Bob and Jamie's Adventures in Hong Kong, Day 3

This morning again started out with very low visibility, but it mostly cleared up during the day. Our first stop was Wellington Street so Bob could have a photo op next to the street sign (he grew up in Wellington, FL). Then we strolled through the open air markets on Gage Street and Graham Street, which will be featured in The Dark Knight.

Next we walked to the famous Luk Yu Tea House on Stanley Street and ate dim sum (it only took us three days to have a meal of Chinese food in China). I mostly stuck to the very tasty steamed barbecue pork buns, because almost everything else on the menu had shrimp in it. The waiter was a bit overbearing (he pretty much forced us to order some other dishes which I didn't really want; fortunately Bob likes the taste of shrimp) but that didn't keep it from being a really pleasant experience.

Oh yeah, and the waiter also refilled our tea every time he noticed we had taken a sip (the cup could still be half full and he'd fill it back up; I guess he's a pessimist). That's right! We finally found a restaurant in Hong Kong which offers free refills on the drinks! I was very excited about that. So, our experience at the tea house was much better than our experience at the Cuban restaurant. It seems that Hong Kong is better at Cantonese food than it is at Cuban food; go figure.

Next stop, Lan Kwai Fong: a street which is a popular hangout for expatriates. After seeing what was there (bars, mostly), we walked over to Jardine House to catch the bus. We took a double decker bus to HKU, which was kind of a harrowing experience. Bus and taxi drivers in Hong Kong seem to have no problem with careening down hills, turning corners at full speed, and playing chicken with pedestrians and oncoming vehicles.

Anyway, we arrived at Hong Kong University without incident, and got to admire the nice architecture of its main building. It has some neat-o columns and courtyards with goldfish in a fountain. Then we walked over to the art museum (our principle reason for going to the university) which has an exhibit on Nestorian crosses dating from the 13th century. We also got to see an exhibit of photographs taken in central Asia by Sir Aurel Stein, including some from Kashgar, which Bob had visited several years ago.

The museum also had a really neat collection of photographs documenting how Hong Kong has changed over the past hundred years or so, as the shore line has been artificially extended and more and more skyscrapers built. It turns out that once upon a time, the buildings weren't all covered by garish neon lights.

After we had finished seeing the museum, we took the bus back to Admiralty and rode the MTR to Mong Kok, the most densely populated place on Earth. Not surprisingly, the streets were pretty crowded. We walked through Ladies' Market (where you can buy things like clothes and jewelry) and Goldfish Market (where you can buy aquaria and fish and of course dogs) on Tung Choi Street, and then on to Langham Place, a big deconstructivist shopping mall with crazy slanted walls that's 15 stories tall.

I got a couple more Jackie Chan movies at CD Warehouse, and then we ate at the MOS Burger, a Japanese chain which invented the Teriyaki burger in 1973. Bob had one of those, and it had far too much mayo, like the ones we had at BK the other day; I had a MOS Cheeseburger, which was a cheeseburger with a big tomato slice and what tasted like sloppy joe mix. I paid extra for a large drink, since we were back in the realm of no free refills. We went back upstairs to the 80M Bus Model Shop so that Bob could get a model Cathay Pacific 747-400 with Pratt & Whitney engines, fulfilling a lifelong goal of having a toy model airplane.

At this point we remembered that we wanted to do the Star Ferry Harbour Tour tonight, so we took the MTR back to Tsim Sha Tsui. Since we had time, we went to the Harbour City mall to check out Hong Kong Records (the other major record store which we had not been to yet). I didn't find anything (all the interesting DVDs were Region 3), but Bob found a Zhang Ziyi movie and I think a Jackie Chan movie. It was almost time for the tour, so we made our way to the ticket booth at the dock, only to discover that they stopped selling tickets ten minutes before the tour is to depart. Blast!

There was going to be another tour leaving an hour later, so we decided to try for that one, resolving to return to the dock sooner this time. In the mean time, we went back to the mall and went to a Starbuck's inside of the LCX department store, which is itself like a mall, with restaurants inside of it (including a California Pizza Kitchen) and separate cash registers at each name brand's apparently autonomous area. While we consumed our beverages, we watched a cruise ship put to sea (Ocean Terminal is both a section of the mall and an actual pier). Then it was back to the Star Ferry dock for the tour.

This time we arrived in time to purchase tickets, and so we spent the next hour cruising around Victoria Harbour. We had vouchers for free refreshments (for having a coupon and presenting our boarding passes from our Cathay Pacific flight), so we got banana bread and canned Nescafé; we saved these for after the cruise so that we could stay outside admiring the view rather than have to sit at a table in the cabin. Back in Tsim Sha Tsui, we partook of our bread and fake coffee on a promenade in front of the Clock Tower and Cultural Centre. Then we took the Star Ferry back to Wan Chai.

Rather than head straight for the hotel, we took the scenic route around the harbor side of the Convention Centre, stopping to see the big statue in Golden Bauhinia Square, a gift to HK from the PRC on the occasion of the handover. Bob predicted that there would be mainlanders there taking pictures of it (the gaudy statue is apparently a source of national pride for them), and he was right. There were four or five Chinese women posing and taking each other's pictures with it.

I waited for them to move and got a picture of the statue, and then we continued around to the west side of the Convention Centre, admiring the view of Admiralty and Central. Then we came back to the hotel. And then I wrote this. And just now I wrote that last sentence. Next I wrote the sentence preceding this one. Finally, I decided that after writing one more sentence I would stop and go to sleep.