11 Sep 2005 - My last day in Hong Kong, and finally today being a Sunday, Peiling was able to join us, and so it was a girls’ day out! But the morning started with just Shihui and I on a trip to Stanley Bay, again an area that I’ve not been to before.

The views of the sea are usually a lot prettier. Unfortunately in addition to being a hazy day, there’s also a lot of construction work going on. Oh well, here’s what it looks like anyway.

We had our breakfast in a typical 茶餐厅 where we had noodles, sandwiches and coffee and tea. The food was pretty plain, but honestly not like I would have been able to tell the difference. Suffering from a major blocked nose, and have completely lost the sense of smell. And you know how taste is basically 70% smell? So guess what, I can’t taste anything apart from being able to tell that it’s sweet or salty or bitter or sour or spicy. Shucks! Of all places! Hong Kong, which is also known for its yummy food. Besides, Peiling has already promised that today, we’ll go to all the popular foodie haunts around town, eating from one stop to another!

Stanley is also known for its market, where you can pick up a bargain or two.

Here’s Shihui getting some swimwear for an upcoming company trip to Club Med Maldives! So envious! And me? Well I managed to buy some children’s wear for Wendy and Yanwei’s babies.

After that we hurried back to the hotel to meet Peiling. And as promised, our first stop was “The Sweet Dynasty” which is supposedly a dessert heaven. They also have very good porridge, and since we have not had lunch, we ordered that first. As mentioned before, I’m sure the porridge was very tasty, but unfortunately I COULDN’T TASTE A DAMN THING! Oh man, I just wanna cry, so torturous to be in my predicament. I kept trying to blow my nose, hoping to clear it, but, nada. See, can tell I wasn’t having a good time, didn’t even bother to take pictures… Anyway, the girls were very kind. We were kind of full after the congee so they decided not to have the desserts yet, helping me buy some time, hopefully I regain my olfactory abilities before the end of the day.

So in HK, after you eat, what do you do? Shop of course! Heh heh heh… here we are at the Espirit Factory Outlet.

Met this little girl who was waiting for her mum, so cute right?

In the evening, the initial plan was to head up to the Peak to watch fireworks. But you know us girls, got too carried away with the shopping and were too late for the fireworks. So how? Well, there’s always more food! Maybe third time lucky for me?

This time it was Shihui’s turn to recommend a place — seafood at “Under the Bridge Restaurant”, erh, something to that effect anyway. The place was small and packed to the brim! Hmm… very promising. The four of us managed to squeeze into a tiny table towards the back of the restaurant. Oh yup, four ‘cos Peiling’s friend, Ron, whom she just ran into a couple of days back, has joined us. Here we are:

Whoa! The food we ordered was sumptious indeed!

Just check out this oyster congee, packed to the brim with 料!

And could I taste it? Not a freakin chance! But guess what, one of the dishes we ordered was this chilli crab thing, and the waiter did warn us that it was going to be very spicy, but I very gei-kiang, go and tell him “Haiyoh, we are Singaporeans! If anyone can eat chilli, it’s us! So just bring it on!” Wah liao!!! With those words, I unleashed a monster! It turned out to be MEGA MEGA SUPERDUPER hot siah!!!! Hey, and it’s not me being wimpy here ok? Even Shihui, the chilli queen, also claims it’s hot! Man, my tongue was on fire! Really don’t know whether to laugh or cry, it was one hellish experience really. I was hyperventilating so much at one point that I almost passed out. So you see, so high from the oxygen, where got time to complain about not being able to taste the food?!? Just whack lah! Anyway, we girls and Ron were just having a party, it was such good fun!

Heh heh and to end off the night, don’t say I say, but we ended up at Ron’s office. ‘Cos he happens to be a trader with some XXX finance company which happens to be housed in this swanky skyscraper, and his office happens to be on the topmost level, and he happens to be real gam with the security guard, so somehow or other, at 12am in the morning, we ended up being alone in this huge trading office, where almost every desk, instead of having just the one regular computer screen, had like six screens with all these financial info, charts, etc on them, dunno, don’t make sense to me. Oh, oh, oh and the reason we were there, magnificent views of Hong Kong’s skyline by night. Pretty amazing stuff, and a real cheap thrill for me.

So, some afterthoughts on the HK portion of my trip: Though I didn’t manage to spend that much time with Peiling, maybe it was a blessing in disguise cause it allowed me to spend heaps of time with Shihui, and to see first-hand the life she lives here in HK. Being a very successful headhunter and all, I thought she was living the high life, always partying or entertaining. But surprisingly, as she herself claims, her life is in fact pretty simple and down-to-earth — just working hard on weekdays, and pottering around the house on weekends, reading, cooking, resting. Most importantly, I’m glad to find out that after having gone through some hard times previously, she’s in a pretty contented and happy place for the moment. Yes, it was good to have seen her, and these are precious days indeed. So tomorrow: well, moving on to Beijing to catch up with another good chum. Life’s good.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 23rd, 2005 at 7:24 pm and is filed under General Ramblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.