Nearing Nirvana, via pork.

04122016

Full day in Hong Kong, woke up early because there is alot we want to see here. We had the day essentially planned out before we rolled.

First sight of the day was the Ten Thousand Buddhas Monestary ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Thousand_Buddhas_Monastery ). The place is really impressive. In case you didnt know, Hong Kong is very mountainous, and an mostly an island, so getting around is kind of a hassle. The subway was going to take us an hour, and given we have so little time in a place so cool, we elected to take a cab.

The concierge hailed us a taxi, and the driver was super friendly chatting us up through his broken English. At one point he noted that the championship for some horse racing competition was here next week, and we could see it, dunno why he brought this up beyond the fact that it was one (of many) ads on the route accross the island. We asked if he liked horse racing and betting and he said "no, only eating" and made a chopstick to mouth gesture. I wasnt sure if he meant his only hobby is eating, or if he only liked horses to eat. And if he meant the latter, was he pulling our leg? or serious. Honestly neither scenario; eating horse, or horsing around seemed any more outlandish than the other.

The cabbie dropped us off and pointed us in the direction to go. The route is not very well publicized as right now they are doing construction and the HK government nor the monks want too many guests to be put in danger. We braved the danger...

The route up to the monastary is very steep in places, and is lined with many many golden statues. Given that we had no guide, and we cannot read Cantonese, i can only speculate what these things are. I think they are boddhisattvas, which are people that have reached Nirvana. I know very little of the buddhist faith or its derivatives, so you should probably go read up on it but i think these are people that reached buddhahood but refused to ascend to buddhahood so they could continue to benefit humanity in some way.

upon reaching the top we saw the monastary part (though we didnt see any monks, so it may not be a monastary, altar maybe?)

There were more statues, and the big pagoda. In the actual building is the mummified-and-gold-leafed body of the monk that built this place, along with over ten thousand buddha statues. There are no pictures allowed, and i figured i have enough ancient deities upset with me, no need to add more to the list. But it was pretty spectacular, the walls are lined from floor to cieling with thousands and thousands of 6-8" buddhas inset into the wall, with their own lighting.

after wandering around on top of the mountain we took an alternate route home, which took us past a troop of monkeys, and an active buddhist ceremnoy. The monkeys were loud, and thankfully avoided us. and the buddhist devotions were also loud, but much less frightening. The monk leads the congregation (if thats the right term) in song. beyond that i have no idea what was happening.

on the bottom of the hill we were a little hungry, so we stopped in an Ikea, because apparently their swedish meat balls are "bomb". unfortunately, this is Hong Kong, so they served the meat balls with macaroni-shell noodles, chicken broth and tomato sauce. So it wasnt that great, but it got us to our next meal.

We then made our way to the Hong Kong Heritage Museum ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_Heritage_Museum ), which this time around was dominated by a Bruce Lee exhibit, and an exhibit about the Qing Imperial weddings. The majority of the museum was free (only the wedding part cost money, and between the cost and how hungry we were we skipped it). We started with the Bruce Lee exhibit, it was exhausting, with relics from the earliest days of his life, to his last, they had copies of both his birth, and death certificate. It went through the narrative of his life; being born in San Francisco, being a child actor in the Cantonese movie scene there, moving back to Hong Kong, more movies, writing and directing his own movies, his wife and kids, his training regime, his library. It was really interesting.

The next part of the musuem was more classic museum content, a bunch of really old pottery and jewelery, some bronze, some of the stuff dated back more than 2,000 years, most was more recent, only 500 years old.

The final part of the musuem we actually went through was dedicated to cantonese opera, which is a traditional chinese art form, with singing and dancing and costumes and all the things that go into the opera that westerners are more familiar with.

After the museums we hopped a train to get further south into the denser downtown like area of Hong Kong (which is pretty rediculous because ALL of Hong Kong is hyperdense). We headed to a famous, Michelin Star holding, Trip Advisor top 10 for the past 5 years running Dimsum restaurant. It is very busy, and they squeeze you into whatever table they can, we started at a 4 top, with an old Hong Kong lady, and then a single Western guy joined us. We all ate our respective foods, exchanging smiles occasionally, but mostly eating.

We ordered a few things, shrimp and pork shumai; these were really good, fantastically hot, like should have started the bamboo steampot on fire-hot, vermicelli noodle wrapped beef; ok, pork ribs; also pretty tasty, boney but flavorfull, pork and vegetable wonton soup, im not a fan of soup, but laura liked it. Finally the last thing to come out, and the best thing by far: pork steam buns.

These were so good, the bun was sweet, dusted with sugar, and the shredded pork IN the bun was suspended in a sort of jam. The savory sweet combination was perfect.

Now full of pork, we wandered all over this part of Hong Kong. We went into some of the indoor markets for toys/model kits. I had a few kits still on my list, and i spotted one, but it was only a few USD less than what i can get shipped to my home in the States, so i didnt buy anything. The set up for these places were fascinating, each floor was crammed with stalls, each one with no more than 25 sq ft, and only they glass display to lure you in. You had to know what you are looking for, other wise you would quickly be overwhelmed.

We also waled around some of the street markets. These were finally the "Asian Markets" we expected. It was crammed with people shopping foreigner and local. The makeshift stalls were full of shit. knock off bags and watches, phone cases, shirts with engrish, stupid trinkets, just about everything could be found on the streets of Hong Kong. We tried some haggling, to buy a day bag (laura wanted something bigger and more comfortable than her purse for the excursions on the ship for water and whatnot). We found a shop, and we got them down from 120HKD to 75, the shop owner wanted 85, and tried giving us back 15 in change for our 100. So i was all keyed up, and when she handed us the 20HKD bill it was different than all the others we had gotten.

I immediately thought it was fake as we walked away, we resolved to try it in the subway ticket machine on the way to our next spot for the night... The machine spit it out, so we went to the information desk in the subway, i was looking for them to get the police so we could show them the bad shop, at that point i wasnt even worried about the 20HKD (<3USD), i was just pissed they tried to get one over on us. BUT the very nice guy behind the info desk assured us it was real, and that Hong Kong just has a whole bunch of differenet bills, he made change for us in coins, and we got our tickets. We took the train even further south to the Victoria Harbor waterfront to see the light show.

this was awesome, way more impressive than the Shanghai light show, mostly because of all the lasers.

For dinner we went to an unfortunately expensive western style pizza and crat beer place. it was getting late, and being sunday many restaurants were closing. The food was very good, the beer was ok, but it was all too expensive, we got a sausage plate that had a 5 different kinds of hot sausage, a 12" pizza and 2 draft beers and it came out to nearly 70USD. I guess we learned to avoid the super-western eateries.

Walked ourselves home, and quickly passed out