Thursday catch up

Actually, this shouldn't be too hard to write, though it does require an addendum to Wednesday.

Between lunner (late lunch/early dinner) and leaving, we went to a dessert place called Lucky Dessert. It was beautiful inside, really nice and we had this girl want photos (fairly normal) of the kids, particularly Sonali. We ordered this strawberry pudding, mango roll thing covered in dessicated coconut and a durian pastry. The first two were exquisite, and something you'd expect the Japanese to produce presentation wise. The third was awful.

You ever go through Chinatown and have this horrible smell like rotting fruit and garlic? And you think "This place is a grotbox place, because it smells like rotting fruit and garlic"? That smell is Durian. And it tastes like rotten custard apple crossed with stringy mango in texture, garlic and rotten banana in flavour. You ever see a combination of flavours and think "that is so wrong"? That is durian. Simply the worst thing grown out of the ground. The pastry was beautiful, but the durian was so awful and no amount of powdered sugar on top (and there was an abundance of it) could make it edible. Even sonali hated it, so that shows how really awful it is.

Thursday, we ended up deciding to go to another local mall we saw on the way to Kowloon proper. It actually works out to be closer than Golden Palace, and it is pretty new - I'd say it's only been built in the last 4 or 5 years. We had breakky (a fairly western affair of steak, pasta and ribs - though we make them significantly better in Oz), but it still only cost about $30 Australian (I can't leave Hamish's with change from $50 and he is the cheapest by miles.

We pottered around the shops. They have this shop called Citistore, which is pretty well a upmarket Myer style store. We saw tons of hello kitty stuff, japanese stuff (The HK Chinese are big Japanophiles), remote control cars and just junk really. Nothing cheap, but not expensive either by our standards. Again, the good exchange rate is probably the cause of it.

We bought this card game called Monopoly deal. Jovia and I have been pretty well playing it nonstop whenever we are in the suite. It's loosely based on monopoly and is a bit uno like - about 80% chance and 20% hedging so that if chance fails you don't get slaughtered. All the locations on the cards are here, so the yellow card for Sham Shui Po is like a "yay!" card.

Told you we did very little, hey?

But I had a thought, especially after wandering around wednesday night, that I've avoided taking too many photos of lots of Sham Shui Po, probably out of a fair bit of snobbery. And I said that on the way back. But the fact is that there is life and everything spilling out on these streets, people being people, business, stuff, and everyone is smelly. And yeah, the buildings are grotty on the outside, but we have a housekeeper here everyday mopping floors, taking rubbish, vaccuuming, cleaning, the whole lot. There are plastic covers that are sterislised on every lift button, sign, door, handle, whatever. They are OCD about it. But the life, the area, and the people aren't sterilised. I appreciate the lack of pretentiousness. This comment would prove strangely prophetic, once again.

The weather has been wreaking havoc with our plans. Basically insert a Brisbane summer - Thundery Showers and patches of heavy rain, and then it's clear, but not for long, and you are having to take cover again.

We had dinner at Watei in the Golden Palace again. I had the same meal - a rice combo with beef and kimchi (yum!), Jovia had a beef & rice thing and the kids a ramen combo. Had a couple of plum liquers on the rocks (and they fill the glass up well) and then pottered around the shops before heading back.

We'd decided to go to Ocean Park, weather permitting on Friday.

Photos:

1. The box from the cake shop in the shopping centre near here we went to.

2. A view of lights from Golden Dragon

3. Strawberry pudding from Happy Dessert.