Wetland, haircut and history

Today's forecast: Mainly fine and dry. Moderate to fresh northeasterly winds. There will be swells.
My parents both had separate plans this morning, so Flick and I were on our own. We decided to take the MTR West Rail (from Austin Station) to walk around the Hong Kong Wetland Park. After getting off at Tin Shui Wai, we saw a haircutting place in the station. QB House is an import from Japan and I was immediately sold by all of the marketing which promised a 10 minute haircut, latest technology and a pixelboard showing how long the wait was (0 min). I had to buy a TICKET from a VENDING MACHINE (even though the stylists were standing right there). A stylist quickly snipped and buzzed my very long hair while I watched a video about the company and how they train all their stylists in TOKYO! Ten minutes later, the stylist was done and they actually VACUUMED the crumbs off my head, then swept the cut hair into a vacuum hole built into the floor. THEN, I was offered a comb. All for $50 HKD!!! This experience was beyond words.
We switched to the local light rail (Trains 705 and 706 are on a circular route and run in opposite directions). At the Wetland Park stop, we got off, then had to take the very long ramps across the road and walk to the main entrance. Travelling with a baby in a stroller means finding elevators and ramps. Fortunately, Hong Kong is a very accessible city, and staff are always willing to help by opening gates or letting us in through a separate entrance. Amazingly, the main floor of the building has a mother's room with a changing table, sink and chairs for nursing.

 

The park's outdoor reserve was our first stop. We walked through the various ponds, bird hides and fields watching with a mixture of amusement and discomfort at moms berating their children for not learning enough on their walks. When we got back to Kowloon, we had lunch with Flick's family friends, here in Hong Kong for business. Wooloomooloo has a location right next to the harbour in TST East, adjacent to a busy street. It was a nice way to spend the afternoon.

 

As our museum pass was still valid, we went to check out the Hong Kong Museum of History next. It was pretty impressive, with many realistic models, all describing the history of Hong Kong.

Peng Chau

On Saturday morning, we made our way to Sheung Wan to take the 10:30 ferry to Peng Chau, one of the outlying islands west of Hong Kong Island. My uncle owns a flat there and it's his weekend getaway. Upon arrival, we were met by my parents (who took an earlier ferry) and my uncle (who went there at 07:00 to start baking an orange pound cake!). We wandered through the alleyways of small shops and restaurants towards my uncle's apartment.

 

Once we got there, we were able to enjoy the warm breeze from the beach, sitting in the open living room. The flat is on the third floor, so my uncle enjoys the use of the rooftop patio as well. It has beautiful views looking to the west and is quite lovely.

 

My uncle's plan was to start making an early dinner around three or so in the afternoon, so after munching on a light snack (cold herbal/medicinal tea, orange pound cake), we decided to head out and explore the island. There isn't much here: a few temples, restaurants, stores selling knick knacks (including much unofficial Angry Birds merchandise) and housewares. But we did stop at Les Copains D'Abord, a French cafe (!!!), for a cheese board and a few glasses of wine.

 

Dinner was freshly caught seafood prepared by my uncle at his apartment. There were shrimp, squid, fish and crab. Unfortunately, Gabe started to have a meltdown at this point, so we had to leave by six or so. We ran towards the pier and caught the ferry back to Central just in time. A few docks over was a Star Ferry so we took the long way back to Kowloon. We stayed around for the nightly laser light show at 20:00 on the Avenue of Stars. This is a pretty spectacular, well-coordinated extravaganza.

City Hall, Midlevels, Synagogue

The signage in the MTR, at the exits, on the street and inside buildings is incredible. A consistent use of colour and typefaces makes it easy to look for directions. Large MTR stations, say, those with 6 or more exits, often have huge (say 2m x 2m) maps of the surrounding area with points of interest clearly marked. When you're near the MTR, there are signs pointing you towards where the entrances are. Elevators are clearly labelled with what's on each floor.

We made our way to City Hall in Central this morning to meet my uncle for dim sum. Because we got there early, and Gabriel was hungry, we found ourselves inside the empty Concert Hall where an orchestra was rehearsing. With seats that had arms, it made a decent place for Flick to feed the baby. Dim sum at Maxim's Palace was fantastic. An enormous dining room (room for 50 round tables, that's over 500 guests!) patrolled by waitresses pushing carts that had LCD screens playing a slideshow of what was available.

We stopped by the ifc Mall in pursuit of a tea that I've been searching for since my last trip to Hong Kong five years ago. Le Gouter Bernardaud was still in operation and we were able to pick up two tins of the quatre agrumes tea. This is another ultra-luxe mall full of designer shops and absolutely sparkling in its cleanliness.

Afterwards, we went up the entire length of the Midlevels Escalator, balancing our stroller on the moving sidewalks. At the top, we took a circuitous journey along Caine Road in search of the Ohel Leah Synagogue. Without any data plan on either of our phones, we feel a bit lost staring at the paper maps in our guidebook. After walking almost an hour, and getting directions from various local residents, we found the guard outside the synagogue. He questioned us very closely to ascertain our motives before informing us that, as it was a holiday and also shabbat, we would not be able to go inside the synagogue. Doh!

We ended our afternoon by taking a swim with Gabe on the rooftop, open-air pool. We had dinner at the Three Virtues vegetarian restaurant in the mall at the corner of Jordan and Nathan Road. Again, another high-quality Buddhist vegetarian restaurant. The dishes were all quite tasty: sweet and sour "pork", braised taro and pumpkin with coconut milk, and some others.

Dumplings, Kowloon Park, Hot Pot

Flick and I went to a cha chaan tang for breakfast this morning, right on Jordan Road. I was looking for one of these eateries, serving approximations of Western food, but cheaply and fastly. For $99HKD, we each got a HK-style milk tea, toast, an egg and cheese omelette, oatmeal porridge with lean pork and corn, noodles with spam and a wiener, as well as an omelette sandwich on white bread. An interesting experience, but I'm too used to a Western style breakfast (tea/coffee, pastry, fruit, cereal, etc.)

My Dad is celebrating his birthday today, and he wanted to go to Din Tai Fung for lunch. This is a famous chain from Taiwan with outlets all over Asia. Their specialty is xiao long bao, pork dumplings with soup. We went to the outlet in the Silvercord building in Tsim Sha Tsui. The meal here was outstanding: we had several kinds of dumplings, spicy cucumbers, a marinated fish dish, sesame noodles... Highly recommended.

Afterwards, we walked through nearby Kowloon Park, checking out the old trees, the hedge maze and the sculpture garden. As it started to rain, my parents went back to the hotel but Flick and I continued on, stopping to feed Gabe at a coffee shop (blech: avoid the smoothies at Pacific Coffee Company, as they don't use real fruit), then browsing in an outlet of Muji, the Japanese chain carrying labelless knick-knacks, pens, furniture and food items. The baking nerd in me bought some candied yuzu peel and candied iyo tangerine peel (I don't even know what this is).

My uncle took us to a hotpot restaurant for dinner, to continue celebrating my Dad's birthday. Budaoweng has several locations in Hong Kong and is a combo sushi and hotpot restaurant. The interior has a very Japanese feel with paper screens separating booths, and sake barrels everywhere. The granite countertop had two holes cut out to accommodate the induction burners heating two pots of broth. We got to make up our own dipping sauces from the provided containers of chili oils, green onions, garlic (raw and browned), satay sauce and more. Our assortment of "boilables" included eel, fatty beef, lamb, skewered prawns, fish balls, tofu and various lettuces and mushrooms. At the end, when we were nearly bursting, my uncle ordered wontons and noodles to finish up the broth. As if that wasn't enough, he also brought a cake (a chestnut cream one from Italian Tomato) that the restaurant served for us. Unfortunately, Gabe couldn't last through the night, and the food didn't agree with Flick, so she had to take him home a bit early, which was a bummer.

Tailor, Paramount, HK Park, Jardine

The saga with the airline continued this morning. We booked a one-way flight from HK to Shanghai online directly with China Eastern. But they had no way of specifying that Gabriel was travelling with us. We called from Canada without any luck (they either hang up or don't answer) and finally got through to someone here in HK. They acknowledged that their website couldn't be used to book infant passengers, and told us we had to come in person to their office to be able to add Gabriel as a passenger. Aargh. We made the trek to Admiralty MTR station, taking Exit C2 to Queensway Plaza, walked around to the United Centre, went up stairs to the elevator deck, then to the 31st floor. The ticket for Gabe cost $240HKD. But at least we were finally able to get this out of the way.

We headed over to Pacific Place to go get some custom shirts made. Our Lonely Planet guidebook recommended Pacific Custom Tailors so we paid them a visit. Celebrity photos in the store included several members of Air Supply, Jane Seymour, President Clinton, and "Pierce Brosanann". The fabrics were very good quality, the patterns decent, but not a huge selection in terms of colours. I ended up getting six shirts made for $2600HKD. I'm sure I could do better elsewhere, but I was here and the staff were great. One fitting to come back for in a few days, and then they'll be ready a few days later. The food hall in the basement, grEAT, was incredible: high-end chocolates, made-to-order lunch items, Serrano ham, Thai food... absolutely amazing. This is not your average North American food court.

Lunch was at the Paramount Banquet Hall near Causeway Bay. The food was alright, and the interior was over-the-top with chandeliers and purple accent lighting and beads, but the most, MOST awesome thing about this restaurant was the blinged out wedding golf cart they had right at the front entrance. With angel wings! I was so flabbergasted that I didn't even take a picture of it. This restaurant was the first dim sum place I've ever been to that had a large, assorted dim sum steamer: one big bamboo basket with five or six different items.

Heading back to Admiralty, we made our way to Hong Kong Park and strolled around the grounds. The aviary and ponds were quite nice, but the humid weather wasn't.

We finished up our day by going to my Mom's third cousin's place in Jardine's Lookout. It was a late night, and Gabe hasn't adjusted to the time change yet. We were all exhausted by the time we took the bus, MTR, etc. back to our hotel.

Park and Art

We started the day off by meeting my uncle in the lobby. He got us China Mobile SIM cards that have dual numbers: one while you're in Hong Kong and one while you're in Mainland China. It worked fine in my unlocked Nexus One. Breakfast was at a dim sum place just next to our hotel. It wasn't particularly memorable, but a great start to our first full day in Hong Kong.

 

Flick and I walked around a local park for a bit before deciding to go to the Hong Kong Museum of Art. There was a lot of pottery, calligraphy and paintings. In the evening, I got some takeout from the nearby Sino-Vegetarian Restaurant: fried rice with pork and basil, corn and seafood soup, and a fried bean curd skin sticks. Total cost: $142HKD. I appreciated how the dipping sauce containers actually had a hinge and closed completely.

Early Morning Stroll along Nathan Road

Today's forecast: Cloudy with occasional rain. The maximum temperature will be about 27 degrees. Moderate to fresh easterly winds, strong offshore and on high ground at first.
We had a pretty decent sleep last night, going to bed around 20:00, waking once at 22:00 when Gabe woke, and again at 04:00 this morning. We were ready to head out around 06:30 before my parents got up. Flick and I decided to walk down Nathan Road from our hotel which is just north of Jordan Station. Our stroll took us past St. Andrew's Church outside of which we saw many banyan trees.
We made it all the way to the Avenue of Stars where we took in the infamous skyline shrouded in fog. On our way back, we took the underground tunnels to Tsim Sha Tsui station and subwayed it back. It's not even 10:00 and we feel we've done so much already!

Hong Kong Adventures

We landed safe and sound in Hong Kong. Gabe was a trouper on the flight. Bringing the breast feeding pillow was the best idea because it gave Gabe a place to sit and play and sleep....  He was happy or sleeping for the vast majority of the trip. The person sitting next to us commented on what a great baby he was! (Incidentally, we made her life a little bit miserable anyway because she refused to trade the window for the aisle and so we were just up and down lots of the flight).

Best of all, because Gabe did so little sleeping on the way, we went to bed at 5:30 PM local time and woke up around 5 AM this morning. Gabe was in such a good mood he decided to grace us with his weekly poop. We are all now well rested, bathed, and ready to begin our eastern adventures.

Ready, Set, Go!

Yesterday was a blur of getting the house ready and packing:

• Making tomato sauce from the last tomatoes
• Moving all the baby stuff out of the living room
• Cleaning the kitchen
• Ripping out the garden
• Fixing the downspout
• Writing letters of recommendation
• Multiple loads of laundry and dishes
• Downing our second dose of Dukoral 

We only have three pieces of checked luggage, two carry-ons and an umbrella stroller. Not too bad, considering all the stuff we need for Gabe.

Gabe hasn't had his weekly poop. Fingers crossed that he waits until we land!

Planning for Asia

Flick and I have talked about going on a longer trip with Gabe for a while now. We figure he's still pretty portable (i.e. still being breast-fed) and having my parents accompany us will give us an extra set of hands to help take care of him. Flick has never been to Asia, my Dad hasn't been back in a while, and none of us have ever been to Shanghai.

Over the last few weeks, we've been researching and planning and booking. Some sites that have been helpful:

• Agoda - Discount hotel booking, focused on Asia. Part of Priceline. Has some traveller reviews too, but not as many as TripAdvisor.
• Expedia.ca - Allows you to build your own discounted travel package, e.g. flight + hotel
• TripAdvisor - Huge list of traveller reviews from around the world. Good for verifying recommendations.

We've now got almost all the hotels and flights booked, so the countdown begins. While we're gone, we won't be updating our baby blog nor my baking one. Hopefully, we'll be able to get around the Golden Shield (aka Great Firewall of China) and post here or on my Flickr stream, either via a mail-to-blog service or tunnelling through a VPN.

Meanwhile, here are some links to pictures and stories from China:

• What Are Young Chinese Thinking About? (chinaSMACK)
• China: daily life (The Big Picture, boston.com)
• China: Daily Life Sept. 2011 (The Big Picture, boston.com)

Weekend in NYC, Part 2

On Sunday morning, we headed back to the Lower East Side for brunch at Little Giant. Although they don't normally do large groups (we were almost 20), the owner agreed to accommodate us. I quite enjoyed the selection of baked goods, especially the melt-in-your-mouth buttermilk biscuit (emphasis on the butter).

After our meal, we went on a walking tour of the Lower East Side, guided by a friend of Dr. S' family. As we listened to our guide describe the history of the area, we stopped outside the Tenement Museum and almost missed noticing that we were right outside a gelato shop. Not just a gelato shop, a gelato lab. Unfortunately, I was so stuffed from the morning that I couldn't even indulge in a sample. Another item for the next trip.

We made our way towards Seward Park, stopping in at Kossar's Bialys for a warm, oniony bread snack. Our guide described the history of The Forward, a Jewish-American newspaper as we stood outside the Forward Building, the former office of the publication. Walking in this part of the Lower East Side, you can't help but notice all of the Chinese stores and signs everywhere. It reminded me of an essay I read a while ago about New York Jews and Chinese food.

Our next stop was the Museum at Eldridge Street, a restored synagogue. We attended a special concert called The Mystical Trumpeter in the synagogue to celebrate Rosh Hashanah. Four performers played from different parts of the sanctuary, sometimes together, often solo. The avant-garde and improvised pieces were largely atonal, often just breathy sounds and squeaks. We left after the first half and had drinks at Les Enfants Terribles, where most of the wait staff spoke French, and the menu had many interesting African-inspired selections.

We had a whirlwind of a weekend, packed with activities and it all went by so quickly. What impressed me most about New York City was the density of the buildings and stores, and the vibrancy of the people on the streets. I didn't plan to do or see anything in particular on this trip, but I would love to explore more of the neighbourhoods and eat more of the food next time I am here.

Weekend in NYC, Part 1

Dr. S and I went to New York City for a weekend trip to celebrate her father's birthday. Our afternoon flight on Air Canada landed late at LaGuardia, and we immediately hopped in a cab to go to Carmine's in the Theater District. This boisterous and crowded restaurant was in full swing by the time we got there at 20:00. Everything was served family-style, with massive platters of salad, eggplant parmesan and veal scallopine weighing down our table. Our dessert selection ended up being a gigantic banana split/cake/ice cream concoction shaped like a ship, fittingly named Titanic. Pretty tasty, great for a large group.

In the morning, we left our hotel and headed for the Union Square Greenmarket. With a bright sky overhead, we perused the stalls, many selling many local and organic items. I was impressed by the range, say, of lettuces or herbs or tomatoes. It's amazing that this market runs four days a week, 10 hours per day. We noshed on olive bread, cheeses and giant peaches... an unconventional but tasty breakfast!

Our next stop was at the Essex Street Market, an enclosed market building in the Lower East Side. We were told of a shop that sold chocolate-covered bacon by a New York friend at dinner and had to check it out. Roni-Sue's Chocolates is a tiny shop with barely enough room for a dozen people to stand inside. The display featured about 20 kinds of chocolates. Interestingly, I recognized a few pieces from the recipes in Peter Greweling's Chocolates and Confections. We learned that the bacon is purchased in the market, then deep-fried by another restaurant, then dipped in chocolate on the premises. And now, dear reader, is when you find out that your inexperienced traveller made a crucial error. He did not sample any of the bacon-chocolate, nor purchase any. I had thought we would be back the next day and didn't want it to melt on our walk. Oh well.

Later in the day, I decided to walk down Fifth Avenue towards Central Park. It's a fancy street, full of high-end fashion retailers and lots of tourists. Near the golden statue of Sherman at the edge of the park, I met up with Dr. S and spent some time watching a breakdancing show before heading into the park.

As one of the most famous landmarks in New York City, I only knew of it by name and didn't realize it was so big: 4.1 km from south to north, spanning 50 blocks. It has a pond, a zoo, horse-drawn carriage rides and spacious avenues. We only spent about 20 minutes walking around, but it's a charming green space in the middle of Manhattan.

For dinner, we went to Vong, a French-Thai restaurant. I didn't get any photos of the food (partly out of embarassment, partly due to poor lighting) but let me say that it was superb. Lobster-daikon rolls full of plump sweet flesh with zing from slivers of finger. Duck breast in a tangy tamarind sauce. Vegetarian pad thai. A piece of salmon perfectly cooked. And for dessert, warm Valrhona chocolate cake with coconut sorbet. Fantastic.

Our evening entertainment was a show at the Music Box Theatre called August: Osage County. The set was incredible, a three-story miniature house that let you see the characters go up and down and in and out. The story was dark but with lots of humour, an Oklahoman family drawn together after a death. I recognized Madeline Martin in the cast from her role in Showtime's Californication. IMDB tells me she is just 15, incredible! Dr. S and I walked home with the fading neon lights of Broadway behind us.