High Tea in Hong Kong

I arrived in Hong Kong mid-afternoon, and promptly set out to see the city. Hong Kong is divided into two parts: Hong Kong island, the main part of the city, and Kowloon, the mainland part of the city. A narrow strip of water separates the two, and they are both technically part of Hong Kong. I stayed in Kowloon, and was happy I did so - there is a bit more space and room to breathe, whereas Hong Kong Island is a maze of apartment buildings denser than New York. Hong Kong Island is infinitely better designed than New York to handle such crowds, though, with an aboveground pedestrian walkway system misleadingly called the Escalators (as I sadly learned, the only mechanics involved are with your own two feet). This allows large highways to pass underneath, and the pedestrians walk Hong Kong safely. The walkway is also filled with interesting little factoids, the reading of which caused my journey to double in time.

Below: Hong Kong from above, Mid-Levels Escalators with my favorite factoid, nighttime Hong Kong

True to form, I tried lots of food, my favorite of which was congee, a delicious type of rice porridge that reminds me of grits. This I found in an amazing place called the Food Republic, with food stalls serving food from all over Asia - Thai, Japanese, Taiwanese, etc. It was my own little heaven. I also found my way to a Michelin-started noodle shop/food stall, and paid a grand total of $4 for wonton noodle soup with rather rubbery noodles. Actually, until I saw the signs, I didn't realize the Michelin star was from the same company that manufactures tires, and I'm very curious as to how tire production makes one qualified to judge food. This unexceptional soup experience makes me even more suspicious.

Below: food republic, amazing congee, mediocre noodles

I only had a day and a half, and made the most of all the big sights: taking the sea ferry between Kowloon and Hong Kong, visiting the top of Victoria Peak and taking the tram down, mixing up Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee at the Star Sculpture Garden. I spent some time at the piers in Kowloon, where I was approached by schoolchildren asking about a survey for their school. There were two adorable boys around 8 years old, who asked me which figures I knew best from Hong Kong (I chose Jackie Chan). A few minutes later, a group of 14-year-old schoolboys approached and asked about another survey, this time on the environment, and then told me I was beautiful. Lest I be approached by college students asking me out next, I escaped the area...but then, fulfilling my worst fears, an awkward-looking young man approached and asked I take a picture of him. This I was happy to do, until afterwards he asked to take a picture with me, and as I stammered out an apologetic refusal he put his arm around me and took a selfie with me anyway. Oh, well.

Below: Victoria's Peak (including massive tree), sea ferry, pier selfies

The pier area also contained what I first thought was an exotic hanging garden, but which I soon learned were meticulously maintained public restrooms, complete with the masking sounds of waterfalls and chirping birds piped in. Well done, Hong Kong.

Below: hidden bathroom

My first afternoon in Hong Kong, I made my way over to the Peninsula Hotel for fancy afternoon tea. The Peninsula is the Hong Kong standard in luxury, a colonial-era hotel with beautiful detailing in every corner. Afternoon tea there is a luxury generally enjoyed by the very well off (it costs $40!), but I decided to splurge. My great-aunt Joann enjoyed tea in this very hotel 30 years ago, and I wanted to uphold the tradition.

Well, upholding the tradition turned out to take a bit longer than I anticipated; I spent 45 minutes waiting in line for the privilege. In the end, though, it was worth it - fragrant rose tea, scones, salmon cakes with gold leaf, chocolate mousse. Propriety demanded I leave at least a few crumbs on the plate so I wouldn't look like a huge glutton, but man, was it difficult.

Below: teatime

The Peninsula Hotel also contained the kind of uber-fancy stores one generally associated with the rich and famous: BVLGARI, Cartier, and more. I spent a bit of time wandering around, curious as to what attracts those with too much money on their hands. Some of the designs were appalling: a fortune cookie necklace encrusted with diamonds (really???), a snake head necklace that looked entirely too realistic, rings shaped like panthers. Other items, though, made me realize I may have some very dormant, very expensive tastes - I loved the sparkly diamond necklaces, and even went in a few stores for a closer look. The prices were far more than my life savings, but I kept my cool and told myself that they didn't know I hadn't recently inherited millions from a long-lost uncle or become Hugh Hefner's 20th wife. My poker face worked, and I even got to try some things on in the store!

Below: ugly jewelry x2, nice diamonds

At night, the city turned a bit seedier. Random Indian men stood on the streetcorners; by day they offered me designer watched and purses, but by night they called me baby and told me they loved me. In part to escape them, I wandered into a nearby public park and accidentally found all the drug dealers in Hong Kong. I had decided to explore a corner of the park that was not as well-lit, and around every corner lurked a tall, hunched-over young man who stared at me and then ignored me as I hurried off. Not my wisest decision, but I found my way out of the park unharmed soon enough.

As my last hurrah in Hong Kong, I walked over to a rooftop bar; I ordered a drink, and it came with 4 new friends - 4 Indians working in Hong Kong who took me to get authentic Indian food after we finished our drinks. There were 3 (very nice, respectful) guys, and one girl who tried alcohol for the first time in her 28 years that night. Needless to say, we had a blast; we played all our favorite Bollywood songs, and she taught me how to dance to Bollywood (I can now shake one hip like a pro), and I taught her how to salsa. We are amazing lamb chops, paratha, and biryani, and I went home very happy and very full.

Below: view from rooftop bar

Altogether, Hong Kong seems like a slightly dirtier Singapore, albeit with (dare I say) slightly more culture. I loved it, and I could definitely see myself living here, even with the closet-sized apartments and Kowloon drug dealers. I'm sure my company has an office here...hmm...

Kidnapped Brides and Other Tales

Trekking through the mud is not most people's idea of fun, but, as my mother will attest to, I have always been something of a peculiar character. I managed to convince Aashika to join a 2 day trekking tour through the terraced  rice paddies of mountainous northern Vietnam, starting in a little town in the border of China called Sapa. Doubtless Aashika imagined a green paradise, ripe rice waving gently as butterflies swirled around our heads, but reality looked quite different. We arrived in the muddy season between harvests - rice planting was another month off, and the rice terraces were dull brown with churned earth. Nevertheless, we had the time of our lives.

We were given a local woman as our guide, a Hmong woman named Su. There are 5 indigenous tribes in this area -Hmong (also spelled Mong), Xa, Tay, Dao, and Giay, each with their own language, culture, and dress. Our guide spoke 4 languages (Hmong, Xa, Vietnamese, and English) and read none; she left school at the age of 10 to help her family, and had learned fluent English from talking to tourists (no classes -amazing!). She was 28 years old and had two children, a 9-year-old and 3-year old. She, like most Hmong women, was married at 16. Her story was similar in this respect to many others I've heard while traveling: her parents had many children (13!), but she and all her siblings have only 1-2 children themselves. A birth rate drop this dramatic, and within only one generation, must be the study of many academics. I can imagine the factors - reduced infant mortality, urbanization of jobs (ie less need for farm help), etc - but nonetheless the rapid reduction is astonishing.

Below: Su and her adorable daughter

Su also told us that most of us rice paddies we saw were owned by local families; every family has rice paddies to sustain themselves, and not necessarily for selling produce. Her family has a plot of land where they grow rice, and they eat rice every meal.

Anyhow, we started out trekking on a road, but quickly veered off into rice paddies territory, which was...well...basically just mud. Two Hmong women followed us, intent on selling us homemade goods when we would stop for lunch (this is normal). Now, I'm very familiar with falling down, generally from my own clumsiness and obliviousness to my surroundings. Aashika, on the other hand, is far more graceful than I, and altogether unused to the undignified tumble. She crept down the hills of mud, clutching the hands of our guide and the two Hmong women, while I charged ahead unheeding of my tenuous footholds. Of course, I slid right down one of the steeper hills on my butt, while Aashika remained clean and secure. After this incident, every local who passed me chuckled at the mud smears running down my pants.

Despite the mud and fog, the views were beautiful. Rice paddies scalloped every hill, and when the fog cleared we saw all the way down the valley. We trekked through villages and across great hills.

 Below: rice paddies, trekking, sugarcane snack

Our two Hmong sellers bombarded us at lunch with offers of overpriced handmade item. Partly to thank them for their help getting us through slippery mud and partly because they had lovely items, we had determined to buy one item from each lady. We ended up with a total of 6 items between us -oops.The area is famous for handmade stitching from hemp - they had pillowcases, wall hangings, purses, and the like - and a cloth dyeing technique called Bathik.

Below: Hmong jackets on women right & left. See the embroidery on the sleeves? That's what we bought on wall hangings and pillowcases. Image stolen from Google.

Around mid -afternoon we stopped for our own Bathik class. Bathing is the traditional art of dyeing patterned cloth with indigo. First you take hot wax with a pen-like tool and draw the wax on the cloth.When your design is complete, you dye the entire cloth with indigo; the wax protects the cloth from the indigo, and the waxed parts remain white while the rest becomes a rich purpley blue. Our teacher was a seasoned old lady who was very specific about the design you were to follow: she carved the design into the cloth, and if you deviated (as the creative Aashika did, to try her own design), she would point and give a toothless chuckle at your non-traditional Bathik. She also laughed at my design, not because I tried to be creative but because my execution was so poor.

Below: Bathik in progress,  wax complete, final product

That night we stayed with 5 other travelers at a homestay in Ta Van, a small village. Our host fed us delectable Vietnamese food and, surprisingly, French fries (fried with garlic -amazing!), and our guides regaled us with stories of their lives. We asked about the practice of bride kidnapping - did they know anyone who had been kidnapped? "I was kidnapped," replied one girl, "but not too far." As if distance from home is the issue when you're kidnapped!

 The practice is that men kidnap women they want to be their brides. Sometimes it is their girlfriend, but it can also be anyone  the man takes a fancy to, even if they've never spoken. ("you never know who will kidnap you for marriage," explained our host.) Once you are kidnapped, you have to spend 3 days with the man and his family; you don't sleep with the man, and the whole time they try to woo you with sticky rice and the like. After 3 days you have the choice to marry or not, but in some more traditional communities you may be the subject of gossip if you say no, since you already stayed at his house. Regardless, if you say no too many times to kidnappers, you will lose face and it will be difficult to find a husband. Sometimes men accidentally kidnap married women (there's no obvious difference in dress or marriage symbols), and then they have to pay the husbands a large fee and return the wife. One man had to pay the husband a whole oxen for capturing his wife! There are other methods of marriage too (parents arrange, love match), but kidnapping was the most unusual method described. The host also told me that husbands complain that their wives are "too skinny," and that my chubbiness would be considered "tasty" by Hmong men. If only that were the case in the States...

We met two other groups of travelers in our homestay: a Taiwanese couple, and a Canadian family with an adorable 7-year-old named Josephine. They had taken Josephine to Hong Kong Disneyland prior to Sapa, in part to show her the contrast of lifestyles; instead Josephine was entranced with Sapa life because her guide's family had 2 dogs and lived in a "treehouse" (a tall rickety house made of wood). Oh, children.

Below: Our group

Our host plied us with stories and homemade "happy water" (clear alcohol made from rice, stored inconspicuously in water bottles) all night, and sent us to bed warm and fuzzy. All the guests slept in a loft in the house, and we woke very early the next morning to incessant dog barking, babies crying, and the host chattering as she prepared breakfast. Even so, the two days trekking in Sapa were perhaps my favorite of the whole trip.

Egg Coffee and Other Delights: Hanoi & Ha Long Bay

In our initial planning period, we used Hanoi as a jumping-off point for all the fun adventures to be had in northern Vietnam, including a 2 day cruise of Ha Long Bay, and a 2 day day trek in the northern villages surrounded by terraced rice paddies. Hanoi itself, though, bested our expectations: here again we feasted on delectable food, wandered the streets of the bustling, lovely city, and found night markets and night festivals to our hearts' content. Aashika and I realized we are growing very old when we started saying "I'll get this round" of food instead of drinks. No longer in college, I guess. After all that sampling, our new favorite morning treat is egg coffee, which sounds off-putting until you try it: creamy, smooth, frothy, and altogether delicious. It combines a whipped sort of egg-sweetened condensed milk -spice concoction with coffee.

Below: Hanoi, egg coffee, I try a motorcycle taxi and survive

During one of the nighttime wanderings, we stumbled across a seeming festival by the lake, where somebody (The government?) organized games for youngsters, from building blocks for the babies to Mafia and boccee ball for the teens. These appeared to be free-for-all games where anyone can join in. It seemed so happy and carefree: families strolling around the lake, babies in tow, kids making friends with strangers in the group games. This is a bit of a stretch after only viewing these games for a half hour,  I would imagine these activities help forge community between strangers in an otherwise large capital city.

Below: nighttime community games

We also ran across some sort of Japanese festival, a large garden area filled with cherry blossoms and  lit up like a psychedelic concert; we thought the lights signified some sort of main act or exhibition to see, but the primary attraction appeared to be the selfies that everyone was taking.

Below: cherry blossoms ripe for selfie pictures

We were picked up in Hanoi for our Ha Long Bay cruise. The bus ride to the port saw our guide tell us stories of his life in Vietnam, some of the saddest I've heard in awhile. Before the borders opened some 30-odd years ago, Vietnamese citizens were almost exclusively impoverished farmers, and often lacked basic necessities like clothes. Back them, the vast majority of Vietnamese were farmers, and even today that number is ~40% agriculture workers. The economic situation has improved somewhat from decades ago, but even still, it's tough going. There is no income tax in Vietnam because of the extreme poverty, so as a result, the government doesn't have the budget to offer basic public services like school or health care. You must pay for school for each child, and if, like many Vietnamese, you are a subsistence farmers - well, no school. Medical costs are beyond the reach of all but the richest. This all compounds to make life very stressful, always worrying about money, food, and your children's future. There's no time to enjoy life, according to our guide. One story drove this home: one man drove a shuttle bus from Hanoi to Ha Long Bay his whole life (until 60), and had never once seem the bay, just the port. Our guide expressed hope that Vietnam economy would continue to grow and be more open, but who knows what the future holds.

Speaking of open economies, I'm not quite sure how Vietnam is communist. You can own land (I'm pretty sure that directly contradicts some fundamental communist philosophy right there), no public services or social programs, and no forced distribution of wealth, as was evident when we passed some lavish homes. Marx would stroke his beard and sigh if he knew.

Anyhow, we made it to Ha Long Bay without incident, and boarded our boat only to be greeted with 7 children under the age of 8. 7 on a boat with 25 people! they were all part of a large Chinese tourist group, and by the end of the cruise I wanted to strangle all of them. They ran screaming all over the boat, tried to get into our room, climbed over me when I was on a lounge chair, and were generally awful monsters. Their parents stared at their smartphones and let them run wild. I'm used to kids, I like them even, but this was truly terrible. It only got worse when we shared the bus back: the kids played tag up and down the aisle, screaming as per usual, and the parents left our poor tour guide to control them all alone. This came to a head when a parent asked for a plastic bag for motion sickness for a kid (that's fine, I get it), but then returned the bag full of....poop. Poop!! She made our tour guide throw away her child's poop. Awful.

Our other tribulation regarded food. The food served was terrible and under-spiced; they filled soups and curries with cornstarch instead of cooking for long enough to reach the right consistency, and Aashika's vegetarian options were a joke. My favorite substitute: instead of grilled chicken, she got empty dumpling buns.

Below: the offending dumplings

Aside from being beset on all sides by child hyenas and terrible food, Ha Long Bay was very nice; we went kayaking through limestone pillars and enjoyed the sights.

Below: kayaking and hanging out :)

We filled out a survey upon leaving the boat, and had highlighted food as a concern; a few hours later, a cruise representative showed up at our hotel, apologizing incessantly, and followed us to dinner until we accepted a gift of embroidered paintings. We of course felt very guilty and were dissuaded from a negative online review, so I suppose it did the trick.

Our next adventure was trekking in Sapa.....

Bonus: my face as I read US news for the first time in a month. Ignorance has been such bliss. I believe I was reading about Trump's proposed steel tariffs...