My cousin, Joey Gourlay, is currently spending a gap semester taking Mandarin classes in Taiwan before entering his freshman year at University of Alabama. Born and grown in Houston, Texas, my cousin was fortunate to grow up living close to our grandparents. Thus, his Cantonese is much better than mine. He’s also been to Hong Kong once before with them, when he was around the age of seven. This time, the plan was to spend about three days exploring Hong Kong and meeting relatives, then fly to Tokyo and spend four days there, then come back to Hong Kong and have dinner with our great uncle and auntie who were visiting from New York. Our first move after he landed was getting McDonald’s in the airport. (You can take the Texan out of America but you can’t take the America out of the Texan.) It was good to catch up with each other on the study abroad life over some burgers.
After lunch, we met with our Auntie with whom Joey was staying and dropped off his things at her apartment in Diamond Hill. We then returned to CUHK, where I gave him a little tour of the campus. He remarked on how pretty CUHK is, to which I agree. CU is unique in its abundance of greenery, mountain views, and affordability (i.e. satisfying canteen food: A big bowl of soup and noodles costs about 4 USD!)
The next day we woke up early, met up at the train station, and took a minibus down to Repulse Bay. Joey had been wanting to go to the beach, so we spent about three hours swimming around the completely empty waters in Repulse Bay. I don’t think the beach was technically open yet when we had arrived, as we and a few old men in speedos and swim caps were the only swimmers for the first couple hours. A lifeguard finally showed up around noon, bringing out some families and officially opening the beach.
We dried off and left to meet with one of my British exchange friends in Causeway Bay, where we went to Mame & Shiba Cafe. Shiba Inus are hugely popular in Hong Kong. This cafe in particular is home to nine shiba and mame (a smaller breed of shiba) pups. We got a juice box and a 30 minute play time for about 10 USD. While the puppies were cute, it’s not exactly an experience that I would pay for again. The puppies were disinterested with us, most likely because they had become used to receiving so much human attention. Instead, they either slept or bit and growled at each other in aggressive play. The room on the second floor of the building where we sat and tried to play with them also smelled pretty rank. I guess that was to be expected.
Later, the three of us headed off to a hot pot place in Fo Tan, where our little group met up with two Australian exchange friends. The place was all-you-can-eat for 90 minutes and we definitely indulged. We got orange-colored ice cream from the dessert bar, thinking it was orange-flavored, but were pleasantly surprised to find that it was cantaloupe-flavored instead! After dinner, I quickly headed back to my dorm to prep for a couple of summer internship interviews.
The next day, we met up for some filling yum cha with relatives in Mong Kok and then walked with our distant cousins (uncles – possibly? It’s hard to keep track) through the goldfish market street and many electronics stores, browsing cameras, lenses, and tripods specifically. We then walked through multiple sneaker shops, bought a sim card for Japan, and later met up with the rest of the relatives with whom we had yum cha with earlier for an even tastier dinner. We had Peking duck, a cool pineapple dish, razor clams, and loads more. A yummy start to the upcoming busy readying week! We finished the night with with a walk through Temple Street and watched Captain Marvel at Cinema City in Langham Place.
ABC in HK 