Dessert!!!

I mentioned before that food is my biggest preoccupation here, in particular desserts. It's time I introduce you to my favorite dessert spots and dishes:

Honeymoon Desserts

• Green tea ice cream with 'black pearl' and vanilla sauce
• Durian crepe with creme
• Durian mochi
• Baked sago and custard with a mashed taro filling
• Glutinous rice balls filled with black sesame paste in a sweet ginger soup
• Mango and pomelo shake with sago
• Sweet bean curd with ginger syrup

Hui Lau Shan Healthy Desserts

• Mango Mochi
• glutinous rice balls with sesame seeds and crushed peanuts
• red bean soup with glutinous rice balls
• Shake: Mango puree with coconut milk and sago
• Shake: Aloe Jelly with mango puree
• Shake: Honey jelly with mango and coconut juice
• any of their pure fruit shakes (Papaya, honey melon, watermelon...)

This week we actually had a really good dessert at a restaurant called "Xi Yan Sweets" (enough said)... lychee sorbet with osmanthus wine:

Dessert is usually on the menu for my dinner in HK any night of the week and the shakes are for in between :) Luckily these two restaurants are chains so we're always delighted to stumble across one while sightseeing!

Gargantuan Mangoes and Spiders

I've already mentioned before how large some of the mangoes are here. HK imports 99% of all it's fruits since land is worth more for housing than farming. Most of the mangoes here come from the Philippines (the sweetest ones) and Taiwan (the biggest ones). Ive been on the search for the biggest mango and yesterday i found one the size of my face:

Today we decided to have a beach day at Tai Long Wan again (big wave beach). Located in the middle of the nature reserve there are a couple hiking paths leading up to it. We took a different path than last time, this one cut through some pretty dense vegetation. We soon discovered that we were entirely surrounded by the biggest spiders i have ever seen in my life. On average they were bigger than my hand and the body of the biggest ones we saw was larger than my thumb. They were hanging in webs above us and next to us. Needless to say we reached the beautiful (spider free) beach in record time :)

Fragrant Harbor

The Chinese name for "Hong Kong" directly translated actually means "fragrant harbor". It probably got it's name from a time when HK was merely a small fishing harbor where they produced incense which is burned as part of worship. Eventually they exported this incense throughout the world. Fun Fact: sandalwood use in Chinese incense today is imported largely from Australia. You cannot go through a single day without smelling incense in HK. It is everywhere, from the altars in restaurants to the altars in front of homes and stores. It's difficult to take pictures at Temples that aren't foggy from smoke:

Incense sticks come in all sizes: rocket shaped, short, tall, thicker spirals (which burn for 2 weeks).

Chinese Cake Baking Class

The two Nadja's entered another class organised by the HK tourism board. This one took place on the Tsim Sha Tsui area, near the famous Nathan Road shopping area where we learned to make 'Wife Cakes' and 'Egg Rolls' on a rainy afternoon. Wife cakes are two types of dough (when baked they create a flakey crust) with a sticky rice & sugar filling. You can buy them at any local bakery here and they're really yummy. Interestingly, the story behind wife cakes is they were baked by a husband who sold them to raise enough money in order to prevent his wife from selling herself to be able to support her sick father in law with medicines.

Under the teaching of two "masters" (in china it takes 10 years of training to become a master chef) our cakes and rolls turned out quite delicious :)

Wet Markets

This is the place to get anything from fresh vegetables to meat, but mainly to buy live seafood. I enjoy the hussle and bussle of both the wet and dry markets. They're usually crowded with people meandering through the tight alleys, surounded by all sorts of produce, occasionally a fish or shrimp will jump out of the polystyrene or glass 'aquariums' and flop around on the floor in front of you. It is also not uncommon for rogue crabs to be scampering about on the floor. Some other things you can buy are tutles in any size, frogs, albalone, snails, meter long groupers, sea monkeys and the usual large assortment of fish. The sights, sounds and loud chinese bargaining and chattering in the background always make for a unique experiece :)

Hell Money

Ancestor worship is a big part of Taosim which is deeply integrated into HK culture. Chinese believe that when someone dies their spirit goes to the afterlife. Christian missionaries told the non-christian chinese that when they died they were going to hell, so they misinterpreted the word to mean 'afterlife'. Really it is 'spirit money'. Relatives want to make their ancestors afterlife as comfortable as possible so they send them gifts. Every object imaginable can be found in paper form, which the surviving relatives pick out and burn. Burning sends them to the afterlife.

In addition to the popular hell/spirit money, you can buy paper cigarettes, clothes, shoes, jewellry, noodles, games (mahjong) and even a whole rost pork to send to your ancestors.

The 'Post Office'

Cheung Chau

Another day, another HK adventure.. this time to Cheung Chau island located 12 km west of of the city. The one hour ferry ride from pier 5 in central too us past some other islands and the floating loading cranes (that unload container ships) in HK harbor. After a weekend of tropical rain, which was refreshing but limited the sightseeing, we were excited for some sun again. Cheung Chau is a fishing island best known for it's annual bun festival and nice beaches. It's harbor is lined with fishing vessels that when in action look like spiders walking on water.

Seafood restaurants with huge tanks filled with live lunches or dinners (everything from meter long morrey eels to sting rays, lobster, bamboo clams and 100 different fish types) line the promenade. We spent 5 hours hiking around the island checking out, among other things, temples and a chinese cemetery!

A notable discovery was a wall of large dried shark fins in one of the stores selling dried seafood. Our very filling dim sum dinner for €2 (!) topped off the trip before our sunset ferry ride back to HK.