Blogging...better late than never: Part Two

Here's part two of my trip summary thus far that you should have got a couple of weeks back:

As I was saying, we arrived at Ngong Ping Village. A tourist trap for sure, but a nice place to relax and grab a bite. Amongst all of the cafes and gelato places, we found a really good Chinese restaurant serving very traditional foods. We took some pics around the village and then headed up towards the Buddha. At the top are six, what I can only describe as 'believers', making offerings to the Buddha and of course the Buddha itself. It's a pretty awe inspiring site, and I can only imagine a much more spiritual one for those who are Buddhist. Inside the statue is a sprawling mural that tells the story of the Buddha. Also at the top where the Buddha sits, it was super windy. So much so that V was being pushed around by it.

We walked back down the stairs, counting them as we went (250 by our count), and found our way over to the Po Lin Monastery. The monastery has a grandeur and elegance to it that I have not seen in many temples throughout my travels in Asia. All in all, my experience at the Tian Tin Buddha was a good one. It's wonder and mysticism gave me a sense of peace and calm. Although I can't help but think that some of it's majesty might be lost on this non-Buddhist.

We took a bus trip from the village near the Buddha to a fishing community about 30mins away called Tai O. Tai O was very reminiscent of my solo trip to Lie Yue Mun on my last trip. The main area is lined by food stalls, restaurants and other shops selling local preserves and delicacies. Tai O is famous for it's tofu pudding. Those of you who don't like tofu, won't find this terribly appealing, but if V, an adherent hater of tofu will eat it and profess to even enjoy eating it, it's probably pretty good. A funny story happened here too, other than V eating tofu. There was this cat at the tofu stall where we stopped, it seemed to take a liking to us and meowed and sat around with us while we ate. At some point though, the cat disappeared. All of a sudden, there was a wicked racket. It turns out the the owners cats were fighting. When the dust settled, the cat that had befriended us was victorious. I told V that it was like my spirit animal protecting me from evil...she didn't buy into it. Just down from the tofu pudding place was a food cart where a husband and wife team grilled dried fish meat. It was from them that V and I tried spicy grilled mantis prawn jerky. If you've never had it, and I'm almost positive that you haven't, you have to try it.

We headed from Tai O to Tung Chung and the outlet mall there. I made my first purchase here at the outlet mall. A nice score I think. Anyways, as always, there's too many stores at the outlet mall to see everything and we run out of time before the mall closes. So, the only thing left to do is have dinner. We settled into a buffet at the hotel there. It's no Mr. Steak Buffet, but for the price it was pretty damn good. Back home from a long day's trip, it was sleepy time.

Friday was a pretty relaxed day before BBQ at with V's family. BBQ with V's family is a a lot of fun. It's a grand social occasion marked by the consumption of ridiculous amounts of meat. Although, this time I was found to be toasting bread brushed with honey.

Saturday was spent cleaning the apartment and packing in preparation for our trip to Japan. I'm one of those people who like to pack early and plan for the worst. V on the other hand is more of a last minute packer and packs for minimalism so as to maximize the amount of foreign booty that can be crammed into a partially empty suit case. Some how we were able to come to a compromise and we got all of our stuff packed up and were ready for our trip on Monday. We had some leftovers from the BBQ the night before for dinner. Wait...that's not quite right. On our way home from BBQ the following night we walked back from the BBQ place to the Causeway Bay MTR station. We were accompanied by V's cousin Ken and his wife Irene and her cousin Ben and his wife Joanna. While in conversation with her cousin Ken, it turns out that they had scored some leftovers from the BBQ. Somehow V got a hold of the bag of leftovers and began to investigate its contents. At this point, she turned to me and asked, "Do you want to steal their leftovers?" To which I kindly replied, "No, that's kind of a dick thing to do." In any event, we acquired some of the leftovers. So, Saturday night V cooked me dinner which consisted of veggies with preserved tofu (which I thought I had never had before, but it turns out that I have had it) and what I pleasantly refer to as hot dog fried rice. Quite tasty although a bit strange in terms of my culinary stereotype of what fried rice is.

Sunday was a national holiday in Hong Kong. I'm not entirely sure what it's called, but it was a day to honour your ancestors. We met up with one of V's aunt and uncle in an older area of the city (Mei Foo) as they were going to show us the way to the cemetery. Let me just say that that Sunday was super hot and I'm glad to finally see some of the locals, and not just me, suffering from the heat. We met up with the rest of the family and headed off to visit the first ancestor. I'm not sure how the rituals actually work, so I just sort of followed along with everyone. Looking around the cemetery, it seems that each family seemed to honour their ancestors in slightly different ways, but all of them seemed to have the same theme. There was the cleaning of the grave stone, a presentation of some food and flowers to the their ancestors, and then a short prayer. After a visit to the last of their ancestors, her family broke out a little feast of fruits and roasted meats and had a graveside picnic in memory of their ancestors. I saw other with even more elaborate ceremonies and grander feasts than ours, but all-in-all it was the same; families coming together to celebrate and remember their loved ones.

After the cemetery, we all started to head down to a little dai pai dong area for a cold drink and short reprieve from the heat of the sun. Of course, as with any family gathering, there was a big dinner planned. V had mention to me earlier in the week that we would be "going to the Gold Coast for dinner on Sunday". She said that it was pretty far away. I replied "Gold Coast? Like Australia?" The conversation sort of ended there and I really gave it no more though. But, there we were Sunday afternoon and headed off to the Gold Coast. Turns out that the Gold Coast is really far away...not Australia far, but it's somewhere where I don't know where I am.

For those of you familiar with Hong Kong and even those of you not familiar with Hong Kong, the Gold Coast is a resort area in the Tuen Mun District in the New Territories. Anyways, there at the Gold Coast Hotel is a super swank buffet. Now I've talked to you about buffets in HK before and there is no comparison to them in Vancouver that I can imagine. The best one I've been to is probably Mr. Steak. The Gold Coast Hotel buffet destroys the Mr. Steak buffet. I can't even begin to describe to you the grandeur of the food presented. Needless to say that any restaurant that has ice cream bars, freshly grilled eel, potato wedges and candy Coke bottles is pretty awesome. After a ridiculous amount of eating, there was of course the requisite family photos, we taxi'd back with V's cousin Ben and his wife Joanna to Lam Tin. One final packing check for our Japan trip the next day and then it was off to bed.