We did a short 6-day trip to Shanghai back in July without the little one. While traveling without the little one was certainly a good decision, it was difficult mending ties with her after we got back. Veve went through several nights of nightmares and closely followed by a bad flu after we got back. The little girl probably felt abandoned and needed to put enough guilt in us to ensure we will never ever leave her behind again.
Back to the trip, on the second day, Mr Heatwave decided to bless us with a 37ºC week. It was unbearable having to down bottles of water every hour, and not to mention the abrasion between my thighs that need powdering ever often (details best left behind in Shanghai).
Old streets along 豫园
Because of the Expo earlier this year, great part of Shanghai was revamped and renewed. What that also mean is losing a huge part of Shanghai’s charm … the old 石库门 houses. We stayed at Hotel Indigo along the bund which is overlooking 豫园 that’s 2 streets away. 豫园 is ever touristy, but we were lucky to discover a few old streets that was nicely left untouched by the new developments.
Old streets along 豫园
Sunday crowd at 鲁迅公园 was amazing, lots of dancing, singing, martial arts …
Watching the “old man” jazz band at Peace Hotel 和平饭店 was certainly a dream come true. While they certainly don’t play the best jazz, the attitude, the looks (age), occasional off pitch, rushing drummer, completes the package I’m glad to have watch them in this lifetime. And I do wonder what kind of BCP they have in mind. Judging from the age, I suspect a couple of them will be going home soon.
This trip, without the little girl, was a very different one. We did a lot more walking (Central to Sheung Wan to Sai Wan and back, easily clocking 5-6km), and eating at more "local" places that typically is not going to be child friendly. Good fun, but again, too short.
Just got my first roll of Natura 1600 developed and scanned. Not too sure if it's because the studio scanned it at fairly low resolution, I quite puzzled with the end colour and pixelation. I did have to do some minor tuning within iPhoto, but with that, the pictures are still over saturated.
It's a huge difference if I compare to the digital ones taken with a Olympus E-P1 using Voigtlander 40mm f/1.4.
Next step, I am going to try shooting with non Natura film, and maybe invest in a negative scanner to see if I can get better color out of the same roll of film.
Left: Fujifilm Natura Classica + Natura 1600
Right: Olympus E-P1 + Voigtlander 40mm f1.4
We went back to David Chan's vintage camera shop in Tsim Sha Tsui as it was closed when we first went there on Sunday. This is the shop that probably has the most comprehensive vintage Leica collection in Hong Kong. It was not an easy find, read in some forums that it was at the ground floor of Kimberly Hotel, which turned out to be quite inaccurate. The shop is in this building call Champagne Court that's beside Kimberly Hotel and the new Mira Hotel.
The shop definitely has a good collection of Leica, on top of that, they also carry quite a fair bit of Rollei, Rolleiflex, Nikon and Canon. I actually spent most of time outside the shop admiring all the gear on display. There were no customer in the shop at that time and I did find the people in the shopping looking a little intimidating. Anyway, prices are not exactly competitive. I get a sense that they are probably priced at 2-3 times more than what I'm paying on eBay.
For second half of the day, we headed off to Stanley Market. Nice refreshing change and I'm just glad to venture out to somewhere new that I have not been before in Hong Kong after so many trips there. We took an express bus from IFC (about 30 mins), it was an enjoyable bus ride as it took the windy scenic route up Repulse Bay.
The Stanley Market itself is no big deal, targeting tourist who are dumb enough to pay premium for junks. But the area surrounding the market is nice. A good view of the bay, some cute old buildings, small lanes … The main street along the bay actually reminded me of the streets along Miami Beach.
As it was Mid Autumn Festival (中秋), and it being our last night in Hong Kong, we stayed out a little later and headed out to Victoria Park in Causeway Bay (銅鑼灣) after having dinner at Crystal Jade in WTC. There was a Mid Autumn Festival Carnival with some lantern display, performances and fortune telling. Veve was initially really excited about playing with her new Stitch character lantern, but strange enough, the minute we got there, for some reason she got really disturbed and insisted on being carried the entire time. She was crying a bit, held me really tight and was complaining about some shadow *spooky*. Not sure if she saw "something" or she was just being tired after a long day. In the end, we probably stayed there max an hour before we headed back to W.
The Hong Kong branch of Ding Tai Fung was awarded one Michelin star in 2010. Honestly, while the food is not bad, not quite sure if it's really that deserving. Then again, I remember dining in another Michelin one star restaurant in Harleem, Holland, and was not impressed as well. One of the HK special dish is the black truffle xiao long bao. While I'm a fan of black truffle, I just don't think that black truffle works well with Chinese cuisine. How should I say it, it's just somewhat “牵强”. The black truffle taste was overpowering and just simply didn't blend well.
The black truffle xiao long bao was not cheap, can't remember exactly how much was it. The entire bill came up to HK$614 (SGD$108), and that's also because I ordered awful lot of food.
Din Tai Fung 3/F, Silvercord, 20 Canton Rd, Tsim Sha Tsui
Tel: +852 2730 6928
[外婆紅燒肉]
This is my 3rd time to Xiao Nan Guo at Times Square. First was back when I was with Yahoo! in 2007, my colleagues in the HK office invited us for dinner, 2nd time was in 2009 when we brought Veve to HK disneyland. We knew this place is popular, without a reservation, we decided to go really early at about 5.30pm to try to get a table.
Food at Xiao Nan Guo is definitely good, and I was seriously out for a "revenge" of sort, and I ended up ordering too much food (again). For starters, we had our usual 四喜烤夫 and also tried something new,丝蜜莲藕, which is lotus root stuffed with glutinous rice, dressed in honey. For mains, we had a fried fish in sweet sour sauce, 松子大海斑, which was delicious. A crab meat sauce thing that came with pancakes, not sure what's the name of this dish and "grandma's braised pork", 外婆紅燒肉 which was truly 油而不腻.
This meal turned out to be our most expensive in Hong Kong, the bill was HK$1110/- (SGD$195/-).
[四喜烤夫] [丝蜜莲藕]
[松子大海斑] [蟹]
小南國 沙田正街18號新城市廣場一期7樓709舖
Xiao Nan Guo Shop 1201, Food Forum, 12/F, Times Square,
1 Matheson Street, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong
Tel: +852 2894 8899
Today is definitely the "toughest" day for this trip.
Let's start from the top (good part of the day) … we went to Luk Yu Tea House (陸羽茶室) in Central, just off Stanley, for dim sum brunch. A Michelin recommended restaurant, Luk Yu is a popular "old school" dim sum place that's full of charm and definitely serves one of the best dim sum I've ever had. The "old man gang" of waiters in their 60s can be a little intimidating, but actually they are quite polite and nice.
I think what makes the dim sum here so good is the fresh and quality ingredient. Portions are generous, authentic taste. We had like 8-9 different types of dim sum and the bill came up to about HK$500/- (SGD$88/-).
陸羽茶室 香港岛中环士丹利街24-26号地下
Luk Yu Tea House No.24-26 Danli Street, Central, Hong Kong, China
Tel: +852 2523 5463
When I was walking around the restaurant taking photos, I overheard a lady talking on the phone saying something about "luk yu", with my limited Cantonese, I actually thought she was saying that it's raining “下雨“ before I realised she was actually telling the other person she's at “陸羽”, but true enough, within minutes of leaving the restaurant, it started to rain. Put it this way, it did not just rain, it went on raining for the next one plus day and it went from a signal 1 to a signal 3 tropical cyclone, with a looming typhoon for the entire day.
Regardless, we persisted, with umbrella, poncho, we walked up 上環 and made it to the Lomo shop along Hollywood Walk. 上環 was supposed to be a really interesting area with some unique streets selling traditional stuff, designer stuff and even coffins. But because of the rain, we did not explore much and certainly no chance for photos at all.
We ended the day early at around 4pm and headed back to the hotel as we were worried that the storm will build up and we will end up stuck somewhere with the little one.
[鹵水千層峰, 滷水鵝片]
Dinner was at Pak Loh Chiu Chow (Teochew) restaurant within Elements mall. Food here is simply fantastic! The 滷水鵝片 is definitely the best I ever had, soft and moist. Thinking about it now makes me hungry. What else was good? The 胡椒咸菜豬肚湯 was "power", peppery but not overpowering.沙律蒸鯧魚 was fresh and delicious. What's most interesting was the 乾煎糖醋麵 , it's not your usual Er fu noodles. This was fried like a pancake and you have it with sugar and black vinegar. Yum!
Our total bill came up to HK$652/- (SGD$115/-), well worth it!
[沙律蒸鯧魚] [乾煎糖醋麵]
百樂潮州魚翅海鮮酒家 九龍柯士甸道西一號圓方1028D
Pak Loh Chiu Chow Restaurant
Shop 1028D, Elements, 1 Austin Road West, Kowloon, HK
Tel: +852 3691 9168
Well, the day had the end with a big bang, literary. At about 1.15am, I was woken up from my sleep by sirens. Initially, I thought it was just fire engine or some emergency vehicle passing by the nearby roads, it went on for a while and I realised it seems to be really nearby and it was not going away. Got out of bed, from my window I can see the port area just opposite our hotel is now packed with six fire engines, 4 ambulances and a bunch of other vehicles. There are also a couple of rescue boats in the waters nearby with lights turned on scanning the water surface. Shortly after, around 1.25am, a huge bright explosion litted up the entire sky. Apparently a boat carrying recycling metal materials docked at the harbour area caught fire, while the fire fighters were putting out the fire, there was a huge explosion, forcing fire fighters and crew to jump into the sea to escape. 18 people, including 12 fire fighters were injured.
Veve went through several nights of nightmares and closely followed by a bad flu after we got back. The little girl probably felt abandoned and needed to put enough guilt in us to ensure we will never ever leave her behind again.
