Typhoons and Dim Sum in Hong Kong

Hong Kong ended up being the perfect place to start my journey and to ride out a typhoon! Met some great people, ate some delicious food, and saw some cool sites in my one week vacation in Hong Kong!

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Originally I wasn’t planning on going to Hong Kong (the cheap flight to Hong Kong for 17000 delta sky miles may have influenced my decision…) but I am so glad I did! Hong Kong is very clean, the food is amazing, the transportation is really easy and cheap, there are cool sites to see, and most people speak some English. Great place to transition into my journey!

The week I spent in Hong Kong I treated as a vacation and to prepare myself for my journey. I got my China visa (first time I’ve had to submit my passport for a visa so that was a cool experience), launched my blog, and started adapting to the new region of the world. The first few days I was very jet lagged. That’s what flying halfway across the world will do to you along with not getting much sleep on the plane or night before leaving. It was days before I wouldn’t get tired at 6:00 PM. Also, there were some days my stomach had to get used to the new foods and drinks. I can say I didn’t hold back on trying new things!

It is amazing how fast you adapt to the traveling lifestyle! I’m glad that I have various trips under my belt because it made it very easy to get around. Technology also helps. Here are some cool apps I would recommend for every traveler.

• maps.me: pre-download the area where you will go. You can see where you are in the city using your phone GPS. Very helpful! (I also still use old fashioned maps but this complements them well! It’s hard to get lost!)
• HostelWorld or Booking.com: I mostly use HostelWorld but both work great to find hostels or lodging. It is very easy in today’s age to book lodging.
• Expedia: They have a 24 hour rule to cancel flights in case you need a quick flight that you can easily cancel…
• Wikitravel: My friend recommended this and it is super useful! You can get a quick summary of various useful things of the area you are going to such as history, food to try, what to see, culture, etc.

As you travel you meet so many cool people from different places. All have their own stories. I met a guy who is a freelance videographer who travels the world and shoots videos for different music festivals. He is starting to do a side project where he interviews different people he meets on his travels. I got to be his first interviewee! We are planning a followup interview when I am done with my travels. I also met some English teachers working in China, a mom who decided to sell her house and travel the world (she is the more adventurous one vs. her kids so it was cool hearing her perspective), some teachers from the UK who also quit their job to travel for 9 months, a mechanical engineer who needed a change and wanted to see the world, some people traveling around from China and Singapore, and many other people from all over the world.

Typhoon

The typhoon was a great experience to live through. I have never experienced a typhoon (hurricane) so this was a first for me. It was funny that my sister also experienced her first hurricane on her honeymoon the month before. Her husband Nick said that we are hurricane chasers!

Hong Kong is very set up for typhoons and they usually experience up to 6 a year. All of the wiring is underground and each building has its own back up generator so you don’t have to worry about the electricity going out. Also with all of the buildings you had some shelter from the storm unless your building was exposed or on the coast. Typhoon ratings:

• 1: warning
• 3: strong winds but business goes about as normal
• 8: Schools, buses, tram are closed. Seek shelter
• 9 & 10: MTR still runs but above trains stop running. Stay indoors.

I found out the movie theater was still open and you could still get stuff at 7-Eleven. It was pretty dangerous going outside. Windows would break and glass would rain down on the streets. Most of the bigger windows would be taped to try to reinforce them and to keep the glass together. Air conditioning units and other things would come loose and come crashing into streets and roofs. We were on the top level of a building so we would hear everything thumping onto the roof. We were with a local so it was fun seeing messages from her friends of what was happening in Hong Kong. Buildings would sway, air conditioning units would fly into apartments, and a crane was spinning around just barely not hitting the building.

 

All in all it was a great opportunity to hunker down with everybody at the hostel. We hung out, made food, played cards, talked about our countries and our stories, and later in the day had some beers from 7-eleven. It almost didn’t even feel like we were in a severity 10 typhoon 🙂

Sites

Lamma Island

I took a ferry to Lamma Island the day after the typhoon. It was a beautiful island with a mixture of small villages contrasted with an electrical plant and tall buildings off in the distance. There was a path that went from one side of the island to the other that I walked down with one of my new friends from Poland. Some of the path was covered with fallen trees and debris from the storm so at times it was more like an obstacle course.

  

Big Buddha

A french guy and I decided to hike to Big Buddha. It took us 3 1/2 hours to get to the top (we also missed a path and got lost for a bit…). It was hot but the hike was good. We both sweated through all of our clothes. I don’t know what I was expecting but that was a big Buddha! It was very cool to see it along with amazing views of the monastery and surrounding countryside.

 

Many Other Places

On my last night we went to the night market to walk through the shops and had a nice seafood dinner. The lady convinced us to sit at her restaurant by offering a free beer and discounted prices. Once we sat down, that lady disappeared and the server we got said that she didn’t know what we were talking about when asking for the discounts. After much negotiation, she finally brought us a beer. It was 0.6% alcohol. We were satisfied though! The crab was delicious and much cheaper than what you could get back in the states.

One of the other things I did was go to a temple and ask the healthcare god for a good journey. That was an interesting experience and I did my best to imitate the bowing that those around me were doing. After that, you pick up a bamboo cup with sticks and kneel down facing the main temple gods. You keep your question in your mind and shake the cup until one stick falls out. You then take that to a fortune teller to get your fortune read. The fortune teller said that I have a good face, healthy family, strong man, will not make money for a bit and then make lots of money, and will have a skinny wife. I guess that is a pretty good fortune!

The best view of the city was up at the peak overlooking all of the buildings. You can take a cable car up there and for most of the ride you are at a 45 degree angle going up. I tested out my new Samsung Galaxy S9 camera up there and wow, the photos are amazing! That was a good purchase before I left! When I show people the photos they keep asking me to send them to them.

 

Food

Unfortunately, I am better at eating food than taking pictures. The dim sum was amazing!!! Dim sum is usually a shareable set of dishes. You can get steamed bbq pork buns, dumplings, egg custard buns, wontons, gelatinous rice things, etc. Very delicious and cheap! Back home my family is very big at getting appetizers and sharing everything so this practice was very familiar. Some other dishes I had were roasted goose (delicious), beef stew (intestines, liver, beef fillets, other things?), Korean noodles, Japanese sushi and udon, congee with fish balls (rice porridge, fish balls may have been a little raw…), seafood (crab, prawns, clams), Indian curry, and many other things! Here is my attempt to take some photos.

Warning: the food may have been partially eaten before I decided to take a picture.

Dim Sum

Beef Noodles in Broth with Assortment of Beef Parts

More Dim Sum (the sauce on this was delicious)

Yellow Chicken and Noodles in Broth (First Meal in Hong Kong!)

The Grocery Store Shows the Butchers Cutting up the Different Cuts of Meat

 

I wanted to give a quick update of my trip in Hong Kong. Now time to start my journey studying healthcare in the Philippines!