Wut wuuuuuut #HongKong.
I'm gonna keep doing this thing senza sorted thematics.
A Haircut!
So I tweeted about this $100 voucher I got, for the "spa" at the Mandarin Oriental. My first thought was: "awesome, I will get a massage!" Turns out that massages at the ol' MOHK start at about 3x the value of my voucher. But I semi-need/want a haircut; the voucher was good for the salon; I got one! The main differences I experienced between this ~$60 men's haircut and the ~$60 men's haircuts I've gotten in America--my data on these are about a decade old; I stopped getting fancy haircuts awhile back--was that, in this haircut, there was no expectation at all that I'd chat with the fellow who was doing the cutting (M.). M., by the way, did a thoughtful and terrific job -- he was the opposite of some fancy/stuffy haircut guy; he was kind of intuitive and precise. Anyway: he absolutely did not expect me to chat, or try to pass the time with chat. WHICH O MY GOSH I APPRECIATED SO MUCH. A big part of why I stopped getting fancy haircuts, in fact, was the craziness of spending a lot of money to sit in a chair and have to do something I am bad at and don't like: make conversation. M. was very friendly the few times I did say a thing, but for the most part he made the whole thing about my hair; he got me a magazine; he moved around the fact that I was catching up on The Economist Espresso on my phone, gently nudging me where necessary.
Anyway, this was worth it -- a good use of time and the gift of the voucher. Now I'm just a tiny bit concerned that, because my haircut took place in the "barber shop" and not the "salon" despite the fact that I called the "salon" I won't be able to apply the voucher but...that is kind of a dumb thing to be concerned about, obvs. Not that that'll stop me.
Leaving the Hotel omigosh All These People
This was great.
At dinner with the senior colleague with whom I am taking this trip, he had mentioned (he's an old hand at the ol' MOHK) that it was very much worth it to check out how "the streets [are] transformed" on Sundays. I thought that he meant they were totally crowded and, y'know, whoa! Like that. He did not. He meant this:
this:
and, when I went out again later on in the evening, this:
Assuming you don't know wut's going on here (I sure did not), let me first just tell you literally what you're seeing.
What you're seeing is major streets in downtown Hong Kong, full of people in tents and in gerry-rigged kind of cardboard...hangouts; the streets are formally closed off, no traffic's allowed on them. The people are everywhere, and there is food all over: packaged foods and meals and also some music playing in the distance. The people are Filipino, pretty much uniformly, and the atmosphere is relaxed and a little festive. Like a Sunday barbecue, or people hanging out in a park on a nice day.
It turns out, that's exactly what this is.
As it was explained to me later by a couple Hong Kong-ers: an aspect of HK that you, reader, may be know and that if you do not know may not surprise you is that Hong Kong has a large population of people who work in various service capacities (housekeeping, home health-aids, etc.) from the Philippines. Now, apparently, (I don't quite get this, because Hong Kong has a lot of parks; I'm not being salty I'm just saying I don't understand) there is either not enough or not enough accessible communal hangout space for these folks to kick back on Sundays -- which is, as in many places, often a day-off. SO, there is some kind of formalized thing where they take over the streets like this; it's not even that rowdy, they're just hanging out. A white guy walking through them taking some pictures was paid zero mind; totally chill.
So, clearly: I loved this. Thanks to my colleague for encouraging me to check it (I thanked him like, actually, too. Not just on this blog).
Mak's Noodle
Readerfriend, I'll be str8: I'm crushing it this trip with the "go to that place you've been meaning to go to." So, in the afternoon, when I sallied forth and encountered the festive tented streets, I marched m'self to this famous noodlery. I bought these shrimp wonton and noodles for $40HKD.
It was good! And I, personally, appreciated the fact that the bowl was not that big. I don't like having a like bucket of noodles thrown down in front of me.
In fact, though: not only was the bowl not very big. An apparently DIVISIVE fact of Mak's wonton is that they are traditionally sized, which means small. Apparently a "traditional" wonton should be able to fit on a teaspoon? Or something.
Turndown Service
Let's stop talking about food (don't worry: just for, like, three seconds).
I am struck by how quickly I'm adjusting to aspects of the preposterous luxury in which I am swaddled, here at this hotel. My first evening, when a woman showed up at my door to do "turndown service", my instinct was that it was obvious she shouldn't come in: I was in a robe, in the room, working. She--in the least pushy way possible; in a very gracious way--seemed to make an opposite assumption: that "turndown service" was a service offering that happened around the guest, to make the guest's time and space nicer. And I kind of went with that, and it was fine -- the little things that they do for turndown (the thing with the bedcovers; leaving a little gift of candy or some personal grooming product) are nice: they do things with the lights and the shades and generally make the room feel nice and calm and evening-y. It weirded me out a small amount when she kneelingly placed the slippers closer to me, as though to minimize the steps I'd have to take without them. But it was nice; I felt weird the whole time, but it was nice.
Anyway my point is that literally by the second evening, I was looking forward to this. I was like, "hey, where's that turndown service?" and was happy when it came, and much more comfortable, and felt much more like, "how nice. someone is so nicely looking after my room to make it and me ready for evening. how nice."
I'm gonna have more to say about all this luxury stuff, but that'll come (if it comes) at the end of the trip.
Lan Kwai Fong: Finding the Right Part of Wellington Street
So, when I wrote in the first entry how Central was different, and I didn't think I'd find the same scrappy, good stuff (restaurants), I felt a flicker of, "well, you don't know where to look." This is a feeling I'm accustomed to, as a New Yorker -- I remember being in the Met Bar in London where my then-girlfriend was a waitress, and having some kind of marketing/promoter guy explain to me how New York didn't have stuff to do at night ("it's shit -- people talk about New York at night but it's shit") and quickly accelerating past angry to, like, wow, dude, you're a knob.
So I knew I was a bit of a knob, saying that about Central. There are places everywhere. Anyway: fixed it.
So a "famous" "walky area" of Central is this distract of smaller streets called Lan Kwai Fong. I knew about LKF from previous trips: it's a thing. And/but because it's a thing, I had written it off. I'd walked LKF, I'd found a couple of places, but y'know it was not as good as the places in K-town that I liked; I assumed that because it's the kind of place with a hundred things on the Internet "100 Things You MUST Do in Lan Kwai Fong," and because so many of the things I apparently 'must' do are like stand on some rooftop and pay $20 (US) for a f#(king cocktail, I was like...you get it.
So that was wrong, also. I just had to walk it.
Specifically, you just have to keep going northwest up on Wellington Street, past the break where Lyndhurst Terrace jukes off and Wellington gets smaller.
Don't get me wrong: it's not K-town. It's more touristy, more backpack-y, etc. etc. But it's good: a lot better than what I'd been seeing. It's the kind of place where you can find
Goose Web!
So, a little echo of the thing from my first entry of this trip, where I kept thinking that I was ahead of Hong Kong but really I was behind it. Small one but I think it's basically the same thing. I'd seen "Goose Web" on a few menus; it of course caught my eye. I'd tried to order it once but been turned down ("out!"); in my state of denied-ness, I imagined that "goose web" was like the goose's neck wattle (do geese even have neck wattles? also what is a "neck wattle"? deliberately not linking, here), somewhat awkwardly translated onto the English menus.
Instead of being an awkward translation of this thing that I'm not even sure it exists, "goose web" is a perfectly straightforward translation of, y'know, the "web" part of a goose -- meaning pretty much the feet.
Culinarily, this was a little bit less exciting. I like eating the feet of poultry--I like chicken feet, a lot--but I've had them before. The webbed-ness of goose feet just adds some skin and (maybe) fat, it's not super-exciting. But they were tasty and knobbly and deliciously sauced.
The place on good-Wellington that finally set me straight re: the web of the goose is called Wah Fung Roast Meat Restaurant [note: I really like how on OpenRice the "didn't like it" emoji is the yellow face crying; it's like: "how much did you not like this restaurant? wow."). It's a lovely place, where the waiter was totally nice. The goose web there is good, as is the roast duck, which I ordered but won't post a picture of here. wtf is this, a food blog?
Also--remember, we're on "good" Wellington now--Wah Fung is a place where you can get roast duck + goose web for $206 HKD, which is by no means cheap but is also not crazy: it's basically two meals worth of protein (or kinda protein-ous gristle, in the case of the goose web) for about $26 USD.
I'm just STOPPING when these entries are done because they don't have a point to reso
I'm gonna keep doing this thing senza sorted thematics.
A Haircut!
So I tweeted about this $100 voucher I got, for the "spa" at the Mandarin Oriental. My first thought was: "awesome, I will get a massage!" Turns out that massages at the ol' MOHK start at about 3x the value of my voucher. But I semi-need/want a haircut; the voucher was good for the salon; I got one! The main differences I experienced between this ~$60 men's haircut and the ~$60 men's haircuts I've gotten in America--my data on these are about a decade old; I stopped getting fancy haircuts awhile back--was that, in this haircut, there was no expectation at all that I'd chat with the fellow who was doing the cutting (M.). M., by the way, did a thoughtful and terrific job -- he was the opposite of some fancy/stuffy haircut guy; he was kind of intuitive and precise. Anyway: he absolutely did not expect me to chat, or try to pass the time with chat. WHICH O MY GOSH I APPRECIATED SO MUCH. A big part of why I stopped getting fancy haircuts, in fact, was the craziness of spending a lot of money to sit in a chair and have to do something I am bad at and don't like: make conversation. M. was very friendly the few times I did say a thing, but for the most part he made the whole thing about my hair; he got me a magazine; he moved around the fact that I was catching up on The Economist Espresso on my phone, gently nudging me where necessary.
Anyway, this was worth it -- a good use of time and the gift of the voucher. Now I'm just a tiny bit concerned that, because my haircut took place in the "barber shop" and not the "salon" despite the fact that I called the "salon" I won't be able to apply the voucher but...that is kind of a dumb thing to be concerned about, obvs. Not that that'll stop me.
Leaving the Hotel omigosh All These People
This was great.
At dinner with the senior colleague with whom I am taking this trip, he had mentioned (he's an old hand at the ol' MOHK) that it was very much worth it to check out how "the streets [are] transformed" on Sundays. I thought that he meant they were totally crowded and, y'know, whoa! Like that. He did not. He meant this:
 |
| Chater Road |
this:
 |
| Ice House Street |
and, when I went out again later on in the evening, this:
 |
| juxtaposition |
Assuming you don't know wut's going on here (I sure did not), let me first just tell you literally what you're seeing.
What you're seeing is major streets in downtown Hong Kong, full of people in tents and in gerry-rigged kind of cardboard...hangouts; the streets are formally closed off, no traffic's allowed on them. The people are everywhere, and there is food all over: packaged foods and meals and also some music playing in the distance. The people are Filipino, pretty much uniformly, and the atmosphere is relaxed and a little festive. Like a Sunday barbecue, or people hanging out in a park on a nice day.
It turns out, that's exactly what this is.
As it was explained to me later by a couple Hong Kong-ers: an aspect of HK that you, reader, may be know and that if you do not know may not surprise you is that Hong Kong has a large population of people who work in various service capacities (housekeeping, home health-aids, etc.) from the Philippines. Now, apparently, (I don't quite get this, because Hong Kong has a lot of parks; I'm not being salty I'm just saying I don't understand) there is either not enough or not enough accessible communal hangout space for these folks to kick back on Sundays -- which is, as in many places, often a day-off. SO, there is some kind of formalized thing where they take over the streets like this; it's not even that rowdy, they're just hanging out. A white guy walking through them taking some pictures was paid zero mind; totally chill.
So, clearly: I loved this. Thanks to my colleague for encouraging me to check it (I thanked him like, actually, too. Not just on this blog).
Mak's Noodle
Readerfriend, I'll be str8: I'm crushing it this trip with the "go to that place you've been meaning to go to." So, in the afternoon, when I sallied forth and encountered the festive tented streets, I marched m'self to this famous noodlery. I bought these shrimp wonton and noodles for $40HKD.
It was good! And I, personally, appreciated the fact that the bowl was not that big. I don't like having a like bucket of noodles thrown down in front of me.
In fact, though: not only was the bowl not very big. An apparently DIVISIVE fact of Mak's wonton is that they are traditionally sized, which means small. Apparently a "traditional" wonton should be able to fit on a teaspoon? Or something.
Turndown Service
Let's stop talking about food (don't worry: just for, like, three seconds).
I am struck by how quickly I'm adjusting to aspects of the preposterous luxury in which I am swaddled, here at this hotel. My first evening, when a woman showed up at my door to do "turndown service", my instinct was that it was obvious she shouldn't come in: I was in a robe, in the room, working. She--in the least pushy way possible; in a very gracious way--seemed to make an opposite assumption: that "turndown service" was a service offering that happened around the guest, to make the guest's time and space nicer. And I kind of went with that, and it was fine -- the little things that they do for turndown (the thing with the bedcovers; leaving a little gift of candy or some personal grooming product) are nice: they do things with the lights and the shades and generally make the room feel nice and calm and evening-y. It weirded me out a small amount when she kneelingly placed the slippers closer to me, as though to minimize the steps I'd have to take without them. But it was nice; I felt weird the whole time, but it was nice.
Anyway my point is that literally by the second evening, I was looking forward to this. I was like, "hey, where's that turndown service?" and was happy when it came, and much more comfortable, and felt much more like, "how nice. someone is so nicely looking after my room to make it and me ready for evening. how nice."
I'm gonna have more to say about all this luxury stuff, but that'll come (if it comes) at the end of the trip.
Lan Kwai Fong: Finding the Right Part of Wellington Street
So, when I wrote in the first entry how Central was different, and I didn't think I'd find the same scrappy, good stuff (restaurants), I felt a flicker of, "well, you don't know where to look." This is a feeling I'm accustomed to, as a New Yorker -- I remember being in the Met Bar in London where my then-girlfriend was a waitress, and having some kind of marketing/promoter guy explain to me how New York didn't have stuff to do at night ("it's shit -- people talk about New York at night but it's shit") and quickly accelerating past angry to, like, wow, dude, you're a knob.
So I knew I was a bit of a knob, saying that about Central. There are places everywhere. Anyway: fixed it.
So a "famous" "walky area" of Central is this distract of smaller streets called Lan Kwai Fong. I knew about LKF from previous trips: it's a thing. And/but because it's a thing, I had written it off. I'd walked LKF, I'd found a couple of places, but y'know it was not as good as the places in K-town that I liked; I assumed that because it's the kind of place with a hundred things on the Internet "100 Things You MUST Do in Lan Kwai Fong," and because so many of the things I apparently 'must' do are like stand on some rooftop and pay $20 (US) for a f#(king cocktail, I was like...you get it.
So that was wrong, also. I just had to walk it.
Specifically, you just have to keep going northwest up on Wellington Street, past the break where Lyndhurst Terrace jukes off and Wellington gets smaller.
 |
| where Wellington picks up... |
Don't get me wrong: it's not K-town. It's more touristy, more backpack-y, etc. etc. But it's good: a lot better than what I'd been seeing. It's the kind of place where you can find
Goose Web!
So, a little echo of the thing from my first entry of this trip, where I kept thinking that I was ahead of Hong Kong but really I was behind it. Small one but I think it's basically the same thing. I'd seen "Goose Web" on a few menus; it of course caught my eye. I'd tried to order it once but been turned down ("out!"); in my state of denied-ness, I imagined that "goose web" was like the goose's neck wattle (do geese even have neck wattles? also what is a "neck wattle"? deliberately not linking, here), somewhat awkwardly translated onto the English menus.
Instead of being an awkward translation of this thing that I'm not even sure it exists, "goose web" is a perfectly straightforward translation of, y'know, the "web" part of a goose -- meaning pretty much the feet.
 |
| goose web! |
The place on good-Wellington that finally set me straight re: the web of the goose is called Wah Fung Roast Meat Restaurant [note: I really like how on OpenRice the "didn't like it" emoji is the yellow face crying; it's like: "how much did you not like this restaurant? wow."). It's a lovely place, where the waiter was totally nice. The goose web there is good, as is the roast duck, which I ordered but won't post a picture of here. wtf is this, a food blog?
 |
| mission creep |
I'm just STOPPING when these entries are done because they don't have a point to reso
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