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Published: July 24th 2014
Hello everyone,
Today was a pretty awesome day full of sights, smells, tastes, rain, and of course the ever presence of sweat pouring out of every single possible area sweat can come from. I had the day off from going to the hangar and I decided to try to make the best of it. I was thrilled to have Russ along with me today as my travel partner. We met for breakfast at 8:30 and at 9 we caught DB03R local bus from Discovery Bay North Plaza bus stop heading in to Sunny Bay MTR stop and then off to Prince Edward station on the Tsuen line. Today we were following a self guided tour that I downloaded on www.discoverhongkong.com called Yau Ma Tei and Mong Kok - Markets for Leisure and Pleasure. Let's be clear, it's not THAT kind of pleasure. First stop was Lui Seng Chun which is an old Chinese shophouse (tong lau) called Lui Seng Chun. The building was used as a residence as well as an Chinese medical clinic. It is a building that was standing before WWII and held Dr. Chun's family in it until the late 1990s when the family moved out and
used the building for guests. In 2008 the building was vacated and given to the HK gov't and HK Baptist University. Today the building has been restored and houses a small herbal tea shop as well as a clinic that is dedicated to the practice of traditional Chinese medicine. I looked over the tea options and found one that had licorice in it, it was the single most disgusting thing I have ever tasted. The other ingredients you will be able to read in the picture, but I promise it was awful.
Ok so on to the next stops: Tuen Po Street Bird Garden, Flower Market and Goldfish Market. The goldfish market is probably not what your thinking. It is a place where you go to buy Goldfish, I mean a whole market dedicated to selling gold fish. The little yellow or gold or white or spotted fish that we flush down the toilet when they die. That's what you thought it was? Oh, well good for you. The bird garden was really only a bird market but it was pretty cool. Connor recently got a Gecko and I have since spent some time in reptile and bird shops
to buy the little guy crickets all the time. This was nothing like that! This was an open air market where vendors in temporary huts sold birds, crickets, grass hoppers, bird cages, etc. Small birds, large birds, bird eggs, song birds, parakeets, etc. I can't imagine that there is that much of a market for these birds and bird houses, but I must be wrong because the market is open seven days a week and there are plenty of vendors. I will say one thing about the vendors though, they all seemed to sell a different kind of bird. In many of the other markets, you can find meat vendors only separated by a few other little shops and there is very little difference between them (to my untrained eye). The bird vendors all seemed to have their niche bird, bird house, egg, or bug and that was it.
The flower market was beautiful and smelled sooo good! Talk about a drastic change for the nose! A smelly bird market full of crickets and grasshoppers of every size to market where both sides of the street were filled with the most beautiful orchids and flower of any kind. The
smell was fantastic and I wanted to bad to find a nice little tea shop and sit there and enjoy the smell. So, that's what we did. We found a pastry shop on the corner and got some kind of delicious little pie (photo) and a cup of hot milk tea, as opposed to cold which is what I usually prefer. Sat and watched for 20 minutes and gave our feet a nice little break. Really, a very cool little break with a park behind us, flowers consuming our view in front of us and the hustle and bustle of HK seemingly gone. Back on our feet and off to the Goldfish market which was just like an open air pet shop selling only fish. They sold quite a bit more than gold fish, but the main product was gold fish and coi. Very elaborate salt water fish tanks set up where coral and salt water plants were raised and sold. It was cool, but we have all seen pet shops before and this really was not a whole lot different.
Fa Yen Street is street that is lined with all of the major stores for shopping, to me,
this was the street that was the least like I had expected anyplace in HK to be. It was a wide street, very busy, no small shops, no signs written in Chinese, very trendy people, and full of brand name stores. These aren't the store that you're going to find bargains in, but they are all the big names. It was well over 100 degrees today with the heat index and every time you walk buy a door to one of these stores, if someone happens to be coming out, you get blasted with the sweet relief of cool air and some type of smell designed to make you want to come in. Since I don't need a Louis Vuitton bag or a new pair of Salvador Ferragamo shoes, we didn't stop at any of the stores and just headed for the Ladies' Market. Uh oh, the Ladies' market. I got sucked into this one in a big way! They had everything!!!! They were very good at selling and getting us to come into their tents. The market is about a mile long and it seems to repeat itself every block. By that I mean, that every block there is
someone selling "copy" watches and bags, smart phone covers, shirts, typical Chinese dresses, trinkets, etc. There is no price on anything and it is a hagglers paradise. For the price of stuff I went back to what our guide in Tangier, Morocco told me: "The price of the item is whatever you think it's worth. If you can come to an agreement with the vendor and the price is right for both of you, great! If you can not, you thank them and respectfully move on." I appreciate that advice and it makes me feel like when they give me their price, I don't have to haggle them down to half or pay the full price. If it is worth it to me and the asking price is fair, pay it. If not, haggle. Russ got an iPhone case for $120 (about $15 US) and I had to get that dust off my shoulders when I talked the same person down to $100. The price started at $240 for both of us. It wasn't until a few minutes later that we realized the difference in our prices. I bought some other fun things to send home to the kids.
From the Ladies' market we walked down Shanghai street which is a sight in itself. It is one of HK's oldest thoroughfares and still has quite a few old Chinese shop-house buildings. One section of the road was like a restaurant or kitchen supply market where nearly every store was selling cookware. The cool thing about each store was that ALL of the stuff was made in house. Large metal shops are in the back of each store and they turn out all of the pots, pans, knifes, etc. They also make their own bamboo products such as cutting boards, dim sum baskets, and chop sticks. A very cool area, but I just don't need any of that type of stuff. Another half a mile or so and we were at the Jade market down on Kansu Street. A covered market where vendors sold trinkets of all shapes and sizes and every one of them knows how to say "best jade." Of course, none of the Jade is really that high of quality, but the colors in the market are amazing. I took a few pictures and then the battery on my wonderful camera died. I bought a few things
in the Jade market, but this time I actually thought the prices were fair so paid full price. I could have talked them down to half price or less, but what was the point. They didn't cost much to begin with so I was really only worrying about a few dollars and to me, it just wasn't worth it. Maybe next time 😊
It was about 2:30 and we were really hungry so we used tripadvisor to find us a good restaurant. We found one that was a highly recommended dumpling restaurant about one and a half miles away. We made our way up there and had fishball soup, beef noodles, and "fish sticks" with some much needed water. I had 3L of water in my camelback, drank every drop of it with an additional bottle, cup of tea, and water at lunch and didn't have to use the bathroom once! My shirt was dripping though, literally dripping. What are you gonna do!? Lunch was fantastic, lots of food and water for $124 HK for the two of us which again is only about $15 US. We dipped in to the Mong Kok train station
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Loou
Louis Drew
Stuck in my mind
Hey Ian, you ought be a tour book writer -- you write so well -- and with great interest. Oh your inquisitive mind for experiences -- I envy you checking all the things out that you do. It seems that you are going to be able to experience enough different things that you will probably start to have some real interest in returning to HK in the future. Yes the concept of entering a high rise to return glasses and have the name of the high rise be the same name as the owner of the glasses would seem to me to be surreal in terms of the backdrop to this reality of how it came to be that the high rise and the new plane fit a rational picture of reality for these people. Nothing here has changed too much. Lighting hit one of my plastic woven ropes holding one of my antennas and literally vaporized about a 100 feet of it. I could find no signs of any of the material from which the rope was made. It caused some minor damage with the internal electronics in the house. The strange thing was what few small pieces that I found, were completely frayed but upon close inspection there was no signs that it had been heated from lighting -- I expect that all the damage was caused by an acoustic energy blast. Hey man -- keep cool -- here's luck to you on your assignment -- will comment later.