Let's go back to Hong Kong!!

Hong Kong at nighttime from MEGABOX

Sorry for the long delay. I've been very busy seeing many people I haven't seen in a while, and also visiting many family members.

So I have been on many adventures in the past few days after Macau. Let's start off with my day in Mongkok.

I decided to have a little ME time and wandered the streets of "ladies' market" in Mongkok. I picked up a few trinkets and card games (monopoly deal and cranium) on the cheap. I ended up striking a conversation in English with a person from Germany over price gauging. He was suspecting the people of raising the prices when they saw white people and I told them that this was truly possible. In the end, we worked out an arrangement where he basically *hired* me for an hour to help bargain for him and his family. So we wandered for about an hour, buying things from electronics to shirts. It was fun for me to haggle with the vendors while being able to speak English to someone! In the end, he treated me to some delicious street food and drinks, and gave me $100 HKD!

Fried pork "large intestine" OM-NOM-NOM

After this encounter, I found a place called "shopping mall" (how creative) and I walked up, surprised to find... AN ALL GUY'S SHOPPING CENTER! This was amazing to me, how every shop was dedicated to clothing for MEN. W0W unbelievable! Anyways, I spent a good two to three horus there and ended up buying two pairs of jeans, a few belts and a few shirts. I did see some other cool things in the store. There was this shop that sold 3-D t-shirts (shirts with 3-D images of Mario and other characters) but that store wasn't open and the pictures didn't show any 3D whatsoever. I did also see a shop that exclusively sold...

Figurines... made of folded paper!!

I watched the lady make them for a few minutes and it looked tedious! I did not envy her but the figures were gorgeous!

The next day was somewhat uneventful, but I did end up going with my friend to a video arcade that also had crane games! Including this one...

Ice cream crane machine!

I tried it like five times, not because I wanted any ice cream but I wanted to look PRO. But it wasn't meant to be, that ice cream was much too slippery! =(

The next day was a day full of new and interesting foods. For breakfast/lunch, my mom and I went to the "cooked food center" connected to the market to try some dumplings.

These may look like simple, regular dumplings to you but these were actually crack filled addiction dumplings... OK... maybe they were made of regular LAMB meat. But there was nothing regular about them. They were delicious! The wrap was just right, not too thick or pasty and they were cooked just right. The lamb meat was made with very little additional sauce added in, so that it preserved a lot of original lamb taste. The dumplins were so juicy and was packed with so much flavor! They were so good, my mom bought four dozen home for family! Did I mention it only cost $3.50 USD per dozen? =)

Later that night, my mom and I went to visit my aunt and cousin in Kwun Tong. We went to a mall called MEGABOX (the view from the top of the post is from there) and wandered around the shops. We walked up to the food court and tried a few items from each of the shops there.

Firstly,

Burgers! But not just any burgers, these burgers had buns made of rice! The first one was with "asian" pork and was very good, and we also tried the seafood one but it was only ok. But it was interesting to see how Asian people adapt and still put rice in every meal!

Secondly, we all had some

RAMEN! Living in Southern California for four years randomly gives me cravings for ramen so I went to grab some at the nearest store. It was actually very good, the soup base was very tasty, just the right amount of salt, with seafood and tempura rice on the side. I regret not telling them not to put bean sprouts in it but that is my own fault, not remembering bean sprouts come in these kinds of dishes in Asia.

My fingers are tired from all this typing so I am going to take a break and write about my wakeboarding adventures tomorrow! Until then! =)