Hong Kong: The things we ate

Eating was good in Hong Kong.  We had a tendency to eat a big, late lunch every day, and to supplement that main meal with breakfast in our hotel room and a snack-sized dinner.

For breakfasts, we had lots of gorgeous ripe dragon fruits.

Bananas, which was a nice change after coming from Australia where they were, at that point, still $12 a kilo.

And we ate a lot of bread and (no frills) peanut butter.

And all of this was made possible thanks to the awesome spoons we bought.

Lunches were nothing short of amazing.  On our first day, we (eventually) managed to find M Garden, in Mongkok, which had a huge menu.  We were pretty hungry, so we ordered lots.

Smoked goose rolls, which were veggies rolled up in yuba skin.

Vegan sashimi - Andy thought this might be interesting, and it was, but not in a way that either of us would order again.  It was basically a salty agar jelly, which tasted ever so slightly of the sea.

Salt and pepper vegan pork, crunchy and greasy and salty and oh my.

And BBQ 'suckling pig' with steamed buns.  Yeah, it's totally weird to think about eating suckling pig, even if it doesn't contain any animal products.  But, I'm a sucker for steamed buns, and Andy is a sucker for BBQ.  So we ordered this, and I'm glad we did.  It was really delicious, with crunchy mock meat, tangy five spice BBQ sauce, and fluffy buns.

We also visited Kung Tak Lam in One Peking Tower, a fancier-feeling place in Kowloon with beautiful views over the Harbour towards Hong Kong Island as we ate.  I didn't take any photos at this meal (because I forgot, I think).  But, we had two main meals and some yum cha.  The mains were Veggie Chicken with cashews & spicy sauce, and Mushrooms on a sizzling plate.  This was very impressive - they poured the sauce over the mushrooms at the table, so it was all sizzly and the sauce got sticky.  We also ordered spring rolls, vegetarian steamed buns, and a silverthread bun, which was kind of sweet.  All of this costed us AU$31.  So, whoo!


Another lunch was at the Chi Lin Vegetarian Tea House, within the grounds of the Nan Lian Garden.  I didn't take photos there, because there was a sign saying 'no photos'.  Boo.  We ordered the five dish set menu, and I'm not sure we got everything we paid for, but we were full at the end of the meal.  There was battered & deep fried eggplant (which proved difficult for two novice chop stickers to pick up), enoki mushrooms with greens, bean curd in spicy sauce, yuba wraps filled with Chinese amaranth, and shredded potatoes with seasonal veggies.  The meal was really good, but in a very different way to most of the food we ate.  It felt healthy, and was more about natural flavours rather than sticky sauces.

Our final big meal in Hong Kong was at the Po Lin Monastery, at the base of the Big Buddha.  There were two set menu options - we opted for the Deluxe, for HK$120, or AU$15.  As an added bonus, if you pre-buy a meal ticket you get to go up to the highest pedestal and get views like this:

That meal started with a very interesting soup, which had shreds of mushrooms and yuba, and instead of being brothy was kind of gooey.  This makes it sound not good, but it was amazing.  I willfully ignored the 'no photos' sign and snapped the soup, but Andy guilted me into putting my camera away after the first course.

The rest of the meal was braised lettuce with shiitake mushrooms; mixed veggies with cashews; spring rolls; and lemon bean curd, which was food from the gods.  The lemon sauce was so sweet, tart, and morish.  I really couldn't get enough.  All up, this may have been the best meal we had, except that we were so close to the air conditioner which was on full blast, so the food all went cold before we got to taste it all.

Our dinners were much less exciting.  We found some vegan kimchi flavoured instant noodles, which we cooked in the hotel microwave.

We frequented a street stall selling yummy fried tofu.

And on the last night, we made an exciting discovery.  About 10 metres from our hotel was a small, hole-in-the-wall vegetarian restaurant.  If only we had found it earlier.  We went for dinner before our flight, but we were still a bit full from our massive meal at the Big Buddha.  So instead of ordering from the menu, we picked some tasty-looking morsels from the window at the front.  Andy ordered, while I sat with our stuff and felt tired - hot chose spring rolls, BBQ pork steam buns, spinach dumplings, and a plate with tofu, eggplant and capsicum.  We assumed that the food from the window would be freshened up, or cooked somehow, and this was the case for the dumplings and the buns which had to be steamed.  And the tofu & veggie plate was heated in the microwave... but the spring rolls came out cold.  And they weren't very good.  After starting to eat, Andy felt hungry for a proper-sized dinner, so he ordered a second round: steamed spinach bunns, broccoli dumplings, and a plate with four kinds of veggie meat made of yuba and gluten with different flavours.  And, for dessert, some sweet steamed buns.  This was so much food, and we were way too full.  And I ended up feeling sick for the whole 13 hour flight out of Hong Kong, which I put down to the spring rolls.

Aside from that veggie place next door, the other great find of our trip was mochi.  I know this isn't a new thing to a lot of people, but neither Andy nor I had tried it before.  But we fell in love.  We started with peanut, and liked it so much that we bought sesame and red bean as well, and then fresh mochi whenever we found it on the street.  So. good.

I don't think I've ever eaten so well (and so cheaply!) as I had in Hong Kong...

Hong Kong: Temples and Gardens

There are lots of things to say about Hong Kong.  Like, all the free wifi all over the city.  Lots of public parks had free wireless access, but since we didn't have a converter for my iPod charger I couldn't make very much use of it.  But it's nice that it's there!  And shopping! Hong Kong has more shopping than anyone could want, from the cheap stuff at markets to the high end shopping centres.  In fact, pretty much every train station is also a shopping mall.  We were more keen on the markets, though we were a little surprised to find a sex toy section in the Temple Street Night Markets.  But we didn't buy much, sex toys or other souvenirs, because we were at the start of our trip and were smugly travelling lightly, with nothing but backpacks. 

From sex toys to religion... I don't have a transition for this, because (as you can see) Hong Kong is a giant mix-up of everything you could want to do, see, experience, and as a result my stories about it are also a mix-up.

Hong Kong had loads of temples, and the thing I found interesting was that while they were centred on one of the three main religions (Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism), most had space for all three religions within their walls.

Tin Hau temple in Kowloon - the reason the photo looks hazy is because of all the incense smoke.

 

Temple of 10,000 Buddhas.  This place... we had read really good things about it on the internet before we left Australia.  The directions to get there seemed pretty straight forward.  We got the train, and got off at the right station, and looked for signs, but managed, somehow, to go out the wrong exit.  We found ourselves walking around Sha Tin, which is in Hong Kong's New Territories, for about an hour.  The New Territories is the mainland China part of Hong Kong, and it felt very Chinese -- in contrast to most of the city, which just felt like a city.  It was an interesting walk, but when we eventually found where we needed to go, it turned out to be about 3 minutes from the train station.  Der.

And, in the end, the temple didn't really live up to the hype.  Most of the temple was storage for cremated remains, so it felt a bit funny to be touristing while people were visiting dead relatives.  But the Buddhas were pretty.

Outside the temple were these friendly cats.

Nan Lian Garden, outside the Chi Lin Nunnery.  This was a gorgeous gem in the city - a traditional Tang Dynasty garden that was all about meditation and contemplation.  There were rules forbidding "frolicking" and posing for photos in "costumes" like graduation gowns or wedding dresses.

Behind that waterfall was the Chi Lin Vegetarian Tea House, where we ate lunch.  It was really lovely looking out the window and seeing water falling over the glass.

The view from the steps of the Chi Lin Nunnery over its internal gardens, with the city-scape in the background.

At the Man Mo Temple, in SoHo, these massive coils of incense provided a smoky atmosphere but left tourists at risk of ashy heads.

Hong Kong doesn't seem to discriminate, though - we also found this mosque.

And this Christian Church.  We just happened to pass on a Sunday, so we stopped to watch the complex car parking situation that was going on.  Most cars got to the bottom of the hill, at the red and white road block that you can just see in the bottom centre of the photo, and were diverted into a parking garage.  But the flash, very expensive cars, were allowed up the hill, where they attempted 37-point turns (give or take) to squeeze into a very crowded parking lot.  All so they didn't have to walk up the hill before church.

On our last day we went to Lantau Island and spent a few hours marvelling at the Big Buddha.  This 34m tall bronze Buddha was a popular tourist destination, for good reason.

Just as interesting as walking up to the statue was poking through the Po Lin Monastery at the base of the giant Buddha.

 Waiting for the bus to go back down the hill, we made friends with this Temple Cow.

These temples were much needed pockets of serenity in the midst of a crazy-big city, so we spent lots of time in them.  Not to mention that almost all had veggie restaurants attached to them...

Walk On, Hong Kong

Towards the end of our trip, and since we've returned, people have asked which stop was our favourite, and the answer is the same for both Andy and I: Hong Kong.  It was interesting, cheap, and easy to get around.  The public transport system made sense. The food was good (so good, in fact, that I will feature it in a post or two of its own).  The people were friendly enough, with people approaching us to ask if we needed help on the more than regular occasions that we looked lost.  The city was beautiful, the harbour was a great feature, and everything was cheap!

Only, when I think back to the specifics, it was crowded, and hot, and we got lost many times each day.  As great as the public transit system is, it took us a while to fully sort it out.  That, and we were touristing, so we wanted to see as much as we could.  So we walked.  A lot. More than was probably smart to do.  We did see a lot, but we had tired, sore legs.

We first got lost the moment we got off the bus from the airport.  We knew our hotel was only a minute or two from the stop, but we didn't know in which direction.  So we walked, at about 9pm, through what we later discovered is Hong Kong's funeral district.  When we found our hotel, the Bridal Tea House Wuhu Street, we were a little trepidatious.  After the 8 hour flight, and a half hour of walking around, we were hoping for some comfort, but all the guidebooks and internet reviews kept our hopes for any Hong Kong accommodation low.  But, we found that our room was clean, comfortable, and absolutely what we needed.  The shower was good, the bed was too short for Andy but at least had space for his feet to hang over the edge.  And the air conditioning proved a life saver, even for two Townsvillains who smugly refuse to use aircon at home.

We did loads of things in Hong Kong.  I'll start with Kowloon, the second-citiest part of the city, across the harbour from Hong Kong Island.  This is where our accommodation was, and where loads of backpacker rooms can be found.  It's also home to the Gold Fish markets, a strip of two blocks or so of non-stop pet shops.  Most were centred around fish tanks, and they tended to specialise - in aquarium equipment, or plants, or, most strikingly, fish.  The freshwater fish were often pre-bagged, ready for quick sale.

The tiny turtles (and also tortoises) clambered over one another in tanks open on the street.

And the marine fish were abundant, and cheap - clownfish selling for the equivalent of AU$4.

Something we learned the hard way: the Gold Fish markets (and the Jade Markets, for that matter) don't start early.  On our first morning, we woke up early due to time zone changes.  Andy seemed to remember that these markets were best early in the day, so off we trekked (taking goodness knows how many wrong turns on the way).  But they were totally empty.  When we came back at 3pm, it was a totally different scene.  In fact, we learned that Hong Kong in general sleeps in quite late.  Most shops open at 10, 11 or 12, but they stay open until midnight.

As a vegan and a crowd-hater, though, I was much more comfortable in the little produce market we found (oddly, flanked by gun shops).

We also made a habit, throughout our trip, of visiting grocery stores in every place.  This was for practicality (buying food) as much as for sight-seeing.

 

We weren't brave enough to try the wolfberry & white fungus flavoured instant oatmeal.

But we were taken with the "No Frills Brand" peanut butter - we ate this whole jar in 4 days.

Mainly, though, it was about the skyline, especially from Tsim Sha Tsui.

And sitting at Central Pier on Hong Kong Island at sunset was pretty stunning, too.

Now, I have plenty more to share, but I will save the rest for another post.

Circumnavigated

This week saw the end of our round the world travels.  I meant to blog while we were going about our food, the sights we saw, and all of that - oops! Turns out I had neither the time, energy, discipline, or technology to really support that plan.  We travelled lightly, so didn't bother bringing a laptop, and blogging from my iPod turned out to be not that easy - except for the occasional Greyhound trip, where we had plenty of time, not much to do, and free wifi.  Anyways, I'm back now, and I am going to tell you all about our trip, probably more than anyone in the world wants to know!  But I need to make some sense of it myself, so it will come in pieces, I suspect.

Because the things that stick out to me most vividly are fairly random experiences, most of which became inside jokes between Andy and I (and probably annoyed everyone else we spent time with on our travels).

Like our first day in Hong Kong, after a full morning of walking around, we spent the afternoon wandering through the "Ladies' Markets" - a series of laneways tightly packed with stalls selling all varieties of sunglasses, fans, umbrellas, tee shirts, mobile phone cases, and other trinkets.  We were approached by a woman who handed us a flyer for a foot massage and proceeded to give us a sales pitch, in perfect english that was so well rehearsed. We were promised that we could both get foot massages at the same time, that it was relaxing, and most importantly (we could tell it was important because it was repeated so many times), that we would have a good and awesome experience.  We totally should have gotten that foot massage.

Or our last day in Dublin.  We had spent the day on a tour of County Wicklow, just south of Dublin, which is the backdrop for movies such as Braveheart and P.S. I love you, and is full of stunning scenery like peat bogs and mountain lakes.  It was a gorgeous day, but confirmed to Andy and I that we are not really organised tour people.  Too group-y for our liking.  We bought some bread and hummus for dinner in a Dublin park, and then caught the Luas, the local tram, back to our stop.  We decided to take the elevator from the stop down to ground level, and when we got in there was a big puddle on the floor.  Andy joked that it looked like pee, but neither of us really thought it was.  But, moments before the door closed, a Dublin local got in, looked, and said "Ahh, they've pissed in it already!" in an angry tone.  He proceeded to have a conversation with us all the way down about how he takes the elevator every day, and every day there is piss in the elevator.  We made sure to scuff our shoes off on the grass on our walk back to our house.

Luckily, I kept a good travel journal for most of the trip, so I have some basis for thinking back about the things we did, the food we ate, and how energetic or cranky we were at the time.  So I'll get to all of those things, but for now, while I overcome jet lag and get over the mountain of work waiting for me, I leave you with these few snapshots.

zPizza

Here is another example of what DC has to offer. A few short blocks from the mall and the museums (and in fact, right outside the portrait museum) is a place called zpizza. I think they are a DC chain, because we also saw one in the burbs where we were staying.

Zpizza has a number of pre-determined pizza choices, as well as salads and sandwiches, and a build-your-own pizza. To do this you choose a crust, a toppings, and a cheese- and one of the choices is 'vegan'.

We opted for the Berkeley Vegan, with loads of veggies. The crust was crunchy, the veggies were plentiful, and the cheese (which we have previously found a bit rich) was a nice accompaniment without being overwhelming. And this generous lunch for two only set us back $19.25.

Score another one for DC. But now we're on a Greyhound travelling to upstate NY to visit family!

Vegan Cupcake

Hi from Washington, DC. This is easily one of the most vegan friendly cities we've been to, in the sense that so many non-vegan places have clearly labeled vegan options. Like this cupcake we found from Red Velvet Cupcakery, on 7th street.

They have two vegan cupcakes, the black velvet and the white velvet. I chose white velvet, which was soft and fluffy and vanilla-licious.

Mac and chreese

We've made it to NYC, after passing through Hong Kong, Switzerland, Scotland, and Ireland. And I promise there is more to come about all of those stops. But for now, look what I found on my (first ever) visit to Whole Foods on E Houston St - vegan Mac and cheese, in a box. We got some to cook in our apartment - shells as well as wholemeal elbows. We also cooked some baby portobellas and mixed them through. The result was easy, but a bit underwhelming. Not as delicious as the stuff we make at home, but hey! Vegan Mac and cheese! In a box!