Sham Shui Po Sunday

Okey dokey - relatively cruisy day was sunday, which (fortuitous or otherwise) gives me the opportunity to think and put my thoughts onto electronic fora.

Sham Shui Po, like I said, is a relatively poorish built up area. Having said that, never, either day or night have we felt unsafe and the locals, English impaired as they are, are very friendly, and extremely fascinated by our kids. Olivia is lapping up the attention, and between Olivia's 100mph mouth in English, the locals 100mph mouths in Cantonese, and many gestures, there have been some amusing conversations to observe.

The locals are amused by Liv's absolute gregariousness, and Sonali's very typical blonde/blue and Esther is just Es' - an Anglo baby who smiles is cute in anyone's culture.

This area is grubby, grungy, but I'm not saying that in a hypercritical sense, nor am I saying it is 3rd world. Yes the outside of the buildings (observe photo one) are grubby, but everyone has at least two or more air-cons and all people live relatively well. I say it in 2 senses - 1. as an antithesis to Jesus' comment about the cup that is clean on the outside and unwashed in the middle (i.e. they are not concerned about the outside, so long as the inside is adequate), and 2. These people live outside - at the shops, eating (apparently HK'ers eat out over 300 days a year), talking, selling, playing Mahjongg.

For all its alleged issues (and I say alleged in the sense of perception being a judge and that one cannot make anything but a subjective analysis of these things), I would thoroughly recommend staying here - not just cost-wise, but you see "real" Hong Kong. It is easy to stay in 5 star, in the best suburb and say "yes, it's a nice place, I ate asian food, I'm well travelled, yada yada yada", but here, we've experienced how locals live.

The kids have had more people say hello, ask how old they are and just been human beings to them, than they have ever. And there is a little man about a street up from us (who sells cleaning products which spill out on the streets) who now recognises us, and demurely (he isn't a gregarious Chinaman) says hello, waves and just plain old fashioned acknowleges that he recognises us.

The flip side is, that sometimes, yes it does wear thin seeing the puzzled looks, pointed fingers and the like at the "foreigners". When nerves are frayed, being anything more than polite can be difficult. After a while saying "hai, sei, saam, yat" (yes, 4,3 and 1), does grate, when nerves are frayed.

Okey dokey. 270 degrees - to the west (from loungeroom) is the water, some rigs in the water, lots of lights, etc. To the east (kitchen, Esther's room, bathroom) is Kwelin Street and Shim Shui Po (the pictures I've posted), and from our bedroom/Liv & Dahli's room is North, which has more high rises that are something you'd see in Brisbane or Sydney, rather than the more grubby looking buildings to the West.

We gave the kids cereal for breakfast on Sunday, but Jovia was not feeling like bowl noodles from the supermarket, so we decided to head out for brunch around 10am. The issue is, that nothing in Hong Kong really gets going until around 11-11:30am. This has wreaked havoc with our sleeping patterns, because Jovia and I generally go to sleep around 10-11pm and wake up around 6-7am, with the kids waking up at a similar time, albeit an earlier bed time.

So, probably clinging to familiarity more than anything else, we went back to the Dragon Centre. We found a place open at around 10:30am (serving their breakfast set) on (I think) the 6th floor. We got the kids a sandwich, had a bowl of noodle, stewed pork and vegetable combo (a bit like a soup base - much the same as the Japanese have with Ramen) each, and two iced teas (green tea is a freebie) and paid less than $14 AU. Another advantage in being in the "less affluent" area. The litmus test for the quantity (quality wise it was beautiful - literally the best iced tea I've ever had and the noodles/pork/veges were yum), was that I ate and didn't want to eat until dinner, Jovia ate, fed the kids her surplus and still had some surplus and was full until dinner (as were the kids) and the kids (despite having cereal) ate, and were full until dinner. Jovia took a photo of the bowl, just to say "heck this was a great, big meal".

Came back via 7-Eleven (there is one on every street corner and they are all owned by Asians, just like Oz). At 7-Eleven here, we pay $24 HK (around $4.30 AU) for 2 bottles of coke and 2 bottles (700 ml) of water. Replace coke with beer (German Munchenal seems to be my drop of choice) and the price is much similar (beer - $2 for 500ml of German beer). Suffice to say, we live on (in this order) water, beer and coke (lemon for me).

We bludged, but ducked out back to the Golden dragon centre (via a long route on Lai Chi Kok Rd and Shek Kip Mei St, back along Yu Chau St - looking for a restaurant labelled on our photocopy map from the hotel staff) to find a feed. Stumbled across this Japanese restaurant, where we ordered Kimchi & beef rice meal for me, deep fried chicken wings, some pastry like flat spring rolls filled with seaweed, mushroom and (dog-haha) meat, a full bowl of beef (sans Kimchi) and rice for the kids (one bowl fed the two piggies), beef ramen for Jovia, beer (Asahi superdry), drinks etc - all for about $40 AU. We were as full as googs. And a beautiful feed (I cleaned up the kids and Jovia's leftovers).

Back via 7-Eleven (for some more Munchenal and water) and sleepy byes. The TV here is okay, as we get a couple of channels (like Discovery travel) from Fox. All the subtitles are in Chinese Traditional, which is amusing. We did kinda plan today (monday), but not really.

More on that to come (if I can stay awake - need to take a trip to 7-Eleven ;D )