The Café de Coral serves mainly a Cantonese spin on Western food, which reminded me of the Silver Tower restaurant that Johan and I used to frequent often in Richmond when we got home late from the office. How it works is they have a menu with some pictures on the wall and you order from the cashier. She gives you a receipt and you go to the back kitchen and give the cook your receipt and you wait. It's very popular and your food is ready really fast. It's sort of like fast food, except these meals are a bit more full and it's not just burger and fries. The prices are also very reasonable at most breakfasts costing less than $3, and large portion lunches max out at $5.
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| I had the New Zealand fish with Hokaido Egg and toast for $3 |
After breakfast I headed back to the hostel to check out. I actually hadn't paid yet and I could have easily left without paying but I told the care taker I hadn't paid cause I didn't want her to get in trouble. There was a bit of a discrepancy regarding the amount due which resulted in going to another floor and talking to another lady and then calling the owners in Canada but it all got worked out after I realized that it was only a few CAD difference and it wasn't worth arguing over (HKD is about 7.5 to 1 CAD so I was still getting used to my 7.5 multiplication table). Plus I was running a bit late to meet Ming who would be my first couch surfing experience!
After hustling down Nathan Road I met Ming at one of the MTR exits at Jordan station which was 1 station away from where I was staying in Tsim Sha Tsui. Ming definitely didn't look the guy from the pictures on couchsurfing.org and for the first few minutes of talking I was still trying to make sure that he was in fact Ming, and not some random guy. I would ask him questions that only Ming would know (details of our previous correspondents online) but most of the answers were generic and I thought anyone could make them up! However after several more questions he started answering with only answers that Ming would know so I felt comfortable again.
Ming lives in a small apartment that's about a 5 minute walk from Jordan MTR on Canton Road. We buzzed into the building and went up to the 11th floor. His apartment was directly outside of the elevator. He offered me some water and we chatted for 15 or 20 min while I dropped off my stuff. I told him I wasn't really sure what I was going to do that day so he gave me some recommendations based on what I said I liked to see (local stuff is my favorite).
He told me to check out Sham Shui Po, which has a large local flea market so I dropped off my bags onto the small cot in his living room and headed out!
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| Me and Ming! |
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| My accommodation for the night. |
Sham Shui Po was only 10 minutes away via MTR and I arrived around noon. Upon exiting the MTR I knew I had found just what I wanted! A locals only sort of non-tourist area. I only saw 1 white person the whole few hours I was there so I knew it was not a tourist spot.
SSP is a major electronics flea market selling everything from cell phones, speakers, computer parts, televisions, led belts, hardware, and knick knacks. The streets were lined with merchants and I was in a daze looking left and right at all the neat stuff. SSP is also an older area of town so the buildings really look like what you'd picture a typical suburb would look like in Asia. Densely packed, old and worn down apartments with Chinese signs sticking out everywhere.
I wandered around for a good 30 min soaking up everything when I came across what looked to be a farmers market. I peered into the open air building and found myself looking at a traditional chinese food market.
Wandering through this market was definitely an eye opener, and I found it quite gruesome at times. I'd never seen so much death in such a small area, and seeing creatures bound and trapped and getting killed right in front of me was quite a shock. I can only post pictures on the blog here, but I have several video walkthroughs if you want to get a better picture in your mind as to what it's like in there.
Disclaimer: The next set of pictures is graphic (though not as graphic as how I felt when I was actually there). Read at your own risk.
The lower floor was filled with small booths with hanging meat and butchers hacking at different cuts of pork and beef. There were also probably even more stalls with seafood both dead and alive. Little styrofoam coolers with fish and eels swimming around, crabs bound with straw, metal chicken-wire cages with live toads piled in, turtles in bags, and fish parts sitting on crushed ice. There was quite a lot of blood everywhere as many people were purchasing live food that the merchant would kill right in front of you and bag. It really felt like I was in animal hell and I felt terrible for these poor guys and really guilty about not being a vegetarian. Good for you vegetarians! You do not have to have this guilt on your shoulders that I'll probably bare for the rest of my life after seeing what I saw here. The weird thing is, that I still won't be a vegetarian after seeing this? Is that selfish? Perhaps that tells us a little bit about human nature, or at least my nature...
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| many of these fish were still alive and flipping around |
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| crabs and other crustaceans bound with straw |
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| live toads |
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| live eels and turtles |
After I'd had my fill of death I went upstairs to see what else was in the market. Upstairs was a much nicer atmosphere filled with mainly produce and dried roots and herbs. There were countless stalls with neat little dried up foods and it smelled strongly like one of those Chinese medicine stores.
Now I thought the 2nd floor was all safe from death, but I rounded a wall and found the live chickens-for-sale area. There were many cages along the walk way and cages at the back of each stall filled with chickens. People would come by and pick the chickens up from their wings to inspect them, or have the shop owner do it for them. I felt bad for the chickens and they would squawk when the people picked them up. I only have 1 picture from this area (shop keepers weren't keen on my photography) and then the rest is in a video on my Picasa.
As I left the market, I was reflecting that it's probably a good idea for people to be exposed to this type of thing more often because all too often we get our meat products in neat little clean packages in the stores, yet that's not really the truth about the food or where it comes from. The truth is that it does come from places filled with death, blood, and guts and this is something that shouldn't be hidden as much as it is in my opinion. I think if more people saw this type of place, they would appreciate their food a bit more and have a higher respect for the price that these creatures pay for us to eat a burger.
I wasn't feeling all to hungry at the time so I wandered around the area a bit further and then made my way back to the MTR to head to my next destination: Che Kung Temple.
The temple was a good 30 minutes away by MTR and required 3 line transfers. The last transfer was onto a light rail train system so it gave me another look at the variety of different transportation methods that the MTR has integrated together.
Upon exiting the MTR station I made my way towards what I thought was the temple according to my Google Maps on my phone. Unfortunately google maps was wrong again! And it was a museum about HK's history. I wasn't in the mood for a museum so I made my way to a mall close by to find some lunch and insoles for my shoes because my feet were killing me! I found the food court and ordered a tasty japanese ramen. Probably one of the best ones I've ever had and it was $5. I then walked around the mall and found it really difficult to find insoles because most people didn't know what the word "insole" meant and they didn't understand me describing it. Finally I found a "Dr. Scholls" sign and found what I was looking for.
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| Yes that is pork in the ramen after my big insight about food. Though to be honest there were no vegetarian places in the food court. |
After the insoles I headed back and found the temple I was looking for! Though to my dismay, the whole thing was under heavy renovation and was basically closed. Oh well. It's not like I haven't seen a temple before.
I made my way back into town and found myself at Mong Kok. A busy shopping and electronics area famous for it's big crowds, countless shops, and big lights.
After window shopping through Mong Kok I made my way to the Temple Street Bazaar, which is a street filled with tall tents, narrow corridors, and merchants selling touristy type products such as t-shirts, key chains, asian robes, iphone cases, etc.
It was getting dark and Lil called me to tell me she was finished work and coming to Mong Kok to hang out. I wanted to get Lil a small gift to thank her for touring around so before I met up with her I was able to find a digital photo place and got the picture of us in front of the library printed up and put into a little frame with the words "Lab Tech friendships are for life!" written on the back.
While trying to meet with Lil my phone ran out of minutes and it was a bit frantic trying to figure out how we would meet up. I checked the 7-11 but their phone recharge was too expensive for what I wanted to pay (I was only staying in HK for less than 24 more hours). Luckily I still had the free $1.50 phone recharge bonus card that came with the SIM card when I bought it. I recharged the phone with money and I was back in business.
Lil and I met at the Jordan MTR and then took it together to Mong Kok for me to see the area at night. There's a large mall called Langham Place which was built by a famous architect, and has one of the longest free standing escalators I've seen. The place was really cool and filled with nice little shops.
After the mall we wandered through the "Ladies Market" which was similar to the Temple Street Bazaar. To be honest I'm not really sure why they call it the ladies market lol.
We passed by this HK waffle dessert place and lil asked I wanted to try it so of course I said yes! What it is, are these waffle balls that are all connected together (see below). When you buy it, you get the whole sheet, and then as you walk, you just pick the pieces off and eat them. They taste just like waffles.
We continued through the ladies market and lil spotted a small all-day dim sum place so we snuck in there for diner. She did all the ordering and the food started coming. Everything tasted super good!
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| From left to right: some kind of shrimp dumpling, shrimp rolls in rice noodle, custard steam buns, pork dumplings, chicken feet |
After diner we continued to walk around the area and ended up at a desert place. On the menu was Turtle Shell Jello and Durian pudding. These were both things I had never had before and they are both very HK so we ordered them up and split them.
The Turtle Shell Jello is supposed to have lots of antioxidants and good health stuff. It came in a mug and was really hot. The server also brought a little jug of simple syrup that you pour on to sweeten it (because the jello by itself is not sweet). The taste is hard to describe, but it tastes very herbal and I quite liked it.
Next came the Durian. I've known about the Durian fruit for many years but have never eaten it. It has a bad reputation for smelling really gross. The pudding arrived at our table and was white in colour. I took my first bite and it tasted like what it smells like, except in a good way. The texture was really creamy and the flavour also had a hint of a buttery like flavour that Niki told me about a few weeks ago.
I really loved the new food experience and was really happy that Lil was about to share some more of the HK culture with me. I gave her the picture I had printed and we headed home planning to meet each other again the next evening before my flight back to Taiwan.
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