Hong Kong
In Hong Kong, there is lots to do outside, much to our surprise and delight. Â The first thing that caught our attention was the really dramatic night-time skyline. Â Each night at 7pm, there is a laser-light show with music that you can view from the shores of Kowloon. Â It is really cool-looking:
Buying fabric in Hong Kong turned out to be a bit of a different experience than anywhere else we’ve been so far. Â We looked up where we might be able to buy some fabric and found a whole lot of shops all in one area of town. Â Hong Kong has a great subway system, so we took a ride over there and this is what we found:
Since we had a full week in Hong Kong, we made sure to find the local swing scene and go to the dances. Â There are two regular dances per week in Hong Kong, run by Hong Kong Swings, and we went to both. Â The first was a Sunday dance at a BBQ restaurant and bar called “Blue Smoke” – interestingly, there is another version of Blue Smoke in NYC which I’ve eaten at while seeing a Maria Schneider concert. Â This venue was quite small and only a handful of dancers showed up, but we managed to have a great time nevertheless.
Wednesday night was a much bigger venue, set at a bar called Grappa’s Cellar, which had a great vibe and a lot more space. Â They essentially cleared the main dining portion of the restaurant to make room for the dance, and there were tables set aside for stuff and for people to sit at. Â We really worked up a sweat at this venue.
Since we wanted to meet the HK Swings people off the dance floor as well, we went afterwards to an ice bar near Grappa’s. Â There we had a number of hijinks including meeting American soldiers who worked at the US Embassy, having drinks with them, nearly getting into a fight with them as they got drunker. Â Also interesting was the bartender’s ability to make 7-layer shots and play a game where 4 random bottles from the bar are selected and then the bartender makes a drink from them.
We had a lot of fun, and made it home safely despite being rather off our heads!
While we were in Hong Kong, I had a mission – eat as much delicious food as possible. Â While in California I had developed a taste for Dim Sum and since this area is where it all started we mainly ate dim sum.
So the day after we arrived we decided to go to a Michelin Starred Dim Sum Restaurant: Tim Ho Wan. Â While it all sounds very fancy, it is just a cheap dim sum shack in the middle of Hong Kong’s Mong Kok district. Â The trick is, you have to go 2-3 hours early and get a number! Â It is all very bizarre. Â Anyway, we got there, got our number and were told that we had at least 2 hours so we left and decided to walk around for a while.
We had arranged our flight so that we arrived in Hong Kong during the day – unfortunately the only such flight was a red-eye, arriving at 7:45 in the morning.  Since we knew we’d have to wait before the hotel that we’d booked would let us check in, we hung out at the airport for a while.  It turns out that HK airport is really useful!  There is fast internet there (we uploaded hundreds of photos), a post office (for sending our souvenirs and gifts home), food and air conditioning.  We ended up spending a few hours that morning just getting organized and relaxing.
Afterwards, we took a city bus to downtown where we found our hotel with only a little trouble (imagine a small sign underneath construction scaffolding in an area with hundreds of small signs) and laid our bags down.  The hotel was just what we wanted – a room with air-con in a great location and relatively cheap.  What we hadn’t expected was the size!