and a sweet Chinese barbecue sauce. There wasn't a whole lot of meat on the bones, so we mostly jut ate the skin and a little of the fatty muscle layer on the outside. If this all sounds horrible - killing a baby pig, cooking it splayed over and open flame, and then eating only its skin - then I don't know what to tell you. It was one of the most delicious meals I've had in China. For my birthday last winter (not pictured here, but over on Rachel's blog), I had a whole lamb cooked up at a local Western Chinese restaurant and served to me and 15 friends. I like eating whole animals.

Such as this roasted chicken, which was also at baby pig lunch.



We also ate a range non-whole animal courses, with the lotus root being the highlight.


Plates, from bottom, clockwise: flatbread; wilted greens; lotus root; and a potato, celery, and wood ear mushroom dish.

The restaurant was a friendly, open air sort of establishment...



with a nice view of the city...

Leavin' on that Midnight Train to Yangshuo

We had a few days off in the beginning of May, so we decided to take a trip. Like Gladys Knight said, Zhuhai became too much for the Dan (and Liz), so we went back on a train (bus) to a simpler place and time. We went on that midnight bus to Yangshuo. Photos come at the end of the post.

Yangshuo is a small but well known county capital in Guangxi Province, located immediately to our west. We caught a sleeper bus out of Gongbei that left at about 7pm and arrived about 12 hours later. This variety of sleeper bus was new to me: rather than having little cubicle beds lining the sides, there were three rows of two-foot bunkbeds with no storage space. Of course one can safely put their possessions in the luggage compartment under the bus; however, I stupidly didn't realize how little space we would have at out seats and brought my huge shoulder bag (which doubles as my camera bag), big water bottle, and jacket. The bed was already about six inches too short, so I ended up in the fetal position, spooning my bag and water bottle all damn night.

Yangshuo is a lovely little town (no skyscrapers) set next to the Li River, surrounded by verdant mountains and limestone karsts. It was a little overrun with both foreign and Chinese tourists, so we tended to spend most non-eating and sleeping time outside of the city. Local food was fantastic: beer fish (river fish braised in beer with tomatoes, green onions, and garlic), spicy snails (cooked in soy sauce, leeks, and hot peppers), and Guilin noodles (rice noodles in a salty broth with various pickled vegetables, greens and hot sauce).

We stayed our first few nights in the Yangshuo Xijie Youth Hostel, thankfully located a good distance from overcrowded, loud Xijie Street but still within easy walking distance. YXYH was adequate, safe, and reasonably priced, although the hostel owner (who speaks pretty good English) was constantly trying to sell us trips and tickets. I always got the feeling he was angling to take advantage of us, coming into our room at one point half-drunk and trying to convince us to go to the Longsheng rice terraces. It was annoying, so we avoided him as much as possible. If your Chinese is adequate, you are in general better off going someplace on your own and negotiating your way into sights and onto buses, rather than letting some booking agent or hotel owner do it for you.

We were pretty wiped out on our first day after the bus-a-thon, so we booked a trip through our hostel to take a bamboo raft up the Li River (I was tired so I didn't take my own advice). The Li River is perhaps most famous for being on the back of the 20 RMB note. It was also overrun with tourists, but we were tired and not looking for anything too strenuous. The Li River rafting seems like something one must do when they go to Yangshuo, thus I think we were happy to do it first and get it over with. The village from which the rafts leave, Xingping, was also a cool old place to walk around in for a little bit.

On our second day, we made our way north of the city to Shi Tou Cheng (a.k.a. shitoucheng, the Old Stone Village) to see the countryside, some very old hamlets, and some ancient Chinese stone gates. After busing up to Putao Town, we arranged for a couple of motorcycle taxis to bring us up into the mountains where we were fortunate to meet a man who gave us a two-hour hiking tour of the area for 100 RMB. Our guide - an elderly teacher at the village school - spoke no English. He was very patient however, talking very slowly and writing down the names of the sights in Chinese so that we could follow along as best we could. This hike, enencumbered by other tourists, was without a doubt one of the highlights of not only our trip, but my time in China as well. Pastoral orchards and rice paddies set against the craggy, towering karsts; friendly villagers and their not so friendly dogs; and the remoteness of the place, practically untouched by time; near perfect weather. I was so satisfied that I wrote down a little recommendation note in English for our guide that he could show to any other foreigners who came his way.

Day three involved renting bikes and, once again, escaping the throngs of tourists. At first we biked along the Yulong River's eastern side. After an hour or so, we forded the river (with bikes) via a hired bamboo raft (shades of Oregon Trail...no joke, we ran into some other bikers who chose to drag their bikes across the river themselves, and probably ended up getting typhoid). This was when this bike trip really came into its own: once again, there was almost no one else around; the weather was beautiful; the karsts, mountains, and lush valley were radiant; and there were lots of birds for Liz. We biked along the Yulong for quite a while, eventually crossing back to the river's east bank and making it into Baisha Town for a lunch of delicious Guilin noodles at a corner restaurant. After lunch, we backtracked to the Yulong River Bridge – an old-to-ancient arching bridge that offered a wonderful panoramic view of the Yulong River Valley. Following that, the noodles started to sit on us so we made our way back to Baisha and then home via the main road.

The next morning (day four, a Monday), we left our hostel in Yangshuo and went to the Farmer’s Holiday Inn. The FHI in located about halfway between Moon Hill and the Big Banyan Tree, pretty well off the main road and situated, as the name suggests, on a farm. This place was wonderful. I can’t recommend it highly enough. The proprietor was a lovely woman (with great English). She didn’t try to sell us anything, was very helpful and funny, and even showed us how to get into one of the local sights without having to pay an entrance fee (shhhhh…). I wish we had stayed at the FHI for our entire trip, rather than in stupid Yangshuo town. Also, their food was delicious and very fresh.

After checking in, we walked over to Moon Hill, a mountain famous for having a giant hole all the way through it. We were smart to wait until after the holiday weekend, because Moon Hill was not at all crowded (though it was very hot). We were accompanied by two oldish ladies who talked to us in broken English (and we to them in broken Chinese), fanned us when we got overheated, and offered to sell us wickedly overpriced water once we got to the top. It was a really beautiful hike; my biggest problem was that rather than hiking up a nice dirt trail, the majority of the hike is on the granite steps that are so customary in Chinese parks. I guess it was easier coming back down. The peak offered some really stunning views of the surrounding area.

After Moon Hill, we looped back around and saw the Big Banyan Tree. It was supposedly 2,000 years old. It was supposedly very interesting. It was actually very lame and touristy.

Following that, we crossed the road and checked out the Jianshan temple, reputedly the oldest Buddhist temple in Guangxi. It was fine, if a little unremarkable. One day I’ll learn that huge Buddhist Monasteries are cool and that small Buddhist Temples are boring (at least for me).

On our fifth and final day, we rented bikes through the FHI and decided we were going to try and make it all the way to Fuli Town, a picturesque village located to the east of Yangshuo. It was hot. Really hot. And we got lost. Really lost. We were using this cutesy hand-drawn map we got in Yangshuo, and it was less accurate than a drunk in the men’s room at Fenway. Roads, towns, and villages weren’t in the right places. None of the distances were right. Crucial landmarks were either in the wrong places or completely non-existent. Lingnan Art Publishing House did a real shoddy job on this map.

Nonetheless, it was still a very enjoyable day. Most of it was spent riding around in rice paddies or stopping to ask for directions (a challenge unto itself, since most of the locals spoke a heavily-accented Mandarin or a local dialect unintelligible to me). Finally, we got to the southern arm of the Li River exhausted, and decided that we should just turn around and go back to the FHI, lest we miss our midnight bus. Our midnight bus to Zhuhai.



Gonna board…gonna board…

The Big Thailand Post

Salinger strikes again after months of inactivity. What can I say? Both my father and Liz's mother asked where the hell my blog had gone, and my father even said something about how he has to follow my life via Rachel Ready. Incidentally, some of the Thailand photos over there were taken by yours truly (passive voice intended), but I leave it to you to sort out which ones. My photos are all in a slide show at the end of this post.

Our two-week trip went as follows: flight out of Macau to Phuket (stopover/customs in Bangkok). Spent a few days in a Swede-infested beach community in Phuket before grabbing a bus over to Krabi Town. Stayed in Krabi Town for a night, then took a boat to lovely Ko Lanta ("Koh" means island in Thai). Crashed at two different beaches on the western and southern coasts of Ko Lanta, then took a bus back up to Krabi and, from there, a car up into a somewhat mountainous, more forested, non-beachy, and less-Swedish area called Phanom Bencha. Enjoyed Phanom Bencha for a night, then back down to Krabi where we booked a bus-then-boat trip across the straight to Surat Thani City on the east coast, and on to Ko Phan-nga. We tried two different places in Phan-nga before ferrying back to Surat Thani for our flight home. As an overview for people that don't know me but happen to stumble across this entry: I and my two traveling companions (Liz and Rachel) are all somewhat experienced travelers, though none of us had been to Thailand or Southeast Asia before (Liz and I currently live in China); we were traveling on a shoestring in February (second most expensive time of year in Thailand, just after peak season); we were not interested in party hotspots or in being overly-backpacker (despite the fact we all had backpacks); we were not looking for anything too spiritual or back-to-nature; we sought out more relaxed places instead of areas known for transvestites and psychedelic drugs; we never booked anything more than a day or two in advance, save for our first hotel in Phuket; and we prefer eating good, authentic, and spicy Thai food.

First, Phuket Island (pronounced "poo-ket"). Phuket Island is roughly the size of Singapore, and is perhaps the original Thai beach resort destination. I found it to be overdeveloped, expensive, and full of Swedish people. Personally I wanted to leave from the moment we got there, but in retrospect it was probably a pretty good way to start the whole trip: we got Mexican food; we sat on a really nice, somewhat crowded beach (Hat Kata...FYI, "Hat" means beach in Thai) for about four hours; and the din of tour buses and unhappy Swedish children made me appreciate every other, better place we visited. Initially we didn't want to go to Phuket, but friends of ours gave us the impression that going to Southern Thailand without going to Phuket would be like going to Fenway and not singing "Sweet Caroline" - it's just something that you've got to do, no matter how kitschy and overdone you find the experience.

We went immediately from Phuket airport via minibus (note: take a taxi instead - it's worth it unless you're traveling alone, and probably WAY faster) to northern Hat Kata, where we had booked a room at a place called Fantasy Hill Bungalow. The internet reviews said this place was nice, though there were complaints that it was at the top of an epic hill and that you might need a sherpa and some oxygen containers to make the ascent. Okay, I am exaggerating about the complaints, but let me say that this place was FINE. The hill took about 30 seconds to walk up and was not very steep. FHB felt off the main road (in a good way); the proprietor was nice; the rooms were clean and affordable; and the breakfasts were completely adequate. My only minor complaint is that it is a bit of a slog to get to the beach, but then again so is everything in Kata besides Club Med.

After some discussion, we decided the best course of action was to stay in Hat Kata for two nights and then leave for the greener pastures of nearby Krabi province. We caught a songthaew (basically a covered pickup truck with benches on the sides) to the Phuket Town bus station, and from there easily got a bus over to Krabi Town. Lonely Planet and other guide books crap all over Krabi Town, essentially saying that you shouldn't spend any time there unless you are forced to do so. Well, go to hell Lonely Planet and other guide books - I really liked the place. Sure, it lacks charm and is sort of a small, non-descript stop-over town, but it has some really redeeming qualities: a great, cheap used bookstore (located downtown, on the street that runs along the river/bay); a cheap, clean, and VERY affordable hotel located next to said bookstore; a really cool night market that pops up on the weekends; and, speaking as a denizen of barbecue (both American and Asian), Krabi has a fantastic outdoor barbecue at night, right on the water next to one of the ports. Plus, I got up really early in the morning (for some unknown reason), went for a walk, and saw a family of rabble-rousing monkeys that appeared to live in or around the roof of a house near the aforementioned barbecue. MONKEYS! Yup, I got everything I could have hoped for out of Krabi Town.

After booking our ferry tickets the night we arrived in Krabi Town, we hopped on a very crowded boat destined for Ko Lanta (technically called Ko Lanta Yai, the more popular and southernmost of the two Ko Lantas). The boat, about the size of a double-decker bus, was somewhat pleasant. It was a very nice day and the crew let the passengers splay out on the uncovered deck and watch the Islets, fishing junks, and long boats go by. Unfortunately the boat was so stuffed with people that it was near impossible to get our bags once the boat docked in Saladan, but what is a minor inconvenience when you're on your way to miles and miles (kilometers and kilometers) of pristine beaches?

For our first night, we booked a couple bungalows at the Kantiang Bay Beach Resort, located (appropriately enough) in Kantiang Bay. The resort (basically a handful of adequate bamboo bungalows, priced around 700THB/night, and handsome concrete cottages, all right on or very close to the water) and Kantiang Bay in general were nice, quiet, and clean, except that the three of us agreed that perhaps we had overshot the "relaxed" beach target and had found a place that was downright sleepy. The beach itself was nice but not spectacular (Thailand has high standards), the place had a sort of overly-isolated feel, and the restaurant options were severely limited. In fact, we ate at this place (it had some sort of whimsical, seafaring name, like the Drunken Sailor or Jolly Skipper) which has something that I, a man that stands at six-feet-four-inches tall, loathe: cute seating arrangements. In addition to normal tables and chairs (which were all full when we arrived, and in a less appealing part of the restaurant), they have small, low tables with beanbags instead of chairs, or small, low tables with low-hanging chairs fastened by ropes to the ceiling. This adorable crap drives me bananas. How the hell am I supposed to make this work? How the hell am I supposed to drink one of their overpriced beers and eat one of their admittedly tasty burgers when I don't know where to put my freakishly long legs? They should have yoga lessons on the appetizers menu. I ended up waiting for the people next to us to leave so I could steal a beanbag to stack on top of my beanbag, thereby allowing me to sit in a reasonable position at a reasonable height with my reasonable plate of reasonable western food on my reasonable lap. All this reasonableness aside, we left the next day and went to my favorite place on the trip: Ao Phra Ae, a.k.a. Long Beach.

We arranged for a songthaew to drop us off next to the access road for Long Beach, then hoofed it up the beach until we found a place that struck our fancy. I can't recall the name of the place, but it - like many other beachfront resorts - had mixture of traditional-looking, two-person bamboo huts, as well as the more redoubtable yet spacious, modern concrete affairs. We went for the concrete because there were three of us and it made more fiscal, groupthink sense to band together.

I have nothing but positive things to say about Ko Lanta's Long Beach: the beach was gorgeous (; there were a lot of people around but never enough to make the place feel crowded; and it wasn't too expensive. The food was sort of a mixed bag...our favorite place was called The Funky Fish (I think), which was right on the water, served good Thai and western food, and made good drinks. We had everything there, from pizza, breakfast, and buckets of liquor to one of the spiciest Thai curries I'd ever had. We also had a really awful meal at another place, but why dwell on the negative?

The three of us decided to take an all-day snorkeling trip, chartered through one of the travel agencies on Long Beach. Side note on Thai travel agencies: in my limited experience, the travel agencies all tend to be about the same, selling the same trips for comparable prices while trying to gouge you into buying something more expensive. As far as I know, most of them aren't trying to straight-up swindle you. The trips are real, the tickets are real, and the prices they quote you are probably fair. And by fair, I mean to say that they won't try to charge you more than the next travel agency right down the street. My advice is to shop around when you first arrive in a given town, pick a place run by someone who at least seems nice, and then to go back to that same place for bike rentals, trips, bus tickets, etc. As with anywhere, the promise of future exchanges of money for goods and services tends to keep things both amicable and on the level.

Anyway, back to the snorkeling. I can't recall the price for the trip, but something in the neighborhood of $20 seems to ring a bell. We chose to go for the cheaper "slowboat" snorkeling trip; however, because there were not too many folks going snorkeling, the company chose to take everyone out on the speedboat. This was good because we would get to visit more dive spots, but bad because the boat would be more crowded. The speedboat was also being used to ferry people between different island resorts, so when we initially got on the boat with a bunch of snorkeling gear, there were a bunch of upset-looking Swedish families, angry that their transport was delayed. I was angry that they had so much stuff with them and took all the good seats, so let's call it even.

While snorkeling we saw all kinds of fish, coral reefs (shouldn't the plural be coral reeves?), bats living in small caves in nearby karsts, and lots of lovely scenery.

After a day of snorkeling, we decided to get away from the beach (begone with you, damned pristine beach!) and go up to a cool park area called Phanom Bencha. We stayed at the Phanom Bencha Mountain Resort, which advertised a beautiful, more secluded setting, fewer tourists, delicious food, and guided tours. I'm pleased to report that they followed through on all accounts except for the guided tour: when we arrived, we told them we wanted a tour the following morning. The evening prior at dinner we met our tour guide, who also happened to work at the resort restaurant. As was our habit during our trip, we had a few drinks and called it a night early; our guide was still up carousing with who I think must be the resort's owners (some foreigners to whom I did not speak). The next morning, we went down to meet our guide and were told he had a family emergency and had left early in the morning. Maybe he did. Maybe someone was actually sick. To me, the whole thing seemed fishy, but what can you say when they tell you there was a family emergency?

We decided to go hiking in the jungle on our own, in an area in the mountains behind the resort. It was very beautiful and hot. Unfortunately Liz and I had already hiked around on some of the paths the night before (we saw a trained monkey retrieving some sort of fruit for his owners!) and Rachel realized that she wasn't that into hiking; therefore, since we did not know where we were going, we hiked for about an hour, came back, packed up, and got the hell out of there.

Now, I don't want to undersell Phanom Bencha Mountain Resort, because it is really beautiful, quiet, and mostly devoid of tourists. We also really like the small but refreshing stream-fed pool, with its stunning views of the forest and mountains. However, I want to make one thing very clear to anyone who stumbles across this blog looking for a review of the place: it is not even remotely close to Phanom Bencha Park. There is at least one giant mountain between PBMR and the park. A guy at the resort told us it was at a four-hour hike to even get to the park. Your options for accessing the park are to either arrange for a car to drive you there and back (which I think would have cost in the neighborhood of 800 THB) or rent motorbikes. Those extra fees, added onto the park entrance fee, the price of the resort (1300 THB for a four-person bungalow - much more expensive than your cheapo beach accommodation), possibly hiring a guide, and the cost of getting yourself all the way out to PBMR in the first place make this a somewhat pricey excursion. For us, I think it was very underwhelming, though that was due in large part to the somewhat shady lack of an available tour guide. I will always remember the Phanom Bencha area as a beautiful, unsullied setting surrounded by rubber trees, and will try to forget about how disappointing the resort was.

We went directly to the Krabi Town bus station, said goodbye to the Andaman coast, and booked a bus-ferry package across the straight and out to Ko Phangan, an island in the Gulf of Thailand best known for the Full Moon Party (more on that in a bit). The first bus was pretty quick and painless, unless your name happened to be Rachel. We got to Surat Thani, had to do some frantic bus-changing on the side of a busy road, and not-so-promply drove for another 45 minutes to a port south of Surat Thani. Finally, we were ready to get on the boat, along with about 1,000 Australians, United Kingdomers (?), and Frathouse kids who were jacked, pumped, and stoked to take a bunch of hallucinogens and go the Full Moon Party. We had heard of the Full Moon Party at Hat Rin: go, take something that will make you see elves and wizards, dance to drum and base until 6am, and try not to get hit in the face by someone spinning fire or shooting off bottle rockets. Fortunately for us, we had all been to Renn Fayre before and didn't feel the need to put ourselves into an altered state.

All 1,003 of us plodded onto the massive ferry like cattle being led to the slaughter. The ferry was also mostly quick and painless, save for our possibly drunk ferry captain not being able to dock the boat in the slip for about 20 minutes. After disembarking, Rachel arranged for transport to a decent beachside resort on the Northwestern portion of the island, a.k.a. as far away as possible from the Full Moon Party. I don't recall much about the this resort, except for the following: we met some nice travellers from Ireland and ended up playing King's Cup with them until the wee hours; we saw a monkey retrieving coconuts from up in a tree, and then opened one of said coconuts and drink the sweet juice within; and we relaxed on the beach and did nothing.

We left after two nights and went to Bottle Beach (a.k.a. Hat Khuad) on the island's northern coast. It was beautiful, secluded, and there was one restaurant right on the beach that we went to every day. As Bottle Beach was our last beach stop before leaving Thailand, we didn't do much: lounged around the pool and on the beach one day; went to the closest port city and had a garlic fish (amazing) another. All in all, it was amazing. I think it was Liz's favorite beach, and my second favorite behind Long Beach on Ko Lanta.



Note: this post was written over the course of an embarrassing number of months. Liz's computer died and we were sharing, making the whole blogging thing very difficult. I apologize if the end (or any other part) seems totally tacked on.

Martyr's Mausoleum

Went with Rachel and Liz up to Martyr's Mausoleum, which, like seemingly everything in Zhuhai (or so says Rachel), is in our neighborhood near the Jusco.

Despite it being just up the street, Liz and I hadn't actually been there before. It wasn't amazing, but it was clean, green, perched atop a short hill, free, and had a fair amount of birds.

Thailand and Updike

Firstly, Liz, Rachel, and I will be leaving for Thailand on Friday and will come back a couple weeks later. No idea if I'll have internet access, or the inclination to write anything while staying in what is reputedly the most beautiful country in the world. Pictures and stories will abound upon our safe return.

Finally, John Updike passed away yesterday. I was never a huge Updike fan; nothing against the man and his work, but I just haven't gotten around to reading him yet. However, his October 1960 New Yorker essay "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu" - which covers Ted Williams' final game at Fenway Park and, in a roundabout way, Williams' career - left a lasting impression on me after I first read it some 10 years ago. The opening paragraph gives the quintessential and oft-repeated portrait of Fenway Park; the terse, perfect, and famous line, "Gods do not answer letters," could serve as a subheader on a Williams biography; but perhaps my favorite section, one that I considered during the that magical 2004 postseason run, is obviously about something much more than baseball:

...there will always lurk, around a corner in a pocket of our knowledge of the odds, an indefensible hope, and this was one of the times, which you now and then find in sports, when a density of expectation hangs in the air and plucks an event out of the future.

A weekend in Hong Kong

Liz and I headed to Hong Kong last weekend to meet up with some friends. We crashed in a hostel (cheap!) in bustling Causeway Bay (not cheap!), and used that as a jumping off point to explore Hong Kong Island and southern Kowloon. We took the ferry from Jiuzhou Port in Zhuhai (165 RMB each way; about an hour and a quarter in travel time) into Central HK, checked into our hostel, and we were off!

First thing: we had some delicious street food. I didn't snap a photo, but I seem to remember that it was some sort soup or curry or something. Tasty, but not altogether memorable for reasons that shall soon become apparent (many other good meals).

After that, the two of us, along with two friends recently of Portland/Shanghai, hopped on the incredibly convenient HK Metro (a.k.a. the MTR) and went north to the Kowloon flower and bird markets. The flower market is located on the sidewalk of a narrow street. Locals and tourists stand shoulder to shoulder with vendors. There were lots of floral and fruit (fructal?) arrangements for Chinese New Year. I don't know much about flowers, and usually things like this would have me bored to tears; however, the slightly exotic flavor (flavour!) of the place combined with the frenetic back and forth of Kowloon completely offset my total lack of interest in flowers. Also, flowers are easy to photograph because they don't move and are very colorful.

Next, we went to the bird market, which is at the end of the flower market street. If you know Liz, you know she was thrilled to go here. A few days before we went to HK, she was coyly saying things like "will we have time to go to Kowloon?" and "don't you think Kowloon would be cool?" I didn't know about the bird market until one of our friends mentioned it; I replied, "hey, Liz, I bet you'd like that!" Her reply: "Dan, why do you think I wanted to go to Kowloon!"

In any case, the bird market sells pet birds of all shapes, sizes, and colors (colours!). There are ornate bamboo cages everywhere. There are also tons of wild native birds hanging out and eating free bird seed. Liz was very excited. I joked that she would have to take a nap afterwards to settle her down.



Then we took the ultra-convenient airport tram ($100 HKD) out to meet Rachel. She was in surprisingly good shape, after sitting in planes/airports for something like 60 hours. We had Burger King (first fast food in five months), headed back to HK island, and met up with some folks for hotpot on the streets (lots of seafood!).

On Sunday, we got up a little late and went into Central/SoHo for Mexican food. Oh my god, I missed Mexican food. It was stupid-expensive but delicious. SoHo is a very interesting neighborhood; it's very westernish and touristy, and has a long system of convenient outdoor escalators known as the Mid-level Escalators.

After brunch, we headed over to check out the zoo, botanical garden, and aviary at Hong Kong park. I don't take pictures at zoos (or aviaries) because they never come out. The bars always throw the focus of the camera off; besides, would you really want to look at a picture taken by a tourist of a South American lemur living in a cage in Hong Kong? No. You can find better pictures of that selfsame animal on the internet. Suffice it to say that the entire complex at Hong Kong park was excellent, free, and worth the trip.

We then sort of wandered around the bustling financial district and successfully avoided getting hit by the double-decker trams. The Financial District has everything you'd expect in any of the world's great cities: expensive cars, skyscrapers festooned with bank logos, and high end stores such as Louis Vuitton, Armani, Bvlgari, etc. There's not really a lot to see, although personally I did get a kick out of standing in the heart of the fourth largest financial center (centre!) in the world. I did NOT get a kick out of a searched-for English language bookstore being closed.

We left HK island via metro and went north to the Temple Street night market. It was a little early, so we strolled around, looked at the street's namesake Buddhist Temple (which was mostly closed), and ate more street food. I'll just say right now that we ate every three hours on Sunday night and that I personally did not take any photos on my camera of anything except the last late-night meal. Perhaps Rachel or Liz took some photos that I will be able to post later. In any case, here is what I recall about those three meals, in order: first meal (street food in Kowloon) was some boiled crab, tofu braised in soy sauce, small clams in soy sauce (my favorite), fried wontons, and Skol, the nationless beer. Second meal (street food, also in Kowloon) had some sort of beef noodles, really interesting egg rolls (outsides had a fried fishnet look to them), and something else that I can't recall. Third and final meal (at a restaurant in Causeway Bay) was sharkball noodle soup and a plate of crispy fried dumplings. In between eating, we checked out the night market, talked with some locals, and went up to Lan Kwai Fong for a moderate amount of expensive revelry. All in all, it was a fun, contained evening.

Monday morning we got up, checked out of our hostel, and had breakfast congee at a local spot. The congee was thicker than I'm used to, but still the same, with century egg, scallions, and shredded pork. Delicious, if unremarkable. We then walked to Victoria Park, which is west of Causeway Bay. More of a community oriented space than Hong Kong Park, Victoria Park has soccer fields, open gardens, and even a pool where people can launch model boats! As in every park in China, there were older people doing freestyle Tai Chi.

We then got on the metro and headed up to the Peak Tram base station. The Peak Tram is a funicular railway that runs up to the Peak, a.k.a. Victoria Peak. The Peak looms over Hong Kong island, and gives some absolutely spectacular views on clear days. Of course, truly clear days are few and far between in southern Asia, so we would have to settle for mostly clear with a thin veneer of haze. The Peak Tram is bloody steep; in one of my photos, I (poorly) tried to show level ground in contrast to the 27 degree gradient of the railway tracks. Good lord was it steep.

Ten minutes later, we were at the top, and were treated to some really stunning daytime views of the Hong Kong skyline. Just beautiful. The biggest downside to the Peak is the hideous Peak Tower. This U-shaped monstrosity - home to the culturally enriching Madame Tussaud's Hong Kong - is supposed to be reminiscent of a wok. To me, it was reminiscent of an air control tower ("let's rack 'em, stack 'em, and pack 'em!"). Awful. Apparently you could pay an extra $15 HKD to go on top of this odious structure for an even better view, but I chose to save my money...which I think worked out just fine!

Our final act of Hong Konging was to go back to the mid-level escalator area and eat lunch at a New York style deli. It was transcendent. Rachel got pastrami, and Liz and I went half and half on a Rueben and an Italian sandwich. There were onion rings as well. This may seem trivial to you, but I cannot get anything approaching this in Zhuhai, so I was quite pleased.



We left Hong Kong via the Kowloon ferry terminal because they had a 5:30pm ferry. The entire travelling process was a snap. Simply put: I love Hong Kong. If anyone knows of a Hong Kong -based financial institution or marketing firm looking for a young English speaker with a tremendous work ethic and above average writing skills, send them my way!

Finally, here is a photo sequence, taken from an elevated walkway at the corner of Queens Road and Pedder Street in Central. I would recommend advancing through the pictures manually as fast as you can, rather than using the too-slow autoplay.

Heading to Hong Kong

Liz and I are heading to Hong Kong to meet up with this person (arriving from Europe) and this person + girlfriend (recently of PDX and Shanghai). The meeting is part long-term plans, part magical scheduling confluence. We're not sure exactly what we'll do, though a trip to Victoria Peak is certainly on the dockett. As one member of our party will be very jetlagged, I think the answer: not much.

In any case, this week Liz and I took turns getting ill (either mild food poisoning or a 24-hour bug), so we haven't had much occasion to take photos or eat anything interesting. In fact, I'm currently drinking the first cup of coffee in three days that hasn't made me double over in pain.