Wednesday, December 10
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Today was a better start, sort of. It’s amazing to me how exciting it was to wake up after 4am, instead of at 1am. Yeah, as you can see by the clock, before 5am, we were all up and at it.
For the record, though, 5am is still too early to be up, especially in a country where most things don’t get moving before 9am. Unlike home, where I drive to work before 7am in heavy traffic, rush hour in the morning here doesn’t get moving at all until after 9am, then its crazy busy.
We headed down into the city again, via the escalator and went for a walk/shop. Stephanie decided she needed to have “har gow” or shrimp dumplings, usually found in a dim sum house. Couple of challenges with that—first off we were way too early for dim sum houses, and second, we were in the business district, which isn’t exactly teeming with them. We did happen upon one after about 45 mins of walking and sat and had nice dim sum. You can see by the smiles that the food was quite good and exactly what Stephy wanted. We are also currently hunting for a new housecoat, the other purchase Emily was promised. Needless to say, that’s not the easiest thing to find. We even checked expensive Marks and Spencers, but no success so far.
On the way back up towards the hotel, I got one of my very favourite treats, and likely the thing I enjoy most to eat in Hong Kong. “Do Fu Fa,” is a kind of dessert, made from silken tofu with gingery sugar water over it. There is this older man that has been selling it beneath the stairs of the escalator tunnel for as many years as we’ve been coming here. He makes and sells the BEST do fu fa. Yeah, I get that the sanitary circumstances aren’t ideal, as you can see in the photo, but I figure I’ve had it over the years, more than once each trip, and never ever had a problem, so don’t worry about it! It’s lovely, and warm, and spicy gingery good. And it’s cheap at $5HK per tub (less than $1 Cdn). Nope, no fancy bakery items that Hong Kong is famous for for me, but under-the-staircase-from-an-old-man-who-doesn’t-speak-English do fu fa and I’m happy beyond words. It’s the catalyst for me learning to say “two do fu fas, please” in Cantonese and manage the money exchange easily with him. Anything for do fu fa!
We headed back up to the hotel in the afternoon and the entire family took naps. My plan was for about 45mins of napping, and I woke up 2.5 hours later, along with both kids. Now you might think this was a good thing, since they were tired and crusty (remember, awake just after 4am) but we couldn’t wake them up. We tried everything, bribing them with a double-decker bus ride, shaking, washing their faces with cool water, nothing worked. We had them semi-conscious and got on the bus just out the front of the hotel to head to Causeway Bay area and Little Sheep hotpot. About halfway there, both kids were asleep on the bus. We hauled them into the busy restaurant, ordered food, and watched as first Emily, then Stephanie went back to sleep. Being the Mother-of-the-Year, I let them sleep and they ate absolutely nothing for their dinner. Half the serving staff and the other patrons gave us either dirty looks, or came over and asked why we weren’t feeding them, so we learned to just explain that they have jetlag, so they’d leave us be. We finished in record time and headed back in a taxi.
Emily never did wake up and Danny had to carry her up to the room (think 52 lbs of sleeping child). We managed to toss her in bed, clothes and all, still asleep, where she stayed for the night. Stephanie, on the other hand, came alive just before we left the restaurant and entertained me for a couple of hours before I convinced her to get to bed at 11pm.
Tomorrow we have some late day obligations, so we are aiming for Disneyland on Friday. The weather has been lovely, around 23 degrees, and nothing but sunshine.
