Month: June 2024

The Geek Diaries – Hong Kong 2024 – Day 14 & 15

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Day 14 – 20th March 2024

I had some free time in the morning, so I decided to do some laundry. In the hotel I was staying in, there’s a laundry room. There are two main disadvantages to this. 1. You need a HK mobile number and 2. There’s only 2 washers and 2 dryers. It was a pain in the a*** just to wait for each person to use the washer then again wait for the dryer.

Did a lot of reading in between each time I went to the laundry room. I almost finished reading The Housemaid’s Secret by Freida McFadden!! (The week before, I finished Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver – such a long book, but it will definitely be a future classical reading like To Kill a Mockingbird).

After doing the laundry and resting a bit more, I went back to Sai Kung – DaddyChef’s home village since I hadn’t done my blessings with my ancestors because it was raining on the day I went back. I managed to get some roast pork from the fresh food market, and quickly did some shopping…

Shouldn’t forget about the street art… I think this has been there for a fairly long time if I remember correctly.

Back in DaddyChef’s home village, and went on an impromptu boat trip with one of my cousins and his son… Pretty cool right? The area is a private part of the sea, so not many people go there.

Then back for dinner before sunset. Didn’t eat too much rice, but had a lot of the spring rolls made by the housemaids. 😋😋😋

Day 15 – 21st March 2024

My free day to go shopping! So back to Ma On Shan I go. I prefer this place than going to the Shatin New Town Plaza, purely because it’s cheaper and there’s a lot of different shops to browse around. New Town Plaza has too many brands but it doesn’t has that HK cheap shopping that I like. Uniqueness is what I was looking for. Not brands.

They had finally changed the display to the Easter display, and there was a filming crew to do their Easter advert thing. I think I briefly saw the ad somewhere… and I thought, wow, I was there before it started!

After shopping, I found a place called Super Super Congee and Noodles that sold noodles with beef brisket and wonton and Shanghai style fried beef and flat noodles. I took it back to the hotel as a takeaway… Obviouslly I used the self-order kiosk machines. I had time to choose as other people like to order at the desk.

It was amazing! I wondered why a lot of the older generation went there to eat. Good portions. I even stopped the person packing too many sauces because I was going to throw them away anyway… it would be such a waste.

The beef brisket was tender. Wonton was fresh. The noodles was great. The Shanghai noodles was a bit oily but well dressed in sauce, and very tasty!

Total came to $110! Amazing price. And better than the prices in Shatin New Town Plaza!

Address: Shop 2243, 2/F, MOSTown (Phase 4), 18 On Luk Street, Ma On Shan

⭐⭐⭐

In the evening, after my long outing of shopping, I had two requests (for the same thing) that same day, and another mission from MummyGeek.

So I went out again! I was tired and a little grumpy but I still forced myself to go out… I also wanted to find the Boox Palma before going back home (at least have a look for it), but every shop I went into had an old Boox, Kindle, Kobo and other ebook devices. No shop had it! (I eventually bought a secondhand one on the Boox Euroshop for a cheaper price). The reason I wanted it is because I could read either Kobo, Kindle and Libby ebooks all in one device in the palm of my hand with an e-ink screen… A lot of people seem to love it… 🤭

The two requests of the same request were from two different people – it was to find gum for Mrs Hen and Mrs Travels. Hahahahahah… I guess I had to go and buy them. You can’t find some of these flavours in Europe.

In the midst of looking for gum and a bigger 7Eleven store, where I knew there was in the other, older shopping mall, I bought my dinner… A McDonald’s… This was MummyGeek’s request. To enjoy myself with fattening food before I returned back. I had used the self-service kiosk. Bought a Chicken Nugget Happy Meal with an orange juice, and a Chicken Sub meal with 2 hot wings, a milkshake (I think it was chocolate or Oreo flavour… can’t remember). They don’t seem to do Happy Meals in boxes anymore…

The girl packing my food was so slow, and too vigilant that she forgot the seaweed seasoning for my fries… 😫 I didn’t want to go back, so left it at that. (When I worked in McD’s, I just wanted to do things fast and get out ASAP!).

The most surprising part of this meal was the lid of the drinks. They use sippy cup style lids, so would pop back the tiny mouth covering part, and then lift the cup to your mouth and suck the drink out. They don’t use straws anymore… not even paper ones. I guess the HK McDonald’s marketing team already knew that paper straws are rubbish, it takes away the flavour from the drinks… I getcha! Well, I was happy with the new innovative lids. Reduce plastic waste but don’t create more waste than needed.

On the other hand the Happy Meal “toy” was not innovative enough… boring!

I was very, very stuffed (because of the late lunch and now early dinner). This meal cost me HK$83.50. Cheaper than the UK!!

Address: Shop 8 & 20, Level 3, Hilton Centre, 3-9 Sha Tin Centre St, Shatin, Hong Kong

⭐⭐⭐

That night I drank alcohol! During my Ma On Shan visit in the morning, I had went into a Japanese convenience store and found a zero sugar chu-hi. Yay!! I’ve been looking forward to this!! Nice but bitter! Wished it had some sweetner in it… as it was fairly bitter.

Do you think zero sugar alcohol is getting more popular these days? Yes, I think it is. Especially for people who are health conscience or diabetic. It’s something to look forward to… I need to find this stuff in the UK (haven’t been to Japan Centre for a while…).

End of Day 15.

The Geek Diaries – Hong Kong 2024 – Day 13

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Day 13 – 19th March 2024

Finally it was the day to collect my HKID card! I took the same route from Shatin Station to Exhibition Road Station then walked the rest of the way. When I got to Wanchai, the process of collecting my ID card me took less than 10 to 15 minutes. I already felt that it was going to be a good day! (So the current news from 18th June 2024 had announced that the old HKID cards will be expiring in 2025… Phew! Changed mine in time!).

I met another cousin in Central Station. I had planned to go to Lamma Island and my cousin said she wanted to go with me… well why not if she hasn’t got much to do, ay.

We got on the ferry. I think it was the 11am ferry to Yung Shue Wan, which is in the north part of Lamma Island. Thankfully it was a nice day and thankfully my stomach and cold sweats from the day before disappeared.

My cousin didn’t realise (or she probably just forgot) that the actor Chow Yun Fat is from Lamma Island. Seriously? Even I knew that!

We arrived in Lamma Island and started walking around, I was taking in the sites of this old fishing village, and the various sites on the island…

Often wondered what those whirly things were. My cousin said they’re incense. The more you pay, the bigger the incense. I genuinely thought they were to repel mosquitoes. 🤭🤭🤭

I treated my cousin to some fried dumplings and tofu dessert, the brown sugar wasn’t too sweet, so I added a bit more. It was good stuff! Apparently tofu dessert is a popular dessert on the island… we did see a few more stalls along the walk. Total cost came to HK$65. I actually skipped and happily paid. 🤭

We moved around the island. It was awfully quiet. Maybe because we went on a weekday rather than the weekend. I was told that during covid times, it was busy as people couldn’t go abroad. There’s lots of slopes, and stairs up to the pagoda… the tiny beach is a sandy beach. It’s a good place to stop and rest.

From the beach onwards, there was a lot of uphill walking from this point. 😮‍💨😮‍💨😮‍💨 Huff, puff, puff. OMG! Why did we take this route? There’s a few resting points, so don’t push yourself too hard if you plan to take this route. I might try going the other way in the future.

We discovered a cave as we neared Sok Kwu Wan pier. During World War 2, the Japanese dug a lot of caves around the island with explosives. I guessed they had planned to blow up the island if they didn’t their way. Oh well… it didn’t happen! Failed mission from the past.

And then back to HK island via ferry we go. It was a good walk. I think I managed to sweat a bit, which was what I needed.

Back in HK island, we took a bus to Victoria Park to see the Hong Kong Flower Show. My cousin said she had seen pictures and videos of the flower show already, so we almost didn’t go in… But I haven’t been to it, and I was sure I wasn’t going to the Chelsea Flower Show this year.

The entrance fee was HK$14. That’s cheap! You can pay with your Octopus card… HK payment card readers are amazing! In we went, and off we go. We saw a lot of different displays… Orchids were popular but the main flower of the show was the Angelonia flower… so we practically saw them in every display. 😁

I’m so glad we went in, as there were quite a few pretty and delicious looking displays. I think my cousin was also happy to have gone in too…

Then finally we went to eat dinner. My cousin’s daughter joined us and we had a soupy dinner. Nice stuff! I managed to sleep well that night… 😉

End of Day 13.

The Geek Diaries – Hong Kong 2024 – Day 12

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Day 12 – 18th March 2024

I left late that morning… well I tried to… I had the most awful toilet experience. My stomach was being cleansed from the sushi I had the night before, and so I waited until I felt ok to go out. Was practically drained.

Well I made myself go out and I think I was lucky to go out late as I saw a scene of a car crash. HK seems to have a lot of incidents of crashes. Wear your seat belts peeps!

I took Bus 85 from Shatin to East Tsim Sha Tsui. I still love the posters at HK bus stops, sometimes  I feel like I’ve gone back to Japan when I see these type of posters…

When I got to East Tsim Sha Tsui, O realised I reached to the last bus stop and missed the stop that I wanted to get off. Oh well. So I walked to the Tsim Sha Tsui pier in the rain… It rained heavily so I had to walk slowly as the floor is quite slippery.

When crossing the roads, make sure you don’t cross until the green man shows otherwise you’ll get a fine… Tourists don’t know this new rule yet, and I had seen a bunch of Chinese Mainland tourists walking when the green man didn’t appear (even though there were no cars)… Ah well. HK won’t fine tourists right?

I got to my destination after going into an office building and going up some escalators… A large bookstore. Elite Spectrum. I was in search of some music theory books for one of my aunts but I had no idea where the music section was… I just wondered around and up the stairs to the English section. Translated books and English books are expensive in HK. Prices of paperbacks are generally expensive!

Address: Hong Kong, Tsim Sha Tsui, Salisbury Road, 3號, Star House, 2-3/F

I decided to go to Kwung Tong early where I’ll meet one of my cousin’s for dinner later… I walked around through the old market section then to the shopping centre APM.

I walked around and around, and bought breads from Simplylife café (great name! 🤣)… Their service was a little weird. They don’t seem to ask if you want to eat in or take away. So they wouldn’t even let me eat in as I ordered from the takeaway section? Weird… Thankfully there was a spot to sit at where people congregate and rest. I ate slowly… Well tried to.

Address:  APM, 418 Kwun Tong Rd, Kwun Tong, Hong Kong

I got bored of waiting around, so I went to find another shopping centre. Almost tripped over someone’s trolley on the way there, the person in front was walking slowly and I didn’t see her stuff…

This small shopping centre was quite hard to find. Was just walking back and forth but found it… I found some claw machines on the top floor. This actually perked me up. Didn’t spend too much but managed to win 2 key rings!! Woohoo!! (I had so much fun that when I got home to the UK, I bought a virtual claw machine game on Steam. I’ve won every single item).

Address: Kwun Tong Plaza, 68號 Hoi Yuen Road, Kwun Tong, Hong Kong

Left feeling happy but sick with a headache. Thankfully there was a Watsons Pharmacy nearby… Bought some Panadol.

Finally I met my cousin who took me to eat what I’ve been wanting to eat! Razor clams… although I wasn’t feeling well we still went. This meal was expensive, and I forgot to take a picture of the raw abalone, which my cousin noticed that I didn’t like the cold abalone taste straight away. She’s very observant!! Thank you cousin for treating me to this meal!!!

Address: Lok Chui Yuen Restaurant, Hong Kong, Yee On St, 觀塘宜安街四號A-B地下 Chi Cheong Building

My cousin was rushing back home to get a package from a Taobao service (it’s like Temu and Shein in the UK). HKers are obsessed with Taobao like how the UK is obsessed with Amazon. So we left Kwung Tong early.

That night, I went to sleep early. I was suffering from cold sweats, and so I had taken some more Panadol, then went to sleep for a good few hours. I woke up in the middle of the night, and took my jumper off before going back to sleep again… I think it was that sushi from the day before and the changes in the weather plus some lack of sleep…

End of Day 12.