The flight was.... Long. I was spoiled on my last flight to Asia with the benefits of first class, but settled for being a common coach passenger on this trek. It was the biggest plane I had ever been on, I think! It was Air Canada's Boeing 777 (about 450 seats according to my pal Mr. Wikipedia). Seat mates were a young man and an older lady, perfectly non-talkative the entire flight. Movies watched: Dawn of the Planet of the Aprs (yeeeeeeeesh), Billy Madison (to make up for the last one, I watched one I knew I'd like -- t-t-t-today junior!), a 2-part documentary on 1964 (woo American History nerd!) and about 30 minutes of Tammy (couple of lol moments but I fell asleep). Food wise, I found 2/3 of my meals to be great (tofu and rice with no sauce was blargh, but tofu scramble and rice wrap were amazing!). Huge hint: if you ever get hungrier than other people, pre-order the veggie meals, you get it delivered like 10 minutes before everyone else (pretty sure I got some death stares when that happened).
When I arrived, the first thing I went in search of in the HK airport was... A hairbrush. I forgot mine at home and couldn't find one there, so that's part of my mission for today! Took the airport express train into the city and arrived at HK station (HK Island). It was wonderful to see James! Especially since he had a beer and pork bun waiting for me when I arrived!
Yes, you heard that... Pork bun. I am putting my vegetarianism on hold for this trip. I want to experience new foods and new cultures and unfortunately a lot of that involves meat. I will most likely still stay away from the slabs of meat styles, but will be open to trying everything once and stick to veggies when possible.
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| James, my host with the most! |
Speaking of dinner, James and I headed off in the #searchforSzechwan. After deciding the cab line was way too long, we took a more traditional route and hopped on the subway. In Hong Kong, they have a transit card similar to London's Oyster called the Octopus (still haven't figured out the name choice yet).. But unlike London, it also can be used to make purchases at certain stores like 7-11 or Mcdonalds... It's like HK's own debit card!
We took a very busy rush hour subway to a place near James apartment. We hopped on the #11 minibus to go to a Szechuan restaurant that James' wife Zoe recommended and was later going to meet us at. Well, turns out we were on the wrong bus after having some passengers yell/explain our mistake to us in Cantonese. We hopped off and switched to a cab.
After finding the restaurant (getting lost is just a part of the adventure), we grabbed some beers and peach tea (very sugary and delicious, reminded me of those ice-tea freezies that we used to love in Grade 8). We ordered an assortment of food covered in spicy Szechuan sauce (super spicy, a little too much for this little white girl!). We had jellyfish (kind of like a crunchy slimy noodle, not my favourite), beef and green beans, chicken hot pot and a noodle dish. Even though I was a bit worried about introducing meat into my system, spicy meat at that, everything seems to be a-ok.
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| Yummy! |
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| James' view from his living room window |
Overall, a pretty eventful first 5 hours in Asia. Tried meat, got lost, fell asleep. Well, maybe it's just eventful because I'm halfway across the world! ;)
