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A quiet day in Hong Kong

Not much to report about today. We slept in while outside the waterfalls around the swimming pool were falling horizontal in the gusty wind and heavy rain. It was a good day to stay indoors.



I woke up with a very painful left shoulder blade, probably caused by dragging or lifting the heavy luggage. It caused a lot of discomfort when carrying Alex. The little fellow played in the hotel room, then had a two hour morning nap. I actually read a few pages of a novel!

When he woke up we walked across to the Federal Restaurant at the adjacent CityGate mall and had yum cha for lunch. Unlike in Sydney, instead of carts of food trundling between tables you need to order the dishes from a menu and they are brought out to you. I prefer the cart method, it's more fun, and truth be told, out of the three yum chas that we have eaten in Hong Kong, none were up to the standard of some of Sydney's better restaurants.



We went to change his nappy in the adjacent children's change room/handicapped toilet, only to have a female restaurant worker, neither an infant or disabled, emerge after having smoked a cigarette inside. I've seen a fair bit of commentary from Australians on Chinese television to mark World No Tobacco Day and I think having the smallest proportion of smokers (17%) of any industrialised nation is a pretty good statistic. I'd be happy for the rest of the world to catch up.


More shopping for B while I let Alex loose to run around. He is big for his age in Hong Kong terms (though not Australia) and has been receiving plenty of "lang jai" (handsome boy) comments. After we rejoined B we went for dessert at the food court. Alex and I shared a sweet mango and pomelo soup, while he rejected B's red bean dessert.

We returned to the hotel room, but eventually reemerged in search of dinner. My plans of wandering the park that has replaced the infamous Walled City, then eating dinner at the Kowloon food streets was frustrated by the weather. Instead, after wandering around some more of the local Tung Chung area, we caught the MTR to Causeway Bay and squeezed through the narrow confines of the stalls of the Jardine Bazaar. There was nothing of interest there.



Outside were a number of noodle restaurants. We picked Ma's on the basis of a newspaper article. The portions were tiny and the soup pretty tasteless, but at least Alex enjoyed munching down on choy sum. He loves his greens.

After this unsatisfying meal we decided to return to the hotel room, purchasing some bakery and other foods for later.

Tomorrow we leave for Japan. I only booked our first couple of nights today, selecting Okayama. I'm not really certain what we'll do yet, but the weather is supposed to be quite pleasant.

I could have stayed longer in Hong Kong. I think that I prefer this city to Shanghai. It's at a later stage of its development with most of the rougher edges smoothed out. I wonder when and if Shanghai will reach that same state.

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