Hong Kong, Day 2-7

I'm back from my trip and more or less recovered from the jetlag and illnesses I brought back, so it's time to catch up on those blog posts! As I said, most of my time in Hong Kong was spent at a scientific conference, so my sight-seeing was kept to a minimum. The conference was held at HKUST, which is unfortunately far from the downtown area of HK but has some really great views. This was the view from my bedroom, for example:

On Tuesday a group of us managed to hop down to the nearby village of Sai Kung for some amazing seafood. It's a nice little village on the water:

We went to a restaurant where you choose your own fish and shellfish to eat from a variety of tanks:

We had an amazing feast of of fish, clams, abalone, prawns, and more:

A few days later I took a solo trip into the city to get lunch at the cheapest Michelin-starred restaurant in the world, Tim Ho Wan. Despite hearing stories about waiting hours to be seated, I was seated and served nearly immediately. The signature dish at this dim sum restaurant is cha siu bao, or BBQ pork buns. These really are incredible- they're slightly crunchy on the outside and filled with delicious, sweet BBQ pork:

 

The incredible thing about this restaurant (besides the amazing food) is how cheap it is. I enjoyed a very filling meal with a variety of dishes for only $10:

After the conference wrapped up in the evening, a bunch of us went back downtown to walk around the Temple Street night market. Though I didn't do much shopping, I did grab some yummy snacks and had a great time seeing the city at night. Afterwards we walked down to the harbour and went up to a bar on the 30th floor of a building overlooking the water. Pictures don't really do it justice, but it really was a spectacular view of the Hong Kong skyline at night.

Unfortunately the drink prices were crazy high and I had to be up early for my flight to Taipei, so we hopped in some taxis back to the university and called it a night. I have lots to say and show from my weekend in Taipei, so look for more posts in the next few days!

Hong Kong, Day 1 Part 2

As I said in the previous post, my sight-seeing had to stay very brief due to the fact that I needed to cross the city to attend a conference. Rather than going to the original lunch spot I had chosen (which didn't open for an hour), I opted to stumble into any place that looked yummy and welcoming. I did indeed find such a place, and the owners very kindly welcomed me in and advised me on what to order (in very good English). Since they specialized in noodles and fish balls (essentially just balls of processed fish), I got a soup with wide noodles, fish balls, and wontons.

It was super delicious. The noodles were a very lovely texture, though extremely hard to pick up with chopsticks. I think it took me about four times as long to eat my bowl as everyone else in the restaurant. I also had milk tea with my meal, which is a very famous beverage around Hong Kong. It's simply English black tea with milk, but it's quite yummy.

One thing that surprised me is that at casual establishments like this, you share your table/booth with other people. A young couple (locals) sat down with me and we ended up having a really great conversation about things to do in the city. They gave me some good tips on food and bars, with an emphasis on places that were most "legit" (that word is a great American export). I was additionally surprised that when I asked for a glass of water, I was given a glass of near-boiling water. It seems like it's very common to drink cups of hot water, likely because everyone boils the water that comes out of the tap and it takes a lot of effort to cool it.

Once I was full of noodles and fish, I hopped on the tram (once again, ridiculously easy to navigate) back to my hotel to pick up my bags and head to the nearby ferry station. The Star Ferry (which actually encompasses a number of ferry lines that cross Victoria Harbour) is one of those things that you're supposed to do while in the city, since it affords some pretty spectacular views of both sides and is affordable and efficient. After a short wait at the pier, our boat arrived:

The ferry had a very spacious upper deck that allowed me to get amazing views of Hong Kong Island as we made our brief trip across the water.

Once we arrived at Tsim Sha Tsui, I quickly made my way to the MTR station. After a very easy ride out to the Diamond Hill MTR station (where the conference people recommended we catch a taxi from), I thought I'd be getting to the conference with plenty of time to spare. However, I faced the very first language barrier of the trip when my taxi driver knew zero English and also didn't know where the university was. It was incredibly stressful and involved lots of phone calls and frantic pointing, but I eventually made it to HKUST right before the start of the conference. The location is lovely, albeit inconvenient:

And even though they have me in a very crappy little undergrad dorm, I can't complain because this is the view from my bedroom in the morning:

There probably won't be too much to report for a few days, since I'm mostly here to attend scientific talks. I'll update once I have some more pretty pictures!