Fobulicious

I spent the first part of reading week in Thailand, to escape the foggy gloom in Hong Kong. My travels did not get off to a great start, as my digital camera decided to crap out on me the night before we were supposed to leave. I couldn’t quite accept the fact that I was going to be camera-less in Thailand for five days, so at the airport, I spontaneously bought a new camera (it wasn’t that spontaneous; I had done some quick market research on Canon point-and-shoots beforehand). I love my new camera! It’s loads better than my old one. Don’t ever buy Kodak cameras. Ever. But I digress.

We met up with one of our tour guides at the airport, and set off for Bangkok International Airport. The flight was very enjoyable, and I highly recommend China Airlines. For a two-hour flight, we were provided with all the food and amenities you would expect on an overseas trip.

Bliss

Once we landed, we met up with our other tour guide, who is actually Thai and speaks fluent Chinese. Our tour guides were very nice and always translated everything in Mandarin for us, since most of us couldn’t understand Cantonese. We then shuffled onto our coach bus and were whisked to Pattaya, a beach town about an hour drive from Bangkok.

It was hot as all hell, but thankfully we had some mild air conditioning on our bus. We were a group of 12, and probably annoyed the other people on our tour by being loud, obnoxious, and late many times.

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Lamb chops with baked penne @ Red Ant

Dude. I love lamb meat. I think I only recently became conscious of this fact. It’s just so good however you prepare it. So far in HK I’ve had lamb chops, lamb in hot pot, lamb in KBBQ, lamb dumplings, lamb skewers, lamb in stew… I am instantly drawn to anything on any menu if it has lamb in it. SO GOOD.

That is all I have to say. Yes, this entry is a scheduled post because I currently do not have Internet access in Thailand, and I know that my lack of online presence has left a void in your life. In the meanwhile, feel free to drool over and discuss the glory that is lamb meat. Back on Tuesday!

On Feb 15th (2nd day of Lunar Festival), Hong Kong showcased its annual Chinese New Year fireworks at Victoria Harbour. I watched it from the Avenue of Stars on the Kowloon side, so Hong Kong Island formed the background. Sadly it was freezing cold that day, and rainy to boot, which dampened (pun very much intended) the mood. We arrived at 6:30, an hour and a half early, yet the entire first row was already filled up. Many of these people had their DSLRs set up with tripods, and I imagine they had already been waiting at least half an hour already.

I nearly got stabbed by an umbrella at least five times.

We managed to wedge ourselves in a spot in the middle area behind 2-3 rows of other people. What I found most annoying were people who were determined to keep their umbrellas open. Not only does it block the view for EVERYONE, I had to keep a lookout to make sure I didn’t randomly get whacked in the head.

Once the show started, though, most people were nice enough to stow away their umbrellas (it wasn’t that rainy anyways). This only left the jerks who raised their tripods so high, their chunky SLRs kept making cameos in the corner of our own shots.

Other than these minor annoyances, the show was enjoyable.

I think that you may actually prefer seeing some fireworks photos, instead of reading a thousand-word paragraph of me describing them for you. Just a warning that the following is going to be very graphics- and exclamation mark-intensive.

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Being in Hong Kong at this time of the year is a blessing, as I got to experience the Chinese New Year (CNY) festivities first-hand. A few weeks ago was the Lunar New Year Fair at Victoria Park in Causeway Bay. It’s like the Night Market in Toronto, but 50 times bigger, and they sell all sorts of (useless) things. This year, of course, there was a lot of tiger merchandise. It’s also known as the ”Night Market” or “Flower Market” because CNY usually falls around Valentine’s Day, just in time for you to spend even more money on loved ones.

That-a-way

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I seem to always have this minimum one-week lag on blogging what I’ve been doing. So here is a recount of last weekend. Some of these photos (evidently the better quality ones) are credit to Danny. Last Friday we went to Tsim Sha Tsui to have some Good Satay based on an OpenRice (which is like BlogTO Restaurants for HK) recommendation.

GOOD, not great.

They had about 5-6 dishes that were very very popular. We decided to split 3 of them: the Hainanese Chicken, assorted satay meat skewers, and the fried turnip cake.

Hainanese chicken (top), assorted meat skewers with satay sauce (bottom)

The chicken and skewers were both pretty good. The chicken was tender, and the satay sauce was flavourful. However, I was rather disappointed in the serving sizes – I thought one dish could eat like a meal for one person, but it wouldn’t be nearly enough.

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