Well, it turns out we hadn't quite done everything there is to do in Hong Kong. After our final Délifrance breakfast of the trip, we rode the MTR to Tsuen Wan and visited the Sam Tung Uk Museum, a restored Hakka walled village. Our primary motivation, of course, was that Chow Yun-Fat is of Hakka descent.
We spent a good bit of the day there learning about rice cultivation and the traditional Hakka lifestyle and about how much Tsuen Wan has changed in the past 60 years. After World War II came refugees escaping the Communists, factories replacing farms, and all sorts of frantic industrialization and modernization. Meanwhile these old skool Hakka villages kept doing things the old ways until one by one they were relocated by the government. Sam Tung Uk was relocated in 1980 and turned into a museum in the late 80s.
When we were done learning, we went back to Tsim Sha Tsui and the Harbour City mall to have lunch at Oliver's Super Sandwiches. My roast beef wasn't exactly super, it had an inordinate amount of gristle, but the good half did taste good. We then wandered around the mall for a while (read: went back to Hong Kong Records again to look at movies), and then we made our way over to The Peninsula Hotel for afternoon tea.
We stood in line for about an hour, listening to live chamber music being performed on a balcony overlooking the lobby. The trio (a cellist, a violinist, and a clarinetist/flautist) played songs such as "Somewhere Out There" from An American Tale and "Can You Feel The Love Tonight" from The Lion King. So there we were, a couple of Latinos sitting in a hotel in Hong Kong founded by Jewish Indians enjoying an English tradition while listening to music from American cartoons.
It was awesome.
Most of the sandwiches and pastries were really good, although I wouldn't have chosen the salmon (Bob ate it). For dessert, they brought us tiramisu, except made with green tea in place of espresso. The tea itself was good, too, and they brought us more hot water when we ran out (Free refills, score!).
After tea time, we went back to Central to visit the IFC mall, housed in the tallest building in Hong Kong. The only record store there was Sam the Record Man, a small establishment with a bunch of really rare (and therefore really expensive) vinyl albums and CDs from Japan, including a sizable Beatles collection. We looked around a bit and wandered around a couple other stores before taking the Star Ferry back across the harbour to Tsim Sha Tsui.
From there, we went via MTR to Yau Ma Tei, to experience the Temple Street night market. This was, by far, the seediest place we went the whole time we were in Hong Kong; alongside the stands selling cheap souvenirs, bootleg movies and knock-off iPods and clothes (such as "Caluin Klein" boxer shorts) were a surprising number of shops offering sex toys and pr0n. Nevertheless, it was sort of a nice change from the sterile high-end malls with their Versaces and Louis Vuittons and guards who wouldn't let us sit on the floor even though there were no benches to be seen (that happened at Harbour City).
For our final dinner in Hong Kong, Bob and I were originally going to go to the TGI Friday's on Nathan Road (a couple buildings down from the Chungking Mansions) for old times' sake, but when we got there they had already closed. So, we went to the Outback Steakhouse downstairs instead. I bet that Outback gets a lot of business that way. I was happy to discover that they understood that I was capable of drinking more iced tea than would fit in their glass, and offered that holy grail of Hong Kong dining, (say it with me) the Free Refill.
After dinner, we rode the metro back to our hotel and packed our bags. We didn't want to risk oversleeping, so we stayed up until it was time to go to the airport in the morning.
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