Bob and Jamie's Adventures in Hong Kong, Day 2

This morning it was smoggy and had a forecast of rain, so we weren't inspired to do as much as yesterday (which was a beautiful day). In particular, if we'd gone to The Peak today, we wouldn't have been able to see all that much. Fortunately, we didn't end up experiencing anything more than the slightest drizzle late in the evening, but I took my umbrella with me today just in case.

First we went back to the Havana Cuban restaurant in SoHo to have lunch. We really wanted to try their Cuban sandwiches, but all they were serving (other than appetizers) was a set lunch. So we chose to have the set lunch.

The set lunch consisted of a choice between tomato soup with sour cream or a weird cole slaw with apples and nuts for the appetizer; creamy chicken with rice and mixed vegetables, or steak with some weird sauce, or some kind of pork dish (I think) for the main course; a chocolate crème brûlée for dessert; and iced tea or soda to drink. My memory is fuzzy on the main courses because Bob and I both chose the chicken as being the most Cuban-sounding from the menu.

For the appetizer, Bob chose the soup and I chose the cole slaw (because I generally choose the non-soup option). Despite the really strange description and ingredients, it didn't taste bad; it mostly tasted like cabbage and carrots in some kind of mustardy sauce. I didn't taste any apple at all, and the almonds (or whatever they were) were mostly hidden by the flavor of the sauce. Bob finished his soup, so I would imagine he found it to be palatable. Either way, neither appetizer was particularly Cuban.

Next up was the main course. The rice was regular no-flavor-added Chinese-style steamed white rice, and the mixed vegetables consisted of peas, carrots, and corn. The creamy chicken ended up being cream of mushroom soup with chunks of chicken in it. Hurray. :-/ I picked out most of the big pieces of chicken, careful to avoid the hateful mushrooms infesting my dish, and I couldn't help but ponder how non-Cuban this meal was.

Last came the dessert: Kahlúa Chocolate Crème Brûlée. This was by far the best part of the meal (Bob went so far as to say that it was "quite good, although not Cuban"). It kind of just tasted like chocolate, with a texture between that of mousse and pudding. On the top of the puddingy part there was a layer of hard solidified something, which made my teeth stick together when I chewed on it; I must penalize it for that. On the other hand, it came with pieces of strawberry on the side (blueberries, too, which I left alone), so overall I would say that I liked it.

All in all, the food was okay, but the portions were small (kind of like at the Taco Bell in Demolition Man) and it was definitely Not Cuban. There was nary a bean to be found.

After lunch, we went downhill to Hollywood Road and walked along it toward Sheung Wan. We stopped in at the Man Mo Temple, which is a famous tourist attraction that happens to be a place of worship administered by a hospital (which strikes me as backwards).

It's a neat looking building which predates Britain's possession of Hong Kong. Inside there are lots and lots of burning incense coils hanging from the ceiling which constantly drop ashes onto the floor (or the heads of people walking underneath) and fill the room with a thick aromatic smoke. There are also idols to the gods Man and Mo (Literature and War), to whom visitors had left such offerings as a bowl of oranges or a half-eaten bag of peanuts. After we left the temple we descended Ladder Street and made our way to the Sheung Wan subway stop.

We took the MTR to Admiralty and visited Elim Christian Bookstore in the Lippo Centre. Here I got the typical souvenir of Hong Kong, a Korean-English New Testament. Bob found a Chinese-English hymnal and a Greek-Chinese-English New Testament. With our backpacks laden with wares, we decided to stop back at the hotel to unload, lest they get rained on later in the day (and to save our backs from unnecessary suffering).

After resting in our hotel room for a bit, Bob and I went back to Sheung Wan for dinner. We intended to go to a local Chinese fast food restaurant called MX, but they were closed so we went to Pizza Hut instead. Pizza Hut in Hong Kong is more upscale than it is in America, and much more inventive with its pizza offerings; it's a lot like California Pizza Kitchen. About half of the pizzas are made with thousand island dressing instead of tomato sauce. With that in mind Bob and I ordered a regular old pan pizza with pepperoni and green peppers (and tomato sauce). It was quite good, even though once again we couldn't get free refills of our Pepsi. Next time we should order a pitcher rather than individual glasses.

After dinner, we rode the metro to Kowloon Station and visited Elements, a new shopping mall. As usual, the different shops keep different hours, so when the HMV closed the ice skating rink was still open. Elements seemed like a really nice mall, but it was nearly devoid of people due to its out-of-the-way location in west Kowloon.

When we left the mall, we tried to walk over to the harbor (on the other side of a group of condos and the construction site of what will be the new tallest building in Hong Kong), but we were thwarted by cops. First we tried to walk between one condo and the construction site, and a cop came up to us and said that the area was closed.

Then we tried to circumnavigate the group of condos, but the ways were gated. There was a delivery access road leading behind one, but we spotted a cop sitting in a chair who surely would have blocked us if we'd started to walk toward him. So, other than fleeting glances, we didn't get to enjoy much of the view from west Kowloon.

Feeling slightly dejected, we rode the MTR back to the hotel, where we performed our American Coke vs. Hong Kong Coke taste test. American Coke, of course, uses high fructose corn syrup in place of Hong Kong's table sugar. I found the American Coke to be slightly less sweet and more acidic than its Hong Kong counterpart, but the differences weren't nearly as noticeable as the ones between the Kit Kats. They were more subtle and it was hard to figure out what exactly was different about one from the other. I left both bottles unfinished, so there will surely be a second round of experimentation later. Bob was there, too.