Today was a fun day.  We had agreed to meet Danny’s cousin and her family for dim sum, and where they live there is a fantastic huge shopping mall.  Colour me happy!

We took the subway out to Tai Koo subway station, and the mall is right there!  And huge it was!!!  Me and Danny and the girls had time to shop around for a while before we were due to meet his cousin.  In fact, this mall has an indoor skating rink too, and Danny had brought the girls’ figure skates all the way from home, so he carried them to the mall.  Unfortunately, the kids decided they didn’t feel like skating, so all that carrying was for nothing.  We bought some new swim goggles, since the twice-daily swimming has pretty much killed their current ones!

Danny’s cousin and her husband and son met us earlier than expected, so they offered to take the kids to an outdoor playground before lunch.  Of course my kids accepted quickly, since a playground is their favourite.  Unfortunately, the skies briefly opened up and they got rained on so they had to come back inside quickly.

We found a really nice little coffee shop and had a snack.  Well, the girls had fancy cupcakes, and I just had a coffee while Danny tried a lemon-ice thing.  The cupcakes must have tasted good, since Emily’s disappeared in seconds, but they sure were a funny colour.  The cake part was a funky brownish colour.  Maybe they used brown sugar instead of white?  I don’t know, but I’m not sure I’d have eaten it.  Oh well, nobody got sick or died, so it’s all good!

By the way, you’ve heard me say that before “nobody got sick or died”.  That’s the test of foods in a foreign country, especially when you’re being adventurous.  You don’t have to love it, but you have to try it, and as long as nobody gets sick or dies from it, it really is all good.

We had really nice dim sum with Danny’s cousin’s family.  Funny thing, though, they ordered very little food, and between that and serving stuff to Stephanie that she’d eat, I really didn’t eat much at all. Her son and his wife joined us too, and they also live right above where this mall is.  After lunch, they invited the kids up to come a see where they live and play Wii.  In fact, they offered to take the kids without Danny or I.  For about one nanosecond I contemplated that, then reluctantly (yeah, right) said ok.  We agreed to meet in about an hour and a half, and Danny went on his way and I went on mine, while the kids left with Queenie and Jimmy (this is the couple that got married when we were here in December).

So, I wandered around the mall some more, in search of a snack of some sort.  Decided to live dangerously and went to “Curry in a Hurry”.  Yes, seriously.   Indian food in Hong Kong.  I ordered some kind of chicken in a wrap from the picture, and waited.  They packed it into the box you can see in the photo, kind of like a jumbo Apple Pie container from McD’s.  When I peeled it open, it was BRIGHT GREEN!!!  Yes, check out the photo. Bright freakin green curry chicken in a wrap, in Hong Kong.  Wait for it, though…

It was delicious, and “nobody got sick and nobody died”, so it was all good!!!  Yes, I live by my own motto.

We had decided to do street  eats for dinner tonight, so we warned the kids we’d be out late.  We let them swim when we got back from the mall, so they were happy, and then we headed off on the subway towards Jordan Station to get some street food.

As you can see by the greasy, delicious stuff on the plate with us, we had chicken wings on a stick, lamb on a stick, mushrooms on a stick, and some congee and donut stick.  I had decided beforehand that a beer was a good accessory to street food, so you can see that I stuck to my plan! 

The kids didn’t really eat much, and Stephanie was getting rattier by the minute, so we wandered around the outdoor night market for a bit, but it wasn’t much fun.  Dragging two whiny kids around, through heavy crowds in a market isn’t a load of laughs.

The last straw came when suddenly Emily announced she needed the bathroom and not just to pee (if you get my drift).  Ok, well the night market area has only really dirty squat toilets, and while I’ve taught Emily how to pee in those, she can’t hold herself long enough for anything else.  Thus, we ended up basically running through the market, cutting people off, and telling Emily to please hold it, until we got out to the main road and found their favourite mango dessert place, with a clean (ish) washroom.  Thankfully, our run was successful, and disaster avoided, but after dessert, the kids were pretty much done.  We did head back over to the market for a short time, but their behavior was awful, and then Emily threw out the phrase “I have a headache” for good measure, and that was our evening declared done. 

Oh yeah, and check out the Air Pollution Index, at 8pm, still very high!!  The weather has been hot, and with the humidity so high, the air isn’t very clear!