Hong Kong Day 1

I woke at 9am, and went in search of coffee. I walked all the way down Nathan Rd from Mong Kok to Tsim Sha Tsui (>4km) and finally found an open restaurant with a picture of coffee on the window. The coffee was strong and effective. Wide awake, I kept walking and it was not long before the Indian tailors started approaching me. Why are tailors in Asia almost exclusively Indian? Anyway I decided to check out the shop of the third tailor, so I followed him into a back street to his shop. His “brother” was inside, and the street harrasser left to continue tourist harrassment.

The man at the shop was very easy to talk to, he must have been doing this for a long time. We spent about 30 minutes discussing the requirements of various countries regarding working visas. He gets a lot of Aussie customers who live/work in the UK. Of course, they are all repeat customers due to the amazing quality of his product.

I started looking at fabrics. I know, I just had a suit made in KL but on its first wear my father basically told me that it looks like shit so I am pretty over it. This time I chose what I want, rather than what Kirsten thought would look good. After fabric selection we negotiated a price: I get a suit, two shirts and two ties for about what I paid for the suit in KL, which is about a third of what I paid for my Aussie bespoke suit.

After the suit stuff I went in search of yum cha (dim sum), in particular I had a hankering for prawn gow gee. I found a place and got what I wanted, and the most delicious choy sum I have ever had, it was somehow sweet. I also got that other prawn yum cha, thing, I don’t know its name. It is a few prawns in a long rice noodle skin and falls apart when you try to pick it up. Iwas the only non-Chinese in the restaurant, and I became aware of a man staring at me and smiling. We made eye contact and, using sign language, her told me that he was impressed with my chopstick skills. The meal was good, perhaps the prawns were not as good as Aussie ones but again I found that Asian food in Asia is the same as Asian food in Australia.

I went shopping. Ineed to get a new ring as I smashed my last one (as Rohan predicted – the ring was made of hematite. I went to many shops, but as Chinese people are generally smaller, no-one stocked rings that would fit my man-size fingers.

Back to Mong Kok and it was time to shop for computer stuff. I looked at a few places but ended up at Mong Kok Computers, kind of a less-shiny Sim Lim Square (Singapore). The prices were disappointingly the same as dodgy Chinese prices in Australia. I got what I needed, a 1Gb thumbdrive and a USB2 2.5” high speed enclosure. Not expensive.

Back to my hostel room. Nothing had been stolen, so there, pessimistic family. Before long it was time for my fitting so I walked back to Tsim Sha Tsui, stopping at one of the over-plentiful convenience stores to get a refreshing Pocari Sweat. The fitting went well, glad I got it because there was not enough room in the Captain area, perhaps they do this for everyone as an ego boost. I had to kill an hour before the night market opened so I went in search of a bar. During the searc, a bad man made threatening mugging type moves on me but I stood up and made my double size evident and he skulked away. I eventually found a bar where, Dear Reader, I am writing this in my moleskine while drinking my third Carlsberg.