Homecoming

After a good morning of sleep brought to me by the letter L for lorazepam, it's homecoming day! To be honest, my parents and I had more or less finished on what we planned to do on this trip, and hell, there's really nothing to do for the rest of the day before meeting at the hotel in the afternoon to take the bus to the airport.

Tea eggs! Off to the wet market we went, and we got ourselves 5 tea eggs for the heavenly price of HKD$10, so that's SGD$0.40 each.

These are extra tea-ey, extra tasty tea eggs without the sulphourous smell one often gets with overcooked egg yolks.

Tasty! And you just don't get as them as good in Singapore. Or as cheap, for that matter.

Next is the cooked meat stall, where we bought some fried belly pork and char siew (barbecued pork) to munch on.

That's a whole load of fat!

And where do we go from here? As we've already seen and done everything, it's just mindless ambling around.

The wet markets in Mong Kok area are equally impressive, with ueberly fresh produce everywhere, like those in Central the previous day.

Feeling utterly lazy, and the weather's pretty cruel too, so we went to Langhan Plaza, which is this sprightly new shopping centre that popped out of the ashes of Kowloon area.

This area used to have its buildings limited in height, due to the nearby airport. However, ever since the airport had moved over to Lantau Island far away from the city districts of Hong King, tall and new buildings have sprouted in the recent years. Langham Plaza, which is a shopping centre built upwards rather than outwards (it has at least 12 floors of shops) is one of them.

Settled for a Starbucks Java Chip frap and a blueberry cheesecake to be shared 3 ways. They taste the same way they do in Singapore, which is testament to their consistently high quality. Prices are similar to Singapore, which would mean that this would be relatively more inaccessible to Hong Kongers, considering how much less other foods and drinks cost them.

I shopped around while my parents lazed at Starbucks and got myself a nice Nike black/yellow/grey bottom! Yay!

Back at Starbucks and we were still feeling lazy, and I whipped out my DS together with the 2 girls at the one side of my table and the lady at the other side. Gosh! The school hols are ending and yet I'm not through with Pokemon FireRed!

Seems like the DS is slightly more popular in Hong Kong than Singapore, and the games and accessories are priced about the same though I notice literally everyone uses a flashcart. Yay for piracy!

Oh, and we got sat kei ma, an eggy, floury biscuit made of biscuit bits stuck ogether with sugar. I've always been a sucker for these, so I bought 3 packs of them, along with egg rolls and sesame mochi!

Yay for my keen eye for hidden snack places!

Ambled around mindlessly until it was time for a late lunch, before heading back to the hotel, getting our stuff and going back to the airport.

It's sad, 5 days of Hong Kong and it's going to end. I hate endings.

At this point, parents were getting cranky and whiney again. This is bad. Sigh. Damn you ageing!

We went to this off-the-main-road eatery near Mong Kok MTR and ate the last few classics that we had not tried yet.

Can I comment on the milk tea first? The milk tea here is GOOD. It tastes tea-ey and thick, the way Bishan S11 does it.

==

And as for the food, here's to a visual feast:


Fishball noodles. The fishballs are chewy rather than soft, the fishcakes are soft rather than chewy, it's a personal preference kinda thing!


Beef kway teow. I didn't like it - the Thai Express one has better meat and stronger flavours - but mom liked it. Personally I find the meat soft and gooey and all, and it must be all that fat in it.


Back to the hotel, and the tour guide passed all the groups the Hong Kong pastries which we had ordered earlier. This is lao po bing/wife biscuit, which is a classic in both Hong Kong and Singapore. It's this crumbly pastry on the outside that wraps a jelly-like sweet paste. Tasty, though I wasa little disappointed that it wasn't as mindshattering as it's hyped up to be.


Unindentified pastry. Madde of almonds, and well, I haven't tasted it yet.

==

The flight back home:


OMG Singapore Airlines put us on a 747-400 instead of a 777-300, so the plane ride was going to be way noisier and cramped. This sucks.


Sunset from the plane. And things got a little hairy when turbulence got bad. Tried to soothe the nerves with a glass of white wine, but it only made me feel bad enough to quickly call for pineapple juice to dilute the alcohol that was already swirling in my tummy.

Distracted myself half-watching Letters from Iwo Jima, and it isn't exactly the best feeling to be bumping around in your aeroplane seat while watching the Japanese shooting down American planes. (Gee, and they're PROBABLY Boeings too) Couldn't really enjoy the movie - turbulence, sleepiness, and hell, the screen was dim and blurry and the subtitles were barely readable. It's a wonder how anyone can enjoy movies on a flight. Anyway the movie's pretty good from the parts where I had managed to concentrate on watching, though it's one hell of a sad movie.


Dinner was beef-something with potatoes. And a smoked salmon salad. Bun and crackers, with a pack of really good garlic cheese.

Oh, and rock-frozen Haagen Dazz chocolate ice-cream, Did they leave it in the unheated cargo area or something before that?

Turbulence got worse. Air stewardess spilled some of containers right next to my seat while clearing the trays. That's who bad it was, and the the pilot didn't even switch on the seatbelt sign. Ugh.

Evil tip, but if you're on Singapore Airlines, remember to bring a 2-pin earphone adaptor so you can use your isolation, earplug-style earphones to block out the engine noise while getting good sound quality. But even better is, as they hand you their own headsets rather late and collect them back rather early, you'd get a whol half hour more with the inflight entertainment with your own earphones.

Then the boring details:
Touched down (the landing was surprisingly smooth.)
Flurry of SMSes as I finally got to replying those I had received while I was in Hong Kong.
Airport. Arrival hall.
Bought duty-free beer and wine.
Lugged everything back to the taxi, and the ride cost $17.

Home! A flurry of unpacking, and here I am.