Okinawa Cruise: Hectic Hong Kong

The Supsic Chinese laundry is open!

Since we have been to Hong Kong before, we did some low-key sightseeing concentrating on the culture: people-watching, eating our favorite noodle/rice dishes, and checking out some of the shopping. Also gave us a chance to get caught up on some laundry.

Young Chinese girls sharing a decadent dessert

The people here are endlessly fascinating. Everyone has been so kind, going out of their way to help us find things in stores and taking really good care of us here in the hotel. We’ve only seen a few western faces, so we know we are somewhat of an anomaly. Asians are very respectful of the elderly, so that helps us out too.

People are so considerate. When a person hands you something, a menu or whatever, it is always done with both hands, almost like an offering. Many people wear surgical-type masks out on the street, not because they are afraid of germs, but because they have a cold and want to protect others. These people are a bit germophobic. A man coughed on an elevator and two women near us immediately covered their mouths with their hands and remained like that until the guy got off the elevator. Speaking of elevators, we saw one with a sign “This elevator is cleaned every two hours.” Wonder how often (and how well) our elevators at home are cleaned? Actually, we’re not sure American elevators are cleaned at all!

Men's room symbol (looks like a cocktail to us!)

For all you potty freaks (you know who you are), one great feature here is the no-touch-required toilet. To flush, all you do is wave your hand over the top of the tank, and voila! All’s gone in a heartbeat.

Hidden behind pillar in tight eating quarters

We love Asian soups and have been slurping down various varieties of noodle soup every chance we get. We ate at a famous Hong Kong noodle house where no one spoke any English. They seated us behind a tight-fitting pillar which seemed rather odd. We thought maybe they can’t stand to watch our pathetic attempts at using chopsticks (lol). We had a great time even though we had no idea what the heck we were doing. The menu was all in Chinese although a picture of noodle soup helped us out there. Anne tried to order a cup of tea (how hard could that be?) but ended up with a plastic cup of hot water! We just love this crazy stuff. You never know what to expect. Few speak English in these very excellent mom & pop noodle houses, menus are seldom translated into English, and if you are not careful, you may be surprised when your food arrives!

Frank chows down on beef noodle soup

One night, we went looking for a restaurant using a Smartphone provided by the hotel. Well, Google maps got us turned around somehow and we walked many extra miles for nothing!! We decided to circle back in the direction of our hotel and find a place along the way. We found a mall with a whole floor devoted to restaurants – not just a Food Hall but really nice places. One helpful gent recommended a restaurant and it ended up being the very restaurant we had been looking for with the cell phone. It was totally bizarre, similar to the odds of winning a lottery. Obviously, we were meant to eat there!

Plates of plastic food makes ordering easy

Some other food oddities. Many restaurants use plastic food models to show what’s on the menu. Very helpful when you can’t read Chinese, and they are like little works of art.

Colorful cakes for dessert

Speaking of food as art, the pastries are out of this world. Haven’t seen such beautiful cakes since we were in Paris.

Crab tries to make an escape at the fish market

We also checked out some of the street markets that are quite common here. The Fa Yuen “wet” market held table after table of live, or fresh-prepared whole fish or fillets. Some of it was still swimming around or trying to leap out of their pools of water. Some were very strange, unusual, & interesting critters just swimming around in small trays, waiting for a patron to come along and select their evening meal.

A bag of live toads ready to be eaten for supper

All this along with some nice-looking prawn, crabs, eels, and even a nautical rope-bag of live toads and frogs – yum! Caution was required as the floors were slippery with the juices of these animals; one false move and you go down, laying in those slimy juices. A simple walk thru here and the smells of strong fishy odors that will haunt you forever. We didn’t think we’d last in a job like this and wondered how these people could stay in this job for a lifetime career. I guess if it pays the bills, it’s worth it.

Frank examines interesting creatures at the Goldfish Market

The Goldfish market is a specialty market with tons of colorful tropical fish along with any aquarium supplies you could need. The fish are displayed in liter plastic bags of water, all tied and hanging from a display rack out on the sidewalks so people can pick what they want. The fish were beautiful, so many different colors. They even sold some fish that looked like somebody had written a message on their sides, in Chinese! Almost made us wish we could bring a bag home!

Teeny turtle pets for sale

And itsy-bitsy turtles too. We haven’t seen turtles like that for sale for many years; wonder if it’s even legal anymore given all the animal rights in our country these days?

Hectic streets of Hong Kong

The sheer chaos on the streets of HK is a sight to behold. We don’t know the exact statistics, but this city seems way overpopulated beyond its ability to provide the needs of all. Especially in the space department. Maybe we are just the proverbial country bumpkins from the USA, and total neophytes to the way of big cities, but just navigating the sidewalks of downtown HK is unimaginable. You are constantly meandering thru the crowds just to get short distances from A to B.

Lots of neon on Hong Kong streets

Well, don’t be in a big hurry. Road traffic is a danger to the unwittingly impatient; almost everyone stands on corners in hoards waiting for lengthy street signals to permit them to cross. And wow!! No shock, but everyone here has a fancy schmancy cell phone, and are dangerously involved in using it, eyes downcast as they walk the busy sidewalks, and even more dangerously, as they routinely cross the over-trafficked highways. We should’a counted the number of times we needed to dodge the unconscious walkers who nonchalantly stroll along, thumbs ablaze, punching text into those things, and creating near-miss situations with approaching walkers – like us! We had several hits too!

Colorful aisles crowded with
merchandise in grocery store

It’s actually “winter” here in HK, although the temps over the past few days have been in the high 60’s and low 70’s. It’s very strange to watch another culture’s reaction to this weather. It was not unusual to watch some Hong Kongers saunter along in this outstandingly warm climate, palm trees swaying along the sidewalk, and these people are wearing winter parkas for comfort against the cold! Frank tried wearing a a thin long-sleeved shirt, but by noon it became so uncomfortable, he shed that layer and went down to short sleeve shirt, while the HK-ers continued to use their parkas!

Tomorrow we board our cruise ship, so you may need to wait awhile for our next update. Cruise ships are very poor (and expensive!) for internet use. Stay tuned – lots more to come!

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