Many things have changed in our Hong Kong lives in the year 2012. I like to think of the majority of these changes as an “upgrade” from our 2011 Hong Kong experience. And although the past year was certainly full of lots of good, the recipe that makes up the year of the Dragon will undoubtedly result in something even better. In my next few posts I hope to update you guys on many of these changes, and the experiences that have come along with them.

The biggest and most crucial change of all: Em and I fiiiinally moved from Ma On Shan [aka: The Boonies, The middle of nowhere, “basically Mainland China”, or Bumblef*ck]  and onto Hong Kong Island!!! GAME CHANGER. This is like scoring a seat upgrade at the Superbowl from your original 10-dollars-a beverage nosebleed bleacher seat, to an all-you-can-drink front row 50-yard line ticket.  Life was exciting before, but this is soooo much better!

Moving from Ma On Shan to HK Island is similar to moving from the ‘hood in Newark, NJ to somewhere in Manhattan. While you may be able to afford a more spacious apartment for your money when you stay in the slums, it is well worth the move even if it does mean you will be inhabiting a shoebox-sized flat.  [and if you can even believe it, you actually get LESS sq. footage for your buck in Hong Kong than you do in NYC. Ugh!]

There are a ton of things about living on The Island that make life a bit sweeter, but I would like to start out with a really important one: THE FOOD. Food plays such an important role in happiness, and you learn this the hard way when you live in Ma On Shan for a year. …Spoken like a true fat kid, Kristin.

 Although the Ma On Shan Sunshine City Plaza & Sunshine Bazaar shopping malls [ßfantastic names for malls, right??] graciously provided us with a choice between classy establishments like Mcdonalds, KFC, or my personal fave “Daddy’s Kitchen”, I am happy to say that we have had a food upgrade!  And while the Horizon Inn & Suites Park n’ Shop grocery store carried the delicacies of Sarah Lee oven-roasted turkey lunchmeat and 3 different flavors of Lay’s Stax potato chips for when we needed familiar comfort food [talk about desperate], the days of abnormal eating habits are over! No more eating turkey-lunch-meat quesadillas 3 to 6 nights a week! We can find just about anything now that we live here. YAY!

I have a series of side stories that I think are necessary to share with you in order for you to truly understand our period of abnormal eating patterns in 2011. I think that these stories will leave you with a pretty accurate perception of Ma On Shan wining and dining and how Em and I coped….

1.) Emily Fowler is a professional quesadilla chef. Emily flipped quesadillas on our hotplate at the Horizon Suites at LEAST 3 nights a week during our food struggle because she always craved “normal food”. Since our usual groceries were not accessible, Em substituted turkey lunch meat for the usual choice, chicken—Points for creativity.

I am confident that no human being in the world has ever consumed so many quesadillas in a 6 month period. I am also confident that making a turkey-lunch-meat quesadilla is ghetto… not “normal”.

2.) To couple with Emily’s nontraditional quesadilla binge, when my cravings came I chose to reach for the ever-so-healthy Lay’s Stax. My personal favorite? Salt and Vinegar. Now, I am aware that the “Once they pop you just can’t stop” slogan belongs to Pringles, but I assure you that it applies to any and all chips that come in a tube canister. I cleaned up shop with Lay’s Stax. It was equally as impressive as it is disgusting. I am unsure if I will ever dare to eat them again.

3.) As an alternative to chips and cereal for dinner, I also was known to practice an irregular meal schedule in order to avoid it. The “One large meal per day Plan”, consisted of me scarfing down an enormous lunch at one of the more normal restaurants located near our office. I would get full enough that I could skip the painful decision of what to eat for dinner. It was like 1/3 of an eating disorder. I think I’ll call it “Ma On Shanorexia”. 

4.) And last but not least is the Ice Cream Intervention. Em and I had to work separate shifts last year when we first arrived. I would work late on days when she got off early, and vice versa. We had taken a trip to the Philippines for Chinese New Year, and when we returned we both came down with a bug. Mine cleared up in a few days, but Em had it worse. Due to that pesky bug, we could not keep down solid food. Ice cream became the preferred and primary source of sustenance.

Emily sort of got on the ice cream train and never hopped off. I swear to the Big Man that every single time I got home I found Emily devouring a pint of ice cream. I started to get concerned. I came in one day after work to find my roomie on the couch in her PJ’s, Haagen-Dazs and spoon in-hand…AGAIN. She was like an ice cream disposal. Not even kidding, that girl was mowing down 2 pints a week, easy. She was reminding me of that lady on the TV show Strange Addictions who ONLY ate popsicles. I could not keep it in anymore, I had to intervene.

“Emily… you have a problem.”  I said, as I stood in the open doorway, stopped in my tracks, “Put… down… the spoon. This is not okay!” The funny part is that I was completely straight faced and serious when I said it. hahaha

At first she looked up at me, peering over the rim of her half eaten pint as if she was a bit offended, but after a few minutes of careful contemplation her eyes softened and she lowered the pint of Chocolate. Em gave up ice cream for a solid few months after that. She quit cold turkey. Luckily, no rehab was necessary and now she is able to enjoy the hard-stuff on occasion without relapsing. 

I think you get the picture. While looking back on it, all of these food stories are definitely just as humorous as they are awful. It is similar to the feeling I had when I saw my bunk-beds for the first time. Laugh? Cry? Laugh/cry?

Hong Kong Island has endless options for dining; it offers cuisine from all over the world.  In addition to the abundant availability of the Western-style foods that we had missed so much while we lived in the New Territories, The Island is also home to the best authentic Asian meals I have had. The “food upgrade” I speak of includes it all. No snubbing the rice and noodles here, because I am a huuuge fan of Asian cuisine. I’m known to dominate some noodle bowls and dumplings. Yum yum yum. #thephomonster

Where we live now, Causeway Bay, is full of awesome little hole-in-the-wall authentic restaurants. [I’ll take the time to explain what Causeway Bay is like in the next post, too!] Em, Logan, and I frequent these little shops and do our best to mingle with some locals. We have now mastered the “menu point” to the things/pictures we want on the menu when we are ready to order. I mean, if I am being completely honest, we sometimes even mess the “point” up and get brought the wrong thing…but hey, what else are we supposed to do when it is impossible to pick up on Cantonese!?

While the majority of our food experiences are great ones now [hooray! we can find salads AND sandwiches regularily], we do periodically have a run-in with a meal that makes for an entertaining story.

Em and I recently went to a little authentic restaurant and decided we would try pointing to some new things. Typically I stick to variations on noodle bowls, veggies, and dumplings/won tons, but we thought we’d switch it up this time…be a little adventurous, ya know? We just went in blind this time and trusted our instincts and our pointer fingers.

And now we know our instincts are awful.

We saw the words “Chop Suey” on the menu and thought to ourselves.. “I feel like I’ve heard that word in America. Must be normal. Lets try it!”

What showed up on our table was a plate of dried noodles with a mess of all different pieces and parts of random types of mystery meat. GAG. It was a pile of one of the most hideous looking plates of food I have ever encountered. It looked like something my dog threw up. Naaasty. After a little research we later found out that “Chop Suey” literally translates into “Assorted Peices”. Lightbulb!

So, after writing three full pages for you on the topic of food, we can conclude a few things:

First of all, I clearly spend waaaay too much time thinking about eating… haha. No, but on a more serious note, the meals, restaurants, and food here are a big part of what makes living abroad so much fun. These experiences that I have had, both the good ones and the bad, all make a significant contribution to the big adventure that is Hong Kong life.  Although we are certainly grateful for our food upgrade in the year of the Dragon, I am also SO glad that we have the ‘quesadilla days’ to look back and laugh about!

I am sitting wide awake at 5:30 am after just falling asleep about 3 hours ago. I am feeling the wrath of the first real case of jetlag that I have experienced since I moved to Hong Kong a whole year ago. Needless to say, I had truly been a lucky traveler in 2011, because this shit is bunk. My eyeballs might fall out of my head before my lids decide to close.

I am willing to admit that I may have gotten a bit cocky about my travel “talent”, my ability to travel back and forth almost painlessly in the past. Actually, I am absolutely sure that I was cocky about my ability to travel comfortably and with minimal jetlag. And gee, I know I can get cheeky sometimes, but I do not think I deserve such extreme punishment for my comfy-flight- non-jetlag-bragging in the past!  OK KARMA?

If I said that I didn’t see this one coming and that I did not expect to have jetlag this time around, I would certainly be a BIG fat liar! FACT. I anticipated the trouble brewing as soon as my bum hit that darn seat cushion; I saw this brutal aftermath barreling in my direction at full throttle as soon as the plane taxied from the gate.

 As you may have gathered by now, my flight back was not exaaactly the comfortable experience that I have had in the past. Nope, not at all. In fact, it was painful…and I would like to share with you the experience…all 26 excruciating hours of it.

Let me start with what I expected my flight to go like…

Board the plane. Sit in pre-selected window seat. Put on my trusty blue snuggie.

[Ehm, puhlease do not judge me. It is a traveling miracle, I swear. It is also a great conversation piece because almost guaranteed someone will ask you “is that, um… a Snuggie?” and you will say, “Yes, sir… it is certainly a blanket with sleeves.” And then think to yourself defensively, “WHAT, sir? It is a genius invention AND a perfect travel companion. Please, do not look at me with those judging eyes.” haha]

Put in my headphones and choose which movie/music to briefly listen to. Figure out how to actually position my little hotpink half doughnut neck pillow. You know, the one that every international traveler feels like we have to buy before a long flight simply because everyone you see in the waiting area has one? After a while of fidgeting I usually find a way to use it that is “comfortable”.

[Admittedly, I only bought one of these before my first flight because I always see them in airports.  So, logically, I thought they must be comfortable.  The truth? Welp, they are not… It took me quite some time to figure out a proper way to use that bad boy. I swear there has to be a more practical pillow design for an airplane seat? I mean, probably not if all I ever see is that damn doughnut everywhere, but really? I asked Em and she had the same experience. So its def not just me. That thing is awkward. Haha… No worries though, I am a veteran now so I make due. My hotpink doughnut pillow has become an awkward staple. Along with the snuggie. haha]

When the plane takes off, I listen to 10-15 minutes of whatever Rom-Com I chose. And then….BAM!! I go into a travel coma.

 [but not kidding, I typically sleep almost the entire plane ride. I am not exaggerating one bit. I am unsure what it is about being in a moving plane, but let me tell you, it normally puts me out like a light. It is like magic. The plane takes off and I am Sleeping Beauty. < it’s actually not beautiful, I’m pretty sure I drool.]

While I sleep, I will undoubtedly miss a meal or two. [blessing!] Sometimes they wake me up for food, sometimes not. Either way is okay with me since airplane food is basically frightening. Hours and hours and hours pass, and then…Wakey wakey!! By this time I have only a fraction of time left on the plane.

 [Considering it takes me 4 hours to drive from the airport in Wisconsin to my home, which I have made about a bazillion times in a minivan crammed full of 6 yelling, screaming, giant Musbachs, this part of a flight is a piece of cake. Man do I wish we had free drinks and personal TVs in that minivan for all of those years!]

So, I spend the last few hours finishing the Rom-Com that I started. Maybe watch another one? And after a few hours of pretty enjoyable downtime and relaxing, TA-DAAAA! Plane lands and I arrive safely and well rested on the other side of the planet.

It’s painless. It’s perfect. And I sleep enough that my jetlag is mild.

In stark contrast, this time around was far from my usual experience…

When I checked in and requested a window seat, the lady asked me if I would like an exit row. I was EXTATIC. The exit row is a tall girl’s DREAM. So much room to stretch my ridiculously long limbs. I felt like it was the luckiest day of my life. I thought “wow, I seeeeriously have the best flight experiences!”.

Little did I know that it would actually be my demise…for a few different reasons.

First of all, I indeed did get assigned an exit row. Unfortunately, it was an Aisle seat exit row.[WOMP WOMMPPP!] The beauty of the window seat is that I am able to lean against the window to fall asleep. I have mastered the window/doughnut pillow-positioning perfectly. And now that I have experienced the wrath of an Aisle seat, I am pretty confident that there is no possible way to get comfortable when you don’t have a surface to rest your head against. I am now 100% certain that it is impossible for me to fall asleep without a window seat. I spent the next 14 hours straight fidgeting with that damn doughnut pillow and over the course of FIFTEEN F-ING HOURS I did not find even one comfortable position.

This was frustrating.

Secondly, I failed to anticipate that people with babies and small children are typically seated at the exit rows. This enables them to stand up and calm their crying infants down or chase around their screaming toddlers. Now, I love me some babies. I especially love Asian babies. But I am not a huge fan of babies on planes. Right next to me. For 14 hours.

These two harsh realities of the exit row aisle seat were enough to make this flight a living, wiiiide awake, nightmare. It is safe to say that the exit row has lost its appeal. It’s not sexy. At all.

So to make an already long story a bit shorter, you can imagine that not sleeping a wink sort of put a wrench in my usual flight agenda. Experiencing a flight while awake had a lot of negatives. I ate every shitty meal. I could feel my legs and ankles swelling. I could not stop thinking about how tired I was. I exhausted all movie options. Boredom… I also didn’t have my snuggie— total bummer!

…And that was only the first leg of the trip!

I then had a layover in Korea. [A FIVE F*CKING HOUR LAYOVER] Since I didn’t sleep a G.D. wink on the first flight, I was miserable as I fought to stay awake for five more hours at the airport. My computer died. My ipod died. The outlets were not compatible (which I had totally forgot about). I didn’t have phone service. But I survived. Admittedly, I fought back tears quite a few times….but I survived!

My flight also got delayed. [FML, cue fighting back tears]

Welp, 20-some hours later, I finally made it back to Hong Kong. And now I’m here. With the worst case of jetlag ever.  I hope that this is not a bad omen or something. It is certainly not the way that I wanted to spend my first few days back.  I feel a little bit like I’m being welcomed by the city with a sarcastic “HAPPY 2012, Kristin! Welcome back to HK,” all while being flipped the double-birds and glared at by the stink-eye. Haha. Oh snap!

So Its been almost a whole year since my last post. It is puh-the-tic. But I’m starting back up again!The fact of the matter is, I really love writing and I think it’s a shame not to document some of the experiences that we’re having over here. So, my Chinese New Year Resolution for THE YEAR OF THE DRAGON (my year, woop!) is to start writing again. 

I wrote this next post right when I got here and just never managed to upload it… expect more to follow as there is a TON to update! I’ll get crackin’!

Now that it is spring time, Em and I have been experiencing that all-too-familiar hankering to day drink. Something about nice weather just provokes that craving and we had to do something to subdue this urge. Solution: brunch.

There is a very famous restaurant in Hong Kong called JUMBO. Jumbo is a floating restaurant out in the middle of the water. There is a separate restaurant on the rooftop of Jumbo called Top Deck that serves an afternoon brunch buffet, including (most importantly) bottomless champagne. We decided it was about time we checked this off of our HK list, so Em rallied the troops and we all decided to meet at Jumbo in Aberdeen at 1 on Sunday.

[Cheers! new friends]

Emily and I still have not quite gotten our bearings straight just yet, and although we are managing to get ourselves around Hong Kong so far, I wouldn’t say we have mastered the art of public transportation just yet. I mean, can you really blame us? There are about a jillion types of public transportation that you can use here. There are the mini-busses, double-decker busses, “mtr” system (which is like the metro/subway), the ferry, and taxis of course. It is great, but I am sure that once we really get to know the area, getting from A to B will be a much more effective endeavor. Right now, the commute is a timely activity. Considering the language barrier between us and the drivers of these vehicles, we never really know once we board where we are going to end up. It is sort of just a blind faith that you are taking the correct route…which doesn’t aaalways work to our advantage. Em has had a couple more bad experiences with hopping on the wrong bus than I have so far, but I also think she has taken more risks with unfamiliar routes. In any case, because we live so far outside the city we constantly have to make fairly significant commutes, and since no one else we know has any idea where Ma On Shan is, we are usually on our own figuring out what transportation system will be the best choice.

Em and I have never actually been to Aberdeen and to be honest I had no idea where it actually was. Yes, I understand that taking a good hard look at a map would probably solve that problem for me in 30 seconds, but since I have been stripped of my smartphone navigating just seems so much more difficult. Oh how I miss my beloved Droid! So Em and I looked up some directions and gave ourselves 2 hours to get there. We left Ma On Shan at about 11 and took a shuttle from our hotel to Tsim Tsa Tsui. Once we got to TST we took the mtr to Central, where we were supposed to find a bus station and take Route 70. Luckily we found our way to the station right in time to board. Route 70 was an “express” bus to Aberdeen, and supposedly took us right to the harbor where we could get to the restaurant. After 45 minutes of riding on the double decker, we were let off in some random place with no idea where to head.

“Hmmm, this does not look promising” I thought to myself as I scanned the crowd and surroundings. We decided to give a friend a call before we got ourselves too lost. Steph told us to find the closest cab to take us, since we were not familiar with the area. So Em and I trudged down the sidewalks of Aberdeen in anticipation for a cab to drive by. 2 blocks later, we spotted the red taxi.

I hopped in the cab—“Can you please take us to Jumbo Floating Restaurant please?” I said to the cabby as Emily started to crawl in aside me.

“Flo-tee Res-raun? AH NOOO!” replied the cabby as he violently gestured in the opposite direction “TWO MINUTE!!” he yelled at us as he aggressively pointed down the street.

“Uhh” Emily and exchanged looks, a little bit startled by the eruption of yelling and pointing that our simple request had provoked. “Sooooo, we should walk that way then?” I asked again, pointing.

“Yes, yes, TWO MINUTE” he barked back as he tried to shoo us out of his car.

“Can’t you just take uuuusssss??” Emily pleaded, as he peeled away. (Haha—this made me crack up)

So, after being harassed by an extremely annoyed cab driver, we started to walk in the direction we were told. He was right. After about 2 minutes we found a sign directing us to the dock where we could catch a ferry to JUMBO. We hopped on a ferry and were taken out to the floating restaurant.

At this point, I was ready for that drink—or five. We arrived at our table where a few of our friends were already seated. It was an absolutely amazing day for an afternoon brunch outside. The temperature reached the high 70’s and it was all sunshine. The view from the restaurant was gorgeous. Perfection.

[How jealous are you?? ps, pictures compliments of Charlie White]

We spent the next 5 hours eating plate after plate of an assortment of amazing food, drinking glass after glass after glass of champagne, and getting to know everyone who had joined us. The food served was not the traditional breakfast/lunch dishes that we are used to having for brunch in the States. Instead there was an assortment of cold and hot dishes; everything from salads, veggies, sushi & sashimi, crab legs and shrimp to Thai entrees, seafood dishes, duck tacos, eggs florentine & much much more. And then of course, there was the dessert buffet… which I aggressively attacked. YUM.

After hours of downing endless amounts of champagne, we were cut off. The restaurant must have decided they would go broke if they served us anymore champagne, and we regretfully turned in our flutes. We hopped on the ferry back to Aberdeen and collectively decided that it was much too early to end our Sunday Funday. One of the guys has an apartment with an open rooftop and invited us to continue the party up there. Clearly we unanimously decided to accept that offer and we headed back into the city.

Continuing the party out on the roof top proved to be a great decision. The weather stayed beautiful and we had a really awesome view of the race track in Hapy Valley, where horse races are hosted in HK.

[Gorgeous view? check, check!] 

After slugging a few beers on the rooftop and being completely envious of this guys pad, Em and I grabbed some dinner with a couple of our new friends. With a solid day of fun behind us we headed back to Ma On Shan early enough to get a good nights sleep and recharge for the upcoming work week.

Great weather, good food, & new friends: It turned out to be a perfect Sunday. 

Sai Kung is a region of Hong Kong located in the New Territories. It boasts some of the most beautiful terrain and landscape views in HK. The town is located right on the water and it is widely known for its fishing industry and seafood restaurants.

While we were shopping, Sam and Amanda’s youngest son, James, explained to us what we had in store when they told us we were going to get seafood in Sai Kung. We would get to pick out the live animals that we wanted and then the kitchen would prepare it for us. I had never done anything like this before—choosing my food and looking it in the eyes (if it has them) before sending it to be murdered for my own indulgence sort of made me uneasy. I was excited to try something new, but I also was a bit nervous. I knew that there were going to be some interesting foods served with this meal, and although I am always down to try new things (“you should always try everything twice”—I live by that rule) I was certain that I would probably not be a fan of all of them!

We arrived in Sai Kung and Sam dropped us off in front of the restaurant while he went to park the car. It was right by the water, so the air smelled like the sea. When we turned the corner we walked up to what appeared to be a market. There it was: every type of squirming seafood you could imagine…ALIVE. I am sure that this place would have been a vegan’s worst nightmare. Each tank was packed with piles of living, breathing, wiggling specimen of the sea. When I say that there was every type of seafood you can think of… I mean it. There was even a tank with Starfish in it. STARFISH? How could you possibly prepare a Starfish?

There were tanks with the little guys: assorted shell fish, sea snails, and little shrimp…and then there were the monsters. When I saw the tanks full of lobsters, crabs, squid, and prawns I could not believe my eyes. THEY WERE GIGANTIC.

Growing up in Wisconsin, seafood was not very often incorporated into our meals. Since there isn’t exactly an ocean nearby, seafood (especially lobster and crab) were always associated with special occasions—normally in a nice or expensive restaurant. I didn’t grow up eating seafood and the lobsters and crabs that I had eaten before sure as hell were nothing like this.

The lobsters that I have seen and eaten in the past were probably roughly the size of a large rodent. These lobsters were closer to the size of a dog! They were probably 2 feet in length. Enormous!!…and to be honest, kiiinda scary! I honestly had no idea a lobster could grow to be so large. The crabs were no different. The body of each crab was larger than the size of my head, and each of its legs was a good foot and a half in length. These creatures were gargantuan. I imagine that they could tear a human being apart, limb by limb! I just sat there wide-eyed staring at my surroundings while people picked out the animal of their choice, threw it in a big plastic bag, and sent it back to the kitchen to be prepared (and murdered I guess…). I wasn’t very actively involved in choosing our meal; I was too busy staring at the lobsters that were the size of a small child. Sam made sure to get the guy at the market to bind ours up so that Emily and I could take a picture holding it… As you can see by the painless expressions on our faces, we were both totally at ease with that thing in our grip!

Sam and James chose a variety of creatures for us to eat and we headed into the restaurant.

One thing about dining in China that I really like is that meals are always eaten at a round table. I suppose this has the most to do with the fact that Chinese meals are served “family style” rather than everyone ordering their own entrée. I love it. It enables you to try so many things.

What I like most about the round table though, is that it also ensures that you can hear and see all of the people you are with. The entire group can successfully carry a conversation that everyone is able to engage in. Even if you get stuck sitting next to or across from “that guy”(or girl) that never stops talking about the most boring shit ever, you’re not trapped there thinking “FML” while you stuff your face and painfully endure the 2 hour meal. I think we’ve all been there…seated in a less than desirable place on a long rectangular table so that you’re entirely unable to hear the hilarious joke that has eeeveryone rolling with laughter on the other end? That’s the worst. Or when the person next to you so politely turns their back to you in order to hear the conversation on the far end, consequently leaving you cut off from all of the action and entertainment? Such a drag. Well people, there is a very easy solution to this dinner party problem: the round table.

Dear Restaurants in America, Please… embrace this. Practice this. Purchase some round tables so that “that guy” doesn’t keep cramping my style at group dinner parties!

Anyway, we tried an awful lot of seafood at dinner. Some of which was delicious, and some of which made me rethink the “you should always try everything twice” motto. Sea snails, for example, were not my cup of tea. You have to stab them with this little wooden skewer and pry them out of the shell to eat them. When you do this, it appears as if the meat is it is made of rubber. I’m not a huge fan of real chewy or rubbery textures, so I could tell just from watching everyone pry their snails that there was a good chance I would gag. I was right. I did not think the snail tasted good in general… It actually did not have a whole lot of flavor at all. It was real chewy and it was a blessing I was able to swallow it. Instead of prying snails, I made the heaping pile of shrimp in front of me my primary focus. Yum, Yum, Yum!

The next things we tried were scallops, sea urchin, and squid. I went one for three on this round, too. I love scallops, and these ones were amazing. They served them right on the half shell with a type of rice noodle piled on top. I thought the preparation was really pretty too. The shells took me back to the Little Mermaid days. Haha. Trying the squid was sort of brutal. The texture problem got me again. Rats! The flavor of the squid dish was much better than the snail, but the little suction-cup things on the tentacles creeped me out big-time. James politely served me “the good pieces” of the squid, which means the more of those suction-cups on the piece the better. Errr, no no no you take the best pieces, I insist!

Probably the most unique thing I tried was the sea urchin. Sea urchin is served cut in half so that the outer body acts as a bowl. The part that you eat is the inside, which looks like a thick golden yellow mush. I only tried a little spoonful and I fully dressed it with soy sauce and wasabi. It actually wasn’t nearly as disgusting as it appeared to be, although I can’t say I would ever request it.

The food just kept coming and coming (as usual) and last we were served prawns and lobster in cheese sauce. The “prawns” were not the same type of prawn that I was familiar with. They were not a giant shrimp-like thing. I’m not exactly sure how to explain what it was, but it tasted great. The prickly shell of the prawn was heavily seasoned in a spicy powder which was really flavorful. Getting the meat from the prawns was sort of difficult, but James helped me out. You had to cut it which scissors and then pry out the meat. Well worth the work.

The giant beast of a lobster that we chose was prepared in pasta with cheese sauce. Considering cheese is my favorite food in the entire world, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I also thought my arteries might clog by just looking at it. Just one lobster provided enough meat to feed 6 of us, and each of us had more than one hearty serving. The chunks of meat were the size of a baseball and there were so many in the dish. It was unreal.

We ended the meal stuffed to the brim. I was ready to fall into a food coma and fully prepared to experience nightmares of that giant live lobster.

After the haircut Amanda went to get some acupuncture done. One of her sisters told her that she got acupuncture for weight loss and that she saw results, so Amanda decided she would give it a whirl. Apparently getting pricked by needles in certain areas of your body will make you lose your appetite? Umm… sign me up! All of these noodles I’ve been eating are starting to take their toll!

 As if they had not already been generous enough, Sam and Amanda invited us to join them and their son James for dinner Sai Kung later that night. Rather than heading all the way back to Ma On Shan, Sam, Em and I decided to find ways to kill time in the city while we waited for Amanda to finish being poked and prodded. Naturally, we decided to go shopping.

Sam had overheard me mention that I needed a new pair of reading glasses, so he offered to take us to a store where he was friendly with the owner. Immediately the eye doctor (orrr, I think he was an eye doctor because he wore a white coat and checked my vision right there in the back room of the store?) put out a tray of thick plastic black-rimmed glasses in front of me. This style is really trendy in Hong Kong right now—another type of Asian flare! You even see young people wearing these glasses without the lenses just to be stylish; “fashion lenses”. Now, although I secretly loved this nerdy HK trend, I never realistically foresaw myself purchasing such a piece of Asian flare. But Emily told me to and so I did.

I’m unsure why exactly this is, but I have noticed that it does not really take much persuasion from Em in order for me to just go ahead and do things. She is actually dangerous to shop with because 9 times out of 10 she says “yeah, buy it!”…and so I do? I like to think if she told me to jump off a cliff (or whatever that saying is) I wouldn’t be so quick to jump…but to be honest, when it comes to things as important as purchasing my very first piece of flare, I am glad she is always there. Sometimes I just need her to give me the extra nudge toward making the right decision.

In any case,  Em said the word and I went for it. I bought myself my first real piece of Asian flare! SO exciting. Bangs and hipster glasses all in one day, gosh I’m trendy. (Sam said “Now you look so young. Now you look like school girl. Hehe!”) I think a Hello Kitty sweater is in the works next…

After our business was done at the glasses store, Sam wanted to take us to a mall called ELEMENTS. Malls are EVERYWHERE in Hong Kong. I say this, and you probably don’t even come close to understanding the reality of this statement. Malls are literally everywhere. There is more shopping in a square mile of Hong Kong than in the entire state of Wisconsin—not that that says a whole lot. Umm… there is more shopping in one square mile of Hong Kong than there are cows in the entiiiire state of Wisconsin. That’ll drive home the point!  Elements is a really nice mall. It has everything from lower-end more affordable shops to all the designer stores, a huge movie theatre, and It even has an ice-skating rink (which I hope to twirl around on/wipe out on someday in the near future).

Em and I decided to head into Zara to do some shopping in a store that actually carries Western sizes (YES!). Sam came with us… Before I continue on with the story of this shopping experience, I want to explain something:

In Hong Kong, the dynamic that you observe between men and women is a little bit different than it is in the states. When you see a couple in Hong Kong it is not uncommon for the man to be at a woman’s side carrying her purse and belongings. Considering that designer handbags are the ONLY handbags here, you see an awful lot of Asian men carrying Louis’ around!

So to the point: Once we got into Zara and started moseying around the store, Sam stuck by my side. He quickly grabbed my purse and jacket out of my arms and insisted that he would hold on to them for me while I shopped. I’m not going to lie, shopping with Sam was great!! He explained to me that he often goes shopping with Amanda to help her pick the best things, and from what I observe, this is a pretty common occurrence with couples in HK. Every time I picked up something that I liked, first he would give me his honest opinion (which I know is brutally honest, as I have been subject to my share of blunt honesty since I’ve been here. My favorite time was when the doorman of our building told me that Emily and I looked like sisters, except that she was thinner than me. Then he made this gesture which appeared to be his way of communicating that I looked more like a big broad giant ape. Gee, thanks doorman! You really know how to make a gal feel beautiful.) After determining whether or not he thought it was stylish enough to consider, Sam would snatch the item out of my hands so that I was free to continue browsing without having the burden of lugging around the things I wished to try on. I couldn’t stop smiling while I shopped and thought about the situation at hand: this man, 20 years older than me and a foot & a half shorter than me, following me around the store with a mountain of my things swallowing him whole. Not only did I find this pattern of behavior extremely entertaining, but I also really enjoyed having Sam as my shopping partner. We went to quite a few stores and even after Amanda returned and joined us, Sam stuck loyally by my side.  It was nice. Hmm…The perks of a Hong Kongese husband… maaaybe I shouldn’t rule it out after all?? Haha.

We shopped for quite some time while we waited for Sabba to join us, then we headed out to Sai Kung for a seafood dinner that we will surely remember forever!

(Alllriiiiighty, Lets try this again!)

Before I get to the next few posts, an important introduction is in order!

INTRODUCING: Sam Lo & Amanda Ko

For the time being we share an office space with another company. The owners, Sam Lo and Amanda Ko, are a Hong Kongese couple. These two are seriously a frickin’ Godsend.  Without their help I am sure that the transition would not have gone so smoothly and that it would have been much more difficult to make the adjustment. They are constantly showing us the ropes of Hong Kong, teaching us about the culture, and bringing us to see and experience new things. These two are an overwhelmingly generous duo, and we are beyond lucky to have them. Last Saturday Emily and I had the pleasure of spending the entire day with Sam and Amanda, which turned out to be quite a memorable one!

The Haircut

Earlier in the week we asked Amanda if she knew of a place in Hong Kong that we could go to get a haircut. Emily decided that she had one split-end too many and I was feeling a little restless with my look, so we made it our mission to spruce up the ol’ hair-do. Amanda offered to take us to the place in Tsim Sha Tsui that she and Sam go, and she made us appointments for the upcoming Saturday. We planned to meet Amanda in the lobby of our building at 11:15 am on Saturday.

I’m not proud to admit it, but I think this was the very first time that I had ever woken up before noon on a Saturday since the day that we landed. A typical Friday night out in Hong Kong normally transitions seamlessly into Saturday morning, due to the fact that bars here never close and there is no one there to kick my butt off the dance floor and out the door at a reasonable hour. As you can imagine, sleeping in becomes a necessary step in the recovery process, and this Saturday morning was no exception. When it came time to meet Amanda at 11:15 that morning, Em and I were suffering the all-too-familiar brutal aftermath of a night out in Lan Kwai Fong.

With our best attempt to ignore the wrath of our hangover, we slapped a smile on our faces and jumped in the pimped out mini-van that Sam and Amanda arrived in. Before our appointments, we decided to grab some traditional dim sum for lunch. It is always great going out to eat with Sam and Amanda for a few different reasons. First of all, they can actually read the menu which tends to be important in the dining-out process. Most of the Chinese restaurants will provide an English menu for us, but typically it is an amended version and only has a small portion of what the Cantonese menu offers. Not only is it helpful to dine with people who can effectively order our meal, but Sam and Amanda also know all of the most delicious things to get and also include items that they know will be new for us to try! (these things are not always so delicious…)

Dining out in Hong Kong with a hangover is not exactly like heading to the nearest diner in the USA where they serve 24-hour breakfast for recovery food accompanied by a bottomless glass of ice water. For starters, meals here are not served with cold water. Instead, you are given hot tea and sometimes a glass of hot water with your meal. This puts a slight damper on the re-hydration process. In order to get cold water, you have to request it in a bottle. If you simply ask for “water” you will promptly receive a warm glass. Anyway, after scarfing down a delicious array of dim sum and a few bottles of water we were feeling much better, and we all headed downstairs to get our hair done.

We walked through the door and Sam and Amanda greeted the hairdressers in Cantonese. We soon realized that none of the employees spoke English. Oh dear. There was going to be a language barrier between me and the dude who was cutting my hair… No. Big. Deal?

Sam introduced me to my hairdresser.

“Kristin, this is Rice.” Sam said, “He will cut yo haya.”

“Err… rice?” I thought to myself “Did I hear that correctly?” I sure did!

[It is common in East Asia for the people to have 2 first names. Their given name is a traditional name that is used in the home while growing up and then some people also choose to have an American name. Sam and Amanda, for example have different Chinese given names that they were called when they were children. Amanda explained to me that this is because the given names are very difficult for westerners to pronounce and understand. I am under the impression that it is up to the individual to choose the American name that they desire to be called. The funny thing about the American names is that sometimes rather than a commonly known name (like Sam or Amanda) the person chooses something a liiiittle more unconventional. Like Rice. Haha.]

My hairdresser Rice is the cutest thing I have ever seen. He had an edgy look; he wore turquoise plaid shirt and big plastic black-rimmed glasses. Plus, anyone who chooses to be named after a type of food is automatically good in my book.  I immediately liked Rice, and for the first time in my life I sat in the hotseat and didn’t feel a stitch of anxiety. 

I’m not sure exactly why but I was feeling an itch to make a change, so I decided to get some bangs cut. Maybe it was some sort of subliminal thing? Bangs are pretty common among the people here— so trendy of me! Maybe I subconsciously thought that it would help me blend in? (umm, fat chance.) I know some of you are probably thinking “For the love of God Kristin, it’s just bangs!” but let me assure you, this was a big step for me. I had been rocking the same long boring hairstyle for the last decade, and anyone who has ever had the misfortune of being in my presence before, during or after a hair appointment knows that haircuts are not exactly my favorite activity. Normally haircuts give me anxiety and I automatically hate the end result even though nobody else can even recognize a change. It’s silly, but it’s true. There are sometimes even tears—reeeeal mature, I know. This took some courage on my part, but hey…New country, new haircut! My thought process on the matter went a little bit like this:

If it turns out that I look hideous, who cares? Literally nobody. I’m in a place where I know zero people. If people make fun of me, I would never even know since I don’t speak a lick of Cantonese. Plus, I have a feeling that I am frequently the butt of Cantonese jokes whether I have a bad haircut or not. Em and I have deduced this conclusion after experiencing a consistent pattern of specific behavior from passerby.  Every 3^rd person we pass on the street looks up at the top of our heads, then takes a gander at our feet (we assume to check and see if there is some sort of heel or stilt attached) and then with a look of utter astonishment/terror looks back up at our heads as if they have just encountered a rare breed of wild animal. It’s charming, really… Jerks.

Anyway, I brought in a picture of the perfectly cut bangs that I desired and showed it to Rice—and thank God I did because communicating through speech was not an option. He took a look at the picture for no more than 5 seconds, which was far from reassuring, and off he went. And guess what? For the first time in my entire life the finished product looked exactly like the picture.

Welp, I just wasted the last hour of my life crafting a perfectly written post only to have it VANISH when I pressed “create post”.  $*%& ?&%^$@!!!!! I AM SO MAD! 

From now on I guess I’ll be writing a draft in MS Word and doing the good ol’ copy & paste. Rookie mistake. FML.

I suppose I owe all of my devoted readers (all 6 of you, haha) an apology. It has been 2 weeks or so since my last post. From here on out I am going to make a conscious effort to blog a little bit more frequently, but life in Hong Kong gets busy! 

Em and I were sick for quite a while after we returned from the Philippines in early February. I’m not sure what brought this on, but if one of us was feeling good, the other was a mess. There were two things about getting ill in a foreign country that really really sucked: 1.) We had NO idea how to go about making a doctor’s appointment, and 2.) Being sick and miserable really makes you start to get homesick.

I decided to just wait out being sick, but Emily had it a lot worse and decided after a few days that a doctor’s appointment was necessary. Aside from the fact that we just had NO IDEA where exactly to go to see a doctor or if the medical system was similar to in the US, we also had yet to receive our insurance cards which made us feel even more uneasy about the process.

Over the course of my life, I always went to a clinic when I was sick to see our family practitioner or the hospital for emergencies. I think that there are small private practices around in the US, but not like the ones here… On the side of the sidewalks, there are what I assume are small private practices. I draw this conclusion because of the lit up florescent signs above the door that say something like “Doctors Office”. It’s a bit strange because these little doctors offices are wedged between two completely normal types of business, like a boutique on one side and a bakery on the other. It makes the idea of going to one of these offices a little bit sketchy when it appears to be as easy as going in to purchase a loaf of bread. 

In anycase, Em went to one of these clinics for a lack of knowing where else to go. She came back with about 10 different types of medicine and one question: “if my doctor had yellow rotting teeth, that’s probably not a good sign, right??”

Apparently the little doctors office that she went to was pretty normal, aside from the fact that the doctor she saw had never used a tooth brush in his life. Mm, gross! I think she had the right to question why the heck a doctor, who knows the importance of hygiene from a scientific perspective, would neglect proper care of his teeth… Teeth do reflect a person’s hygiene and cleanliness, both things that I would sure hope my doctor practices as much as he preaches!

There was one side effect of being sick that the hilbilly-tooth doctor could not perscribe for: homesickness. You know how when you’re sick you just want to be cuddled while you watch romantic comedies all day and someone brings you food and drink and medicine while playing with your hair all day? (no? that must just me…hm, ok. embarassing.) Well as a result of feeling like crap and craving some comfort, Em and I had our first bout of minor homesickness. 

While rest and medicine can cure being sick, there was only one thing that could cure Emily’s homesickness… a huge meal from Outback Steakhouse! haha. As soon as we knew were able to keep food down, we planned a trip into the city to Outback—THANK GOD THEY HAVE THEM HERE! Nothin like a Bloomin’ Onion and 8oz steak to ease the homesick episode. 

Our trip to Outback did the trick, and kicked of a start to an amazing weekend ahead!

While being in Boracay Island was a wonderful vacation, I think that Em and I can both agree that we were not exactly the typical duo to embark on an island get-away together. Our man-scoping proved to be a little bit more difficult than we would have preferred considering that every gorgeous man that we scouted normally had some chick on his arm. Sweet. Mingling was not an easy task for two white gals either, since my radar left me with the impression that cute Asian girls are in high-demand in that place (real shocker). But in addition to the loads of love birds and honeymooners, there were also the not-so-appealing couples.

Every now and again we’d spot a pair that would strike us with that feeling of uneasiness— The cute, tiny, young Filipina along side of a big, old, fat creepster who looks 3 times his date’s age. Actually, this happened more often than “every now and again”; on Boracay Island this was common. When I see a couple like this I cannot help but immediately think of all of the time spent in my women’s studies courses in college learning about sex trafficking and sex tourism in 3rd World countries. I never thought I would actually be in a place where I could see these things in practice.

On one hand, it seems a bit presumptuous to assume that these girls are with these men against their will, however, after taking a second look at the nasty dude that they are accompanying there’s no way I can justify the couple under normal circumstances. It is equally as sad as it is disgusting. Some of these girls looked as if they were no older than 12 years old. I did a little bit of further research after we got back and found that sex tourism has been on the rise in the Philippines while tourism in the islands continues to grow. Boracay was named specifically as one of the primary areas. I’m not exactly sure how a grown man can justify these actions, but it really made me want to vomit. I’m pretty sure anyone who buys a child for sexual recreation deserves to be shot.

In conclusion, next time I go to Boracay Island I hope to be on the arm of a tall & handsome manly man who can lather me with suntan lotion while I get my tan on…However, being with Em was a great alternative to those poor little Filipinas!