Hong Kong

This only covers a part of my epic journey across Asia across ~5.5 weeks. The entire itinerary is here.

Nov 22 - 24: Continuous Eating

On November 22, we left for the airport in the morning. Normally, Priority Pass lounges are shit because they're so crowded. Hanoi airport's was great. They refilled food constantly (even if they haven't run out at all)--they had delicious pho, along with a ton of other food selections. Coffee abound, and it is one of the few Priority Pass lounges left that let you have free-flowing, free alcohol.

I had 2 phos, some other noodles, egg rolls, and a whiskey. Funny how weird my food combos are when things are free.

Had some last-minute tasks to do for work, so I did those while in the lounge.

We flew and arrived to HKG at ~1PM. I love HKG.

All airports we've been to has always been a 30-minute to 1-hour wait for luggage. It took maybe 20 minutes from getting off the airplane, going through customs, waiting for our luggage (which showed up almost immediately), walking to the ground transport, and then getting on the taxi.

HKG is hands-down world's best airport; some would argue it is Changi. I'd say the latter is pretty good but I've never had a better experience (not to mention the excellence is consistent) than HKG.

Then we ate a bunch of stuff; off the top of my head:

• Sushi place where the sushi plates are delivered to you on a plastic train / tray that automagically slides the dishes to you on a rail.
• Afuri (yuzu tsukemen).
• Egglettes at Mammy Pancake.

Then went to Apita downstairs to get some groceries. I bought a bunch of chocolate milk and coffee. Coffee pricing was charm pricing: $60 HKD for a pack of 16; $70 HKG for 2 packs of 16. Obviously, you buy the latter--not bad actually, about $0.30 per packet. These are drip/pourover-coffee packets where you open up the package and the package itself has latches that attach to the sides of your cup. Then all you do is pour boiling water onto the package (which is made out of paper-filter material), and you get pretty good tasting coffee with minimum effort.

The next day (23rd), I ate / drank:

• The coffee I bought
• Coconut cream pastry / tomato-based sausage pastry from a bakery downstairs

• 8-courses at Cuisine Cuisine (a high-class Chinese restaurant). There was a 50% off coupon. It was very filling because each course has multiple plates (like a couple of dumplings + soup is 1 course). And Serena's mom was full so she gave me a lot of her portions for the last few plates. Some examples:

• Japanese pancake

• Blueberry croissant
• Oxtail
• Chicken soup / chicken

Next day (24th):

For lunch we went to a place called Ap Lei Chau. There is a famous seafood market there. How it works is you buy seafood downstairs and then go upstairs and pick a kitchen to cook it for you. We got:

• Fried squid
• Razor clams
• Geoduck (mini). On shell w/ glass noodles
• Giant shrimp (about a 1.25 feet long each). This was most expensive items
• Scallop on shell w/ glass noodles
• Milk tea + coffee as one drink (called 'yin yang' in Chinese)

At night, me and my uncle at at a Malaysian place. For only $130 HKD they gave us a starter (2 chicken wings), a big plate of food, plus a drink. Again, high volume of food and I was very satisfied. We also got beer (apple cider beer for me because I am not sophisticated). The rice was also pandan-based and had a very strong coconut scent. Was really good. Would go again. Some of the food:

Earlier in the day, we bought 4 x Guilinggao for 100 HKD since they were running a special downstairs. Normally, it costs 160 HKD. So I ate one of them for dinner and gave one to my uncle to take home.

Nov 25: Homecooked food

Had lunch with Serena's parents. It was a pretty fancy Chinese place. We ate high-quality dim sum. Almost all the time, Serena's parents pay for our meals. This time, I pretended to pee and paid--so I finally got one in.

Then, we walked with Serena's parents for a bit, around Tai Hang (region in Causeway Bay). There's a cultural center that talks about its history: it used to be a canal area. It was prone to flooding, so they raised the sea level of the entire region. Water used to rush in from rain, and fresh water that rushed to the canals were used by locals to do laundry.

There's also a once-a-year festival that night where they burn incense a long a giant dragon in Victoria Harbor. The guy working at the cultural center was very enthused about it. I don't mind going but had other plans for the night.

Went to Serena's friend's home. She had a Speediance machine; it's like Tonal and uses electromagnetic weight resistance (i.e. it generates a magnetic force that opposes against your pulling force but varying the current through a coil). While Serena and her friend's chatting away, I just worked out. After I worked out, I ate a post-workout meal which was just a slice of apple pie we brought to her place. Then, another one of Serena's friends came--she has a new baby and it is super cute. Super chubby face.

After chatting and playing with the baby for a while, we ate at Serena's aunt's place. Her place is huge. Maybe 800-900 sqft but only 1 bedroom. In Hong Kong, this generally means 3-bedrooms, but it was made instead to carve out a gigantic living room (enough for 10+ people to dine comfortably), and an equally gigantic master bedroom with a big closet area.

The kitchen's huge as well. Not only that, the kitchen itself has an AC so that you won't get too hot cooking food.

Serena's aunt took a bunch of cooking courses that taught them various French cooking techniques. It was like a Michelin-starred meal. We had:

• Seaweed soup + hand-made cuttlefish ball.
• Soy sauce chicken, yellow chicken.
• Fresh, roasted, suckling pig. Super juicy and fat. Brought in by Serena's other aunt/uncle.

• Shrimp.
• Hairy crab (Chinese mitten crab). These crabs are small but very creamy. The male has a much more dense goo in its skull. The female has a much more creamy goo; tastes like very creamy egg yolk. I ate 3.
• Ginger soup.
• Various fruits: cantalope, grapes, and something called "leen mo" which is not Google-able because I don't know English for it, but it looks like a pear / apple mix. My first time having it. Here's the fruit in question:

• Pistaccio basque cheesecake.

This was all in a single meal. I was stuffed after 2-3 hours of straight eating.

Nov 26: Local food with friends and family

Went to eat with Serena's friends. Ate more local food:

• Spicy curry fishballs
• Char siu and various meats
• Egg with rice
• Cheung fun with sesame / peanut sauce / egg
• Various beef intestines
• Cucumber coffee (more bougie and less local)

After that, we went home and rested for a bit. Ate with my family at around 7PM. We had:

• Lobster with thick noodles.
• Some vegetable soup.
• Peking duck.
• Abalone with vermicelli noodles.
• Some vegetable (I think watercress?) in a broth.
• Some creamy fruit-based dessert.
• And a couple of other dishes in between I don't remember.

Nov 27: GUESTS OF HONOR

I need to renew my Macau ID. So we wanted to stay in Macau for a day to eat. Went via boat at around 9:15AM. We ate:

• Portuguese egg tarts.
• Mixed beef intestines mixed with curry.
• Pork chop sandwich + locally famous brewed coffee.

• Goat Bakery's verison of portuguese egg tarts, which is much bigger / taller, and the inside's filled with cheese. Also had Thai green tea.
• Some noodles with beef + cold "yin yang" (see above). And toast with butter + peanut butter inside.

We originally booked St. Regis in Macau, but Serena's aunt travels for business a lot and thus had Hyatt's Globalist program. To qualify, it's like 60 nights in qualifying Hyatt hotels (think $300+/night). Anyway, as a globalist you can do what's called a "guest of honor" booking where you gift one night to someone and they get the same privileges as a Globalist:

• Late checkout
• Exclusive access to club area
• Free breakfast
• Free afternoon tea
• Free late afternoon cocktail and buffet
• Free room upgrade.

Long story short, we cancelled St. Regis because Serena's aunt graciously gifted us the Guests Of Honor. It's quite incredible. When we got back to the hotel at around 2PM after all the food above, I was completely stuffed. For the afternoon tea, I can only drink a cappucino and some water and tea.

We went up to our room and it's just HUGE. Giant living room area, with a 1 bedroom. This is nice because most hotels when I work, I'd wake Serena up; or if Serena has meetings, I'd have to stay up. Now we can work without disturbing each other's work schedule. The bathroom is also huge. There's a shower room inside the bathroom--it has a bathtub adjacent to a showering space, like a lot of Japanese shower rooms. This is nice because you can take a bath after, before, or during your shower.

The second room inside the bathroom is the toilet. And the main bathroom area is a jack and jill sink area.

After being amazed by the room, we went down to the gym. I did mostly chest, and some calves and shoulders. The gym had a machine where you can do cables, without having to adjust the height of your cables. It's hard to describe, but you can move in a very multi-dimensional way. It's very convenient to just switch from any cable-based lift you want and only switch the weights:

The annoying thing about most chest press machines is they start too far behind. This is bad for your shoulders if you go too heavy. And not a good workout if you go too light. A good workaround I learned from Sam Sulek is just to insert clips in where the machine's supposed to stop so you can force a gap. Here's what I mean:

Here's what it looks like close-up. Macau's called City of Dreams? More like City of Snap.

After you do this, the weight stack should be lifted a little bit already. And yes, this is super sketchy.

They had a scale there and I found out that I am now +10lbs from when the trip started. To my surprise, this is a lot less than I thought. It's OK, it's "off-season":

Post-gym, we went back to the room to shower. Then, it was cocktail time. We actually didn't know there's a free buffet included in cocktail hour, but there it was. I had:

• Gin & tonic
• A martini
• Whiskey sour
• Some red wine
• 2 bowls of beef noodles, with a ton of condiments (some fried chili oil sauce, peanuts, garlic, and cilantro)
• Spring rolls
• Fatty pork meat
• Some dim sum
• Passionfruit panna cotta
• Chocolate / cherry cake

Got back to the room and showered / bathed again and started typing up Nov 25 - Nov 27, where I am now.

I forgot to mention that our living room and bedroom has a giant floor-to-ceiling window view of the adjacent Wynn Palace, which houses a giant lake with light shows every 20 minutes. Each light show is different and is not the same as the other one. Each show's about 5 minutes.

In between shows, the fountains still fire and light up, but in a predictable pattern, like a screensaver.

Having the view in our room lets us skip the Wynn Palace's cable cars, which looks at the light shows but generally has a 2 hour wait.

As I'm typing this up, I keep getting distracted by the lake's light shows, which comprises of water cannons blasting tons of water everywhere, along with red and white underwater LEDs that flash and dance around the lake rapidly. During the light shows, the Morpheus building next to us has its lights dance around as well as part of the light show. Below's a sample--doesn't really do the room justice but you can use your imagination and think about what this looks like from a hotel bedroom, where the show is different every 20 minutes.

Nov 28: Taking care of business

Ate breakfast, and went to the Macau ID center to renew my ID. That was the whole purpose of going to Macau, after all.

The process was pretty quick. Though annoying because I went in with my ID, and need to leave Macau with my ID. Thus, my mom's friend's sister needs to pick up our Macau ID in Hong Kong, and then hand it back to my mom's friend (who lives in Macau) eventually, when my ID's ready to pick up (I'll be long gone by then).

After that, we went to the hotel gym for a bit and then took a boat back to Hong Kong. We gave it to my mom's friend's sister, and then went home.

Ate peking duck dinner with Serena and her friends.

Nov 29: A real gym

Met with Serena's parents for lunch. Ate really good, per usual.

Then, we walked around K11 Musea for a bit. About 7K steps. Ate Dominique Ansel's Lemon Iced Tea cake. This is what it looks like smashed up (you can Google the original). It is earl grey tea filling inside and the buttom is some breaded crust:

Then, we went to the Pure gym upstairs. This is a premium gym in Hong Kong (think cheaper Equinox) and off the top of my head, had these amenities:

• Main room'

  • 5 weight racks
  • Astroturf with 2 sleds

• Side room

  • A bunch of cardio machines
  • Stretching area

• Personal Trainer area--I'll skip this since I won't use this, but it's pretty big

• Outdoor area

  • Various TRX contraptions
  • Gymnastic rings
  • Boxing bag
  • Battle rope
  • That treadmill that's like a U-shape and looks like a tank track
  • View of Hong Kong skyline / Victoria Harbor

• Dumbbell area

  • Maybe 3-4 benches with dumbbells

• Machine area 1

  • Lat raise machine
  • Chest supported t-bar row
  • The large cable machines where there are 2 large wings to it (8 cable stations)
  • Various bench machines
  • Shoulder press machines

• Machine area 2 (legs)

  • Roman chair + some other ab thing
  • Squat / deadlift machine
  • Rear delt machine
  • Hack squat
  • Another machine that looks like you can do rows and can double as a squat machine
  • Hip thrust station
  • Single leg donkey kick machine
  • Some other station for ass
  • Calf raise machine
  • That one squat machine that cbum uses where you hook up a belt to an anchor and do squats. With a safety lever.

• Cardio area 2

  • Tons of ellipticals, treadmills, and more.
  • Floor-to-ceiling views of the Hong Kong skyline / Victoria Harbor
  • On one side of this room is glass-to-ceiling view of the top-floor area of K11 Musea, and you can see other people outside looking at the same view as you. Except you're doing cardio and they're not.

• Bathroom

  • Shower stalls.
  • Shorts / shirt / socks so you don't have to bring gym clothes. You just dispose of them so staff can launder them afterwards.

  The gym's huge so I probably forgot some machines. But I think I got most of them.

  Went to Serena's parent's place for some awesome home-cooked meal (very clean, which is good because it gives my stomach a rest). Then, went home and wrote this up.

  Nov 30: More family & friends time

  Visited my aunt who has leukemia in the morning. Normally, she's in pain but for some reason she's in a great mood when we visited. She said me + Serena's visit makes her very happy and that her good mood helps alleviate her pain.

  Cancer tells you you're going to die soon, but we're all going to die. The main difference is cancer is constantly painful, which drains your will to exist, which is the most depressing part.

  Being able to make a cancer patient happy and provide some relief (albeit only for a few hours) feels very meaningful and I'm glad I was able to visit and take her mind off the pain a little.

  She took us around the Hong Kong Heritage Museum, which was both huge and quiet. Tons of exhibits ranging from:

  • Bruce Lee
  • Old / retro toys and magazines
  • Antiques and jewelry
  • Much more

  Given how small Hong Kong is, it was surprisingly large, spanning 2 giant floors. It was also free.

  After that, we went around a nearby park where we saw old people get together and perform some songs and dance on stage. Watching, I danced as well. Aunts were entertained.

  All in all, we did around 10K steps over the course of a few hours.

  Later, we went to eat at Serena's friend's place. Her friend made tons of extremely delicious food--we brought some Japanese food + red wine as offering. The latter's surprising. Was recommended by the supermarket sales and I wasn't expecting anything, but its aftertaste is a little sweet and provided a bit of relief against the numbing spicy food, and so was a really nice pairing. Here's some pics of the food.

  

  Serena's friend also had Earl Grey Rum, which was pretty dope.

  Dec 1: Bad Bench Press and AYCE Dim Sum

  Went to the gym and recorded my bench. My right arm is lower than the left. As is my elbow. My suspicion isn't that I'm activating one side more than the other. I think my shoulder blades are asymmetric and thus sets me up in a bad benching base. Need to confirm hypothesis by filming my shoulder blades.

  Went to my favorite place, Ming Bistro in Hysen Place. This is a place where they serve high-quality dim sum, in large quantities.

  Quality + quantity = yummy. Here's a sample picture of the food:

  

  The fried milk rolls, dumpling, savory pancakes, and spicy chicken feet are most memorable. Everything else is still really good. They also gave a giant coconut / red bean drink at the end to stuff me full.

  

  And here's the menu of what we ordered.

  

  This is about 42 items.

  Total = $343 HKD for 2. ($43 USD)

  I want to sincerely apologize to Ming Bistro for literally eating your margins away.

  But I will probably do it again.

  For dinner, went to another one of Serena's friend's place to visit a fairly newly minted baby. Had takeout pizza (with various breads with dipping sauce) and cake. Good laughs & good get-together.

  Dec 2: Stroke of luck

  Did a small session of legs in gym. Due to time limitations, I maximized it by doing slow leg presses instead of squats.

  I just loaded up 4 plates each side.

  • On the positive, you don't lock out to keep tension.
  • On the negative, you go very slow. Maybe 3-4 seconds.
  • 20 reps for a set.

  As you can see, no need to go heavy. The slow reps makes your legs explode.

  Did similar sets for calves on the leg press (no calves machine), then just a set of slow hamstring curls (same method). Latter only for 1 set because I ran out of time.

  Met with Serena's parents to eat fancy chinese food. Very good:

  

  Top left to right bottom:

  • Chinese, savory soup. Tastes like a high-level chicken soup. But has cantaloupe that disintegrates to give it a little bit of sweetness. Very balanced & delicious.
  • Char siu with rice and egg.
  • Cheesy egg dish with hot pot rice.
  • Fried, moist fish with rice, along with a corn/egg, thick soup. You're supposed to ladle the soup over the rice, as a sauce. Was very delicious.

  Then, we went to a place called the Bakehouse. It's a bakery chain and very popular. Every single time, you have to wait a long time in line to sit down.

  Except this time. There was no one in line.

  Even Serena's parents said of all the times they have went to Bakehouse, it's either a shorter line or a longer one. Never no line.

  Very lucky.

  

  Yes, those are portuguese egg tarts. Unlike Lord Stow's, they don't specialize in a flaky crust. It's more of like a mini-baked bread with burnt portuguese egg custard inside. Still delicious, just different styles.

  Later, for dinner, we ate with one of Serena's aunt, whom I have not had dinner with 1-1 like this before. Brought us to more of a local place which to be honest is my style. After having eaten at so many fancy restaurants, my vibe's more the down-and-dirty, hole-in-the-wall, local food. Though I still enjoy fancy restaurants.

  This is a restaurant that specializes in fish and fish parts. We had lots of food. And it was a pretty good deal (about 1100HKD, or $140 for 4 people). Here's a sample:

  

  

  Above is like a fish hot pot, and they add broth if needed. Underneath the fish tray is a butane gas burner. Fish was very creamy and smooth. Veggies were super-fresh and crunchy.

  Below's some grilled eel. It was so juicy and fatty, it had almost a ribeye texture. They grilled it really well to the point that the natural oils came out to the surface and was absolutely out of this world. Salivating just thinking about this again:

  

  We also ordered lots of sides, not pictured.

  Dec 3: Left alone

  Serena had to go to a bridal shower today, so I'm left all alone.

  Went downstairs and got:

  • Coconut cream bread
  • Egg white fluffy bread
  • 2 thick slices of swiss roll

  All for 41HKD, about $5.25.

  Gym: Only had 35 minutes. Already went quite intense the last few days, so opted for just 3 sets of heavy curls. Hit new PR at 12 reps. But to be fair I only hit 11 reps at 40lbs prior since it's not my first exercise. And at this gym, I hit 12 reps @ 18kg (~39 lbs).

  After curls, I just did 20 mins of high-incline treadmill at a moderate pace. Sweated.

  Had lunch with Serena's parents at Kikkusan. We had:

  • Grilled uni
  • Salmon salad
  • Fried chicken + cold udon
  • Hot steamed chicken with truffle rice

  

  Per usual, it was really good.

  After that, Serena's parents took me shopping for groceries. This is because I invited my uncle to come to dinner for hot pot. I was able to buy 8 large, hand-made cuttlefish balls for only 20HKD. I also got a huge plastic bag of organic vegetables + green onion (they gave this for free) + garlic...for 18HKD. Basically a few pounds of veggies for $2 USD. Got also:

  • Wagyu beef from Donki
  • Regular beef from Donki
  • Fatty pork from Donki
  • Dumplings from a dumpling shop
  • Mixed veggies from Donki, to be used as soup base
  • Large radish from Donki which is used to soak up all flavor in broth so you can eat it after
  • High-quality, Japanese eggs you can eat raw (raw eggs are used as part of hot pot dipping sauce)

  

  I bought too much for 2 people.

  Luckily, Serena came back at around 8PM and helped out with finishing some of the food.

  Dec 4: 2 gym sessions in 1 day?!

  I woke up early to do work.

  During yesterday's bridal shower, Serena did a cooking class. She made the following:

  

  I had an egg tart for breakfast, with coffee.

  I went to Pure closeby and was very time-constrained. So I just did:

  • 3 heavy sets OHP
  • 3 sets of 10 of OHP at 70% 1RM
  • 3 sets of machine shoulder lat raises
  • 15 mins of cardio

  Was supposed to have lunch with Serena's parents, but they didn't feel well so she brought me to West Villa in Taikoo. Had the tastiest "One brother char siu" (means best char siu):

  

  After that, we went to K11 Musea and walked around a bit. When we were done digesting pork, we went to the Pure at K11 Musea again. We were time-constrained, once again, so I just tried to finish off some missing sets:

  • 2 sets of machine shoulder lat raises
  • 2 sets of 10 of OHP at 70%.
  • 3 sets of single-leg hamstring curl machine.
  • Horsed around a bit on other machines to show Serena how they work.
  • 20 mins cardio.

  Then, we rushed off to visit my aunt (see Nov 30) again, but this time in her home. Her maid cooked us tons of food:

  

  They sang karaoke and we had huge laughs. As my other uncles/aunts were there, they reminisced about the old days. And since old people do not give a fuck about anything, they let loose and just said what's on their minds. As my aunt (with leukemia) sang karaoke, my aunt's husband cried.

  Chatted until around 9:30PM and went home to sleep.

  Dec 5: Serena's masseuse. Hotboxing.

  Serena and I walked around a bit and then settled for lunch at Pizza Hut.

  Pizza Hut is great and kind of has a Chuck-E-Cheese vibe. Really great meal for kids, and especially for kids' birthday parties. What I like the most in particular is that their pizza crust has melted mozzarella inside it:

  Next, we went around and did some shopping. We just got some basic stuff like:

  • Microfiber towels
  • Wagyu meat
  • Other hotpot stuff

  Went home for a bit, and then headed out again to Serena's masseuse.

  When I came to Hong Kong 3 years ago, I visited her a few times. She's since moved to a new place. But she presses really hard. Painfully hard. The massages in Vietnam is nothing compared to this. When she finds a nerve that really hurts, she will put all her weight on it for a prolonged amount of time.

  It doesn't hurt any less after prolonged "massage."

  She also has a sauna inside her home. It's about 4 feet tall and is literally just a wooden box big enough for you to sit in. Leaning on the window is just a small clock so you know how long you've been in there.

  The great thing about this is that the masseuse literally bought pounds of fresh lemongrass, and other herbs from Thailand. They're kept in her fridge, and they're used whenever her clients (us) need to use the sauna. Instead of just having a boiler boil water, the steam is actually from herb-infused water so it smells like lemongrass and herbs, and it smells extremely potent (in a very good way).

  You basically change out of your clothes and into provided shorts.

  But it was hot. Really hot. I've been in saunas and some read 60-80C (moderately warm). Most are about 80C-90C (I'd say this is about average and not too bad to be inside for 15 mins). I've been to some that are 100C and it's scalding.

  This felt like the latter. The steam coming out of the vents after a ~3 mins feel like they are searing my buttocks. So I had to keep shuffling my butt around. Minute 5 and my shorts are completely soaked, as if I gone swimming.

  I did 2 sets of 10 minutes. With 10 minute rest in between.

  When I came out, I felt dizzy and probably overdid it.

  The reason for this is because when I looked at the temperature knob, it was at 120C.

  After the massage, we went on a food tear. We started out eating some chicken broth with noodles + fish maw:

  

  Then, we went to TST and looked at Bossini (my favorite clothing store due to their low prices and high quality clothing). We then proceeded to eat:

  • McDonald's fried chicken
  • Yam egg waffles + mochi egg waffles at TST's Mammy Pancake

  Walked around the pier a bit, then took the boat back (Star Ferry) to Central. The boat ride back at night is beautiful, you can see the brilliance of the Hong Kong Island skyline as part of your commute:

  

  Back to Taikoo, we went to a basement mall to hunt for discounted sashimi (perishables are discounted near closing as shops need to 86 inventory anyway). We're cheap that way.

  Instead of 170HKD, a pack of sashimi with:

  • 6 pieces salmon
  • 4 pieces tuna
  • 4 pieces toro
  • 4 pieces amberjack loin
  • Wasabi and soy sauce packets
  • Small, juicy yuzu you can squeeze tons of juice out of
  • Decorative leaves, flower

  Was marked down to 120HKD ($15.35).

  Ate that and then typed this up.

  Dec 6: "Standing on business"

  Did some cardio in the morning with Serena at the gym. My favorite form of Zone 2 nowadays is incline treadmill at a moderate pace.

  Time was limited so we just did 20 minutes of cardio--machine estimates ~200 calories and ~250m of elevation gain (820 feet).

  Ate lunch with Serena's parents--same place as Nov 25. Memorable dishes were:

  • Shrimp + scrambled egg. The egg was smooth and silky, not overcooked like in most American preparation. And there's a shine to it.
  • Sweet & sour pork. Unlike US sweet & sour pork, it's not corn-syrupy. The sweet & sourness comes from the peppers, as well as peaches they stir fry it with. It's also berkshire or iberico pork, so the outside is fried and nice and crispy, while the inside is moist and tender. Contrast this to what we get in Chinese restaurants in the US: doughy on the outside, texture of rubber on the inside.
  • Chicken feet--their chicken feet is really smooth and silky. The sauce that comes with it tastes pretty herbal as well.

  After that, Serena's dad took me to renew my HKID and to deposit a check.

  On my way home, I detoured to a nearby Ikea and got some sweet potato fries, matcha ice cream with red bean and pastries shaped like little fish with custard inside, and a cinnabon:

  

  Went home and finished up some work.

  Serena came back and we had the smallest hot pot I've ever had, just:

  • ~400g of beef (half wagyu, half not--latter tasted more meaty/better)
  • 2 japanese eggs
  • Bowl of veggies
  • Sweet potato fries (re-oven'd) from Ikea.

  This was for 2, so divide this amount by 2.

  Serena also bought dessert from the bakery shop downstairs, so we'll probably have some cake soon after I'm done writing this entry.

  Dec 7: Walking around and eating

  Went to West Villa with Serena's parents. Had pig lung soup which is extremely tasty.

  Pig lung's texture is very fluffy and airy. It didn't really have much taste to it as the meat's essence is absorbed into the broth. From what I can tell, the soup was made at least with:

  • Pig lung

  • Chicken feet

  • Chicken meat
  • Almonds (filtered with cloth, not seen in soup)
  • "White berry" (Gingko) which apparently you can't eat

  And probably a lot more. Here's what it looks like:

  

  After that, Serena and I went with Serena's parents to Kai Tak, where they had an investment flat. The common area's pretty great, and they had robots that help you carry luggage to your flat. Didn't see their gym though because I think I injured my back, and it costs 100 HKD to go in.

  Though all in all, very modern, and very large. They can afford to do this because they share 1 common area between 3 towers.

  Then, we went to a digital ocean exhibit. It was cute and if you registered beforehand (we didn't), you can grab an iPad where it is AR and fish are floating around. But without AR, it looks like this:

  

  At the end of the exhibit are TVs showing bright white light and a polarized screen, which lets you see the hidden image displayed in the white light.

  I explained it to Serena how it works and this other old auntie overheard and kept badgering me about the physics of how it works.

  Baffled.

  Anyway, went around to eat some more and ended up in an old school tofu place in Cheung Sha Wan. Been there since Serena's grandmother was working nearby. Pretty good.

  Bought some groceries and had mini-hot pot at home (just 500g meat between 2 and some desserts). Got this gem from nearby bakery store for 30HKD for dessert.

  

  Dec 8: Shenzhen

  Went with Serena's friends to Shenzhen. Took the high speed rail from Austin to Shenzhen. They go to ~200 km/h:

  

  The train's fast but customs take a long time so it's not as convenient as marketed.

  They're really advanced.

  EVs everywhere, with tons of affordable brands.

  Had pastries. Service is impeccable--they would give us disposable gloves when eating pastries.

  Then had lunch at a BBQ place where the skewers auto rotate. They have a little hole for you to toss used metal skewers in, and a little flap for you to open up a mini-trash can. Very convenient and I think the design's great. Also note a lot of places in Hong Kong / Shenzhen lets you straight up do your ordering from your table via QR code without a need for servers (like some airport lounges). US should adopt this because I hate tipping.

  Anyway, here's what the BBQ looks like in action:

  Oh yeah, I also had caccoon, which was pretty cool. They were squirming around and are fresh. You're supposed to eat the goo inside and spit out the insect inside. The goo's consistent, color, and taste is basically like a less fragrant hard-boiled egg yolk. Not bad, but not worth the effort to peel the shell. Pretty cute though and would order again.

  For dessert, we had ice cream and latte.

  Maitou is a famous drink in China and I had:

  • Maitou ice cream
  • Maitou latte (LFG Luckin 0DTEs)

  Here's what the Maitou latte and Maitou ice cream shop looks like:

  After that, we walked around a bit and ate dessert. I ate a tart, and we bought some snacks with us to go back to Hong Kong with.

  Shenzhen is very affordable.

  Total for 2 people in Shenzhen, including high speed rail tickets: 650HKD, or about $80 USD.

  Once we were back in HK, we chilled at the flat for a little bit and headed out again to arrive at hot pot at around ~7PM. Main highlights in hot pot were geoduck and this tea that has:

  • Grapefruit
  • Blueberry
  • Orange
  • Chia seeds
  • Dragonfruit
  • Lemon
  • Honey

  Tasted really refreshing and sweet which pairs with hot pot food quite nicely:

  

  Hotpot total: 846HKD for 2 people.

  Dec 9: Final preparations

  Serena's busy for the latter half of the day to go to a wedding, so we did the majority of the packing today to go to Japan.

  In the morning, we did a ~10 min walk to Quarry Bay. There was a place that I went years ago and loved where they just had straight up cheung fun with only sauce, and nothing fancy. Would walk with my dad there and take it to go. Used to come in a styrofoam container and even after a ~10min walk back home, opening the bag cheung fun, it'd be steaming hot.

  Was hoping we'd find it.

  We did, but instead of takeout, we ate inside for the first time. We ordered cheung fun and also lo mien with pork. The pork had very soft bones so you can eat them, and the pork itself was very soft. Yes, the bowl of noodles is as large as it looks.

  

  

  Total cost, only 41HKD (about $5 and change--not internet to look up conversion right now as I'm on the plane flying to Japan as I type this up)

  Next, we went to West Villa, again.

  Before this trip: West Villa 0 times.

  This trip: West Villa 3 times.

  It's a more premium place, but to be fair, it's really, really good. We had the pork lung soup again, which is about $50+ USD. Still insanely delicious the 2nd time around. But this time I found very interesting is they served pork liver, Taiwanese style. Most liver is bitter, but this one is probably marinated in vinegar for a bit to take most of the bitterness out. On top of that, they glazed it with a honey-based, sweeter sauce (but not too sweet) to give a really nice balance to the bitterness and the sweetness. Very yummy. We also had roast pork with very crispy skin.

  And chicken feet with abalone sauce. Here's the spread:

  

  Did some work and at around ~6PM my uncle came to visit and I had dinner with him. Walked around a Christmas x Food Truck event nearby.

  

  Then, we walked around and hunted for food for about 30-45 mins. Just wanted to see what was available and evaluate all our options before eating. Went to this place called Dumplings Station.

  So.

  Fucking.

  Good.

  For ~80HKD you get:

  • A noodle bowl of your choice
  • 6 dumplings of your choice
  • Drink of choice

  I picked the honey red dates tea, which is soothing and not too sweet. Went really well with noodles:

  

  There's tons of different flavors of dumplings. So we chose:

  1. 6 x crab dumplings (for my uncle's set)
  2. 6 x lamb cumin dumplings (for my set; I love cumin)
  3. 6 x pork + black truffle dumplings (about 60HKD, ordered separately to share)

  

  And then there's the noodles (pictured above). I did the Dan Dan mien which looks small in the menu photos, so that's why I ordered the extra 6 dumplings. But it's actually quite huge and very filling because the sauce is a heavy, peanut-butter based sauce.

  Pretty sure the sauce alone is 1000+ calories.

  Completely stuffed.

  Went home and dealt with some crypto.

  Coinbase support kind of sucks. Coinbase sent me an email that they'll lock an old account on Dec 10 so I tried to recover it. I wanted to double check if there's any hidden BTC in there I can scrape. After recovering my password, their TOS popped up and upon clicking "accept terms" in Firefox, Chrome, Edge, and on the app, the button just refreshes and nothing happens.

  Wanting to file a ticket, despite some verbiage saying that you can send emails or talk to a real person in chat:

  • The chat just has pre-ordained answers that aren't powered by AI (i.e. gives you buttons for irrelevant answers, and ends the conversation if it thinks it can't help. Asking for real person prompts the bot to do more auto-prompts and doesn't give you a human to chat with).
  • There's no way to file a ticket; when you click on things to file a ticket, it'll just lead you to help pages where at the end it'll say "if you need more help, call us."

  Since I'm traveling, I used Google Voice to call. But the good thing is they have a callback number.

  So, they called back after 30 minutes. The rep wasn't able to help and escalated the ticket. The root cause of my inability to login is that I am currently in Hong Kong. They tried to give me KYC URLs but they just redirected to the terms of service, which, again, just refreshes indefinitely.

  They said they won't close my account even if the email says so, since they cannot close accounts that have more than 0 balance.

  This bullshit took a good few hours--about til midnight, which is good because that's about the time it took for Serena to come back (I had to open the door since she didn't have keys). Normally, I'd be bored and fall asleep at around 9-10PM max.

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