From Hong Kong to Macau

Our itinerary in Hong Kong included a four-day trip to Macau.  We left Hong Kong from one of Ocean Terminal’s pier on a Cotaijet 金光飛航 – a high-speed catamaran which made the crossing of Pearl River to Macau in an hour.

In this picture taken from the departure lounge, the tall gray building on the left is Hong Kong’s International Commerce Center, 4th tallest building in the world. The other buildings with curved facades and the arch are luxury residential apartment buildings.  They all sit on top of – Elements – one of the newer malls in HK – where the restaurant Nahm is located.

Macau Tower 澳門旅遊塔 Torre Panorâmica – its bungee jump height (233 m) is only second to that of the Stratosphere in Las Vegas.

Macau is connected with its two islands – Coloane 路環 and Taipa 氹仔 – by several bridges – recently a landfill was created bridging the two islands.  The landfill is now known as the Cotai Strip 路氹 – an imitation of the Vegas Strip.  Our hotel is on the Cotai Strip.

Looking back towards Macau’s downtown – the building with the irregular outline is the Grand Lisboa casino hotel – it is spectacular (or garish) at night.

This is the massive Venetian Macau which is next to our hotel and all the hotels/shopping arcades/casinos are connected.Same view at night. It looks just like Vegas.

Flower Market part 2: Street Food 年宵花市之小食篇

Market + around New Year + lots of people + night time + winter + in a park + Hong Kong = ?

Of course, it is street food.  Not as much as I expected but they were there.  Since no two stalls sold the same kind of food, I suspect they were tightly regulated by the organizer.  If you want to see the flowers sold at the market, click here to go back to the previous post.

I know many of the items on offer, deep fried fish balls, stuffed peppers, stuffed eggplant, sausages, chicken nuggets …  As you will see, most are either deep-fried or made spicy in a curry-chili sauce.  We sampled a few of the offerings, including Korean charcoal-grilled marinated squid. The flavors were all bright and big – instant gratification – the virtues of street food.  Too bad they do not sell beer on the grounds.

Curry-flavored stewed whelks (no, we did not try this).

Deep-fried fermented tofu cubes – known even locally as stinky tofu – and indeed they had a sharp odor.  Yes, we all ate one each – it was good.

Hot and sour rice threads from Chongqing – I never saw it so I had to try.  Sue and Sis were not impressed and did not bother.  It was nothing special.Deep-fried battered turnip strips.  They were fried in a wire-basket and come out like little oily cupcakes.  No thanks.

Takoyaki (Japanese style grilled octopus balls) nope, not impressed.  Takoayki is essentially a ball of pancake mix with bits of octopus, cooked in a hot iron plate and eaten with mayonaise and some herbs.  Little sticks are used to turn the little balls so that they are evenly grilled and not burnt.  Vendors on the streets of Tokyo flip each octopus ball on a rack at super human speed – as soon as the last ball on the rack is flipped, he has to go back and flip the first ball – it was fun to watch.

Fresh squeezed sugarcane juice.  Some of the juice was bottled and sold after it has been warmed.

Lunar New Year Flower Market: part 1 年宵花市

We visited the Chinese New Year evening flower market at Victoria Park 维园年宵花市 in Hong Kong.  This type of market or fair is an annual tradition in Southern China – 行年宵.  I remember lugging a peach blossom tree home with my Dad many years ago at such a market.  The practice is similar to the Christmas tree tradition except these peach blossom tree has no leaves except flower buds.  Red ribbons and packets are hung from the tree.  If the timing is done right, pink flowers emerge on New Year’s day and continue for a week or so.

Families buy the plants for decoration at home, a week or so before Chinese New Year. There are several traditional plants that are required items for a proper CNY decoration: peach blossom tree (above), four season kumquat shrubs (below), and Chinese daffodil 水仙花 (Narcissus tazetta, top picture).

More Chinese daffodils 水仙花.

The bulbs of daffodil are often carved so that the leaves and flowers grow into fanciful shapes – crab claws 蟹爪水仙.  I have seen these daffodils with short stems before but don’t see any resemblance to crab claws.  The white stuff in the middle is wet cotton wool.

Orchids are not traditional flowers for the new year.  But I saw a lot of them in the market.  Also common is the plum blossom tree.

I do not remember this type of orange-colored fruit being a traditional CNY plant – don’t even know its name. The outside has a nectarine-like texture but there are one or more protrusions from its round body.  Odd looking fruits, if you ask me.

The green towers were made with mini fortune bamboos 富貴竹, lots of them. By the way, fortune bamboo is not related to bamboo but a kind of dracaena plant (Dracaena sanderiana) originally from Africa.

Nahm @ Elements, Hong Kong

Nahm is the first restaurant we went to on this trip to Hong Kong.   My sis took us there, it was convenient and the line was not too long.  Indeed, our trip started on a high note, this restaurant is highly recommendable.

I regretted not taking my camera with me since the food was not only tasty but beautifully presented.  We started with a drink from a freshly opened coconut, and had sauteed lamb rack with basil, green peppercorn; deep-fried soft shell crab roll with spinach, mango, avocado in orange caramel sauce.  This picture of their grilled squid salad in toasted seasame, garlic dressing below was found online – we had the same dish and it was delicious.  Unlike regular calamari rings (that are formed by chopping across the body), these were formed by slitting open the body longitudinally and pushed down to open up the rings.

I just discovered that this vietnamese/thai restaurant, belonged to a group that is associated with New York’s Laurent Tourondel restaurants.  In fact, the same NY restaurants – BLT steak, Blue Smoke,  Craftsteak – have their counterparts in HK.  Interesting business strategy – when you have a successful formula (marketing concept and tried-and-tested menu) in one world city, clone the whole package in another world city.  Pictures of the restaurant below were found online.

Check out their web site – Nahm – a short clip of a soundtrack will be play when you visit the site – it turned out to be one of my favorite tracks – Surround me with your love (mental overdrive mix) – I got mine  from Hotel Costes 6.  Someone put the track up on youtube with images of Hotel Costes CD :

Night views over Hong Kong

I just spent a 2-week vacation in Hong Kong (four days were actually spent in neighboring Macau). It has been a long while since I had 2 weeks off.  More remarkable is the fact that I spent Chinese New Year there – I cannot remember when was my last CNY in HK. The highlights of this trip are mostly food-related as we have been so deprived of Asian cuisine in Switzerland. So, expect more food porn in the near future.

To kick off, I will share some views of Hong Kong central taken from my friends –  V & B’s balcony.  Their building is halfway up one side of Victoria peak on Hong Kong island and they are on the 26th floor (if I remember correctly).  It must be a great place to watch fireworks over the harbor. All these photos were taken by my tiny Canon S90 without a tripod, not bad.

In the photo above, from left to right, the third tallest building in HK – Central Plaza (78 floors; ranks 11th tallest in the world – green-blue kights),  the second tallest – Two International Finance Center (IFC2, 88 floors; 7th tallest worldwide), and fourth tallest – Bank of China (72 floors, IM Pei) are clearly in view. Only the tip of the tallest building in HK is visible in a distance between Central Plaza and IFC2, the International Commerce center (ICC) is located on the Kowloon side – with 108 floors and ranks 4th tallest in the world.

In this photo below, you can just see Ocean Terminal, the old Star Ferry site and the Cultural Center on the Kowloon side. On the island side, the Standard Chartered Bank building, HSBC headquarters (Norman Foster) and Cheung Kong Center (62 floors, Cesar Pelli) are prominent.

Looking straight down at the streets at Mid-levels.

Xmas lights are still on !

Central Plaza changes its color continuously.