Hong Kong in a nutshell

So, Rommel and I were in Hong Kong over the weekend and I was scheduled to have training in the office on Monday before flying back home on Tuesday.

I say "was scheduled" because the training ended up being cancelled. Due to some miscommunication with the vendor (i.e. the external trainer whom we hired from Australia), the trainer ended up being on a plane to Tokyo on Monday morning instead of being in our office for the training.

To cut the long story short, my non-training meant I stayed in the Hong Kong office to work on Monday but effectively had Saturday, Sunday and Monday evening to roam around Hong Kong with Rommel. I wont count Tuesday because I woke up in time to have a shower, pack, check out, and head towards the airport.

But, overall, it felt like a mini holiday because we did touristy stuff with Huei Suen. Xi Bing and Chin Chan were in HK too, coincidentally, so it was great because we could all go out and eat eat eat together!

So, what damage have I done over the weekend?

Foodwise, we had....

1) For the first night's dinner, the famous roast goose from Yung Kee in Lan Kwai Fong. Ma packed this back once for us during one of her trips but it didnt taste as good as eating it there!!

2) Next was Sunday brunch dimsum at Lei Yuen on Hennessy Road. Probably the best egg tarts I've had in recent years (THE BEST is still the shop along Jln Pudu where they only start selling the tarts at midnight. Haven't been there since I was maybe 10 yrs old so I have no idea if it still exists!). But I digress... back to Lei Yuen... we had a really good ginseng soup with chicken and pork ribs that cost ~HK$600!

(Sorry no pictures, we were hungry and therefore too busy eating to take any!!)

3) For tea, we were recommended the really famous and yummylicious chocolate mousse at Cova in Landmark. When we got there, there was only 1 choc mousse left so we ordered it to share...

Of course, 1 choc mousse was not enough so we also ordered the baked cheesecake... Super yummmmmm.... I wish my cheesecakes turn out like this.

And the mango cream mousse which had real mangos and was very refreshing.

And we also had gelato - I chose nocciola (sorry if it's the wrong spelling but sadly Im too lazy to google it up right now) or hazelnut gelato. This almost beats the Harrod's Parlour one in London!!


(We attacked the cakes the moment the server placed them on the table so I only got pictures after some bites were taken out of the cakes. Can't help it if they're good!)

4) Suennie wanted to take us to have a light sushi meal in the evening in Lan Kwai Fong before heading off to a famous beef noodles shop on Gold Street. But just our luck, the weather was extremely crappy, just kept raining and got us all wet, AND.... both shops were closed. So we ate at a Japanese restaurant called Kiyotaki along Gold Street. It was raining and I didn't want to walk in the rain any longer so we decided to just eat there. You'll never know until you try, right?? It was not too bad actually but probably wont be a place I'd specifically want to go back to when I next go to HK.

5) Monday night, we travelled to Kowloon to have a seafood dinner. This was Suennie's colleague's family business so we were more assured that we wouldn't be charged the "tourist prices". We had the usual stuff - stir fried lobster with noodles, steamed scallops with glass noodles, deep fried mantis prawn, steamed fish and steamed crabs (recommended by the restaurant as a type of crab we won't usually get in Malaysia). All in all, pretty good, most of the stuff were relatively fresh although I felt that the fish was not as fresh as I'd expected. But then again, my dad spoils me with really good fish all the time so I've become a fish snob.

(Again, sorry no pictures because I forgot to bring along my camera)

On Monday, we decided to take the tram ride up to Victoria's Peak. I dont remember having been there before (the last time I was in HK in 2002, my mom wanted to just shop so we didn't bother going up to the Peak) but I'll say that it was really nice and cool up there. And we were really lucky because the typhoon had just passed and swept away the haze that usually clouds over the Hong Kong skyline.


More yarn? Of course!!
On knitting, yes I managed to find time on Saturday to go hunting for the LYS that was highly recommended by fellow Ravellers.

Tailor & Alteration
Room 1402-03, 14/F, Kin Tak Fung Commercial Building,
467-473, Hennessy Road, Causeway Bay, Hongkong.

I actually went into the wrong block at first but I saw the sign for New Yarn Co on the 4th Floor. Ended up in another LYS which was rather spacious but didn't really appeal to me.

Tailor & Alteration was probably yarn heaven.... It had so much yarn in it that you had to squeeze through the tiny aisles to get to the end and at some ends, you couldnt walk further because it just became too narrow. If you're claustrophobic, don't even go there!! But for me, there was so much yarn, I ended up having a major headache trying to decide what to buy. Which was really bad because I only ended up buying 10 balls of Sublime cashmere merino silk aran (the same one as my poncho!! Really soft yarn!!) and 8 balls of some linen yarn in a pretty peach. Pictures to come..

Pricing-wise, it wasn't really that cheap, about the same as the prices in Singapore which was why I didn't go crazy buying everything up.

Great shopping...
And now, here's what most people do when they go to HK... SHOP!
Suen took me to Island Beverly, a shopping mall similar to Xi Men Ting in Taipei or a smaller version of Sg Wang in KL or the Heeren in Singapore. Just my type of thing. Local HK designers selling super funky clothes!

And what did I buy.... 4 pairs of shoes, some dresses, some tops and some cardigans (it's Autumn fashion now).

Rommel also went shopping but he didnt buy clothes.... He went to check out the electronics stores for headphones for Fatteh (yea the ones Fatteh wanted went up to HK$4000... mad) but we didnt buy it for him. Sorry Fatteh! If you want those headphones, next time we get Ma to buy them when she goes over. Rommel did end up buying something that cost more than all my shopping combined.... an iPhone.

So there, my unintended holiday... Time to go to bed now...