Friday our entire team at Ketchum went out for Hot Pot to a nice restaurant in Causeway Bay. This Hot Pot was the more traditional type with two huge pots that contained a boiling pork stew. The process was similar except this time you order ingredients from your server. Some of those ingredients included: fish balls, ostrich, shrimp dumplings, oysters, an unappetizing fish muss that you make into balls and it turns out delicious, along with corn, carrots, pork, bean curd, tofu, steak, etc. Delicious! My favorite was the ostrich -- Shocking I know, but so tender! (Fish testicles and other intestines were on the menu, but we passed. Thank goodness!)
After dinner I was invited out for a drink with my boss and GM, I couldn't say no of course :-) It was a fun night and a great opportunity to network. Talk of hiring me as a freelancer came about again; maybe it really will happen...
Hot Pot
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This weekend I moved out of my slum and into a hotel. Rags to Riches so to speak :-) Then enjoyed an authentic dinner at Yellow Door Kitchen in Soho. Some of the weirdest food I have ever eaten happened in a mere 24 hour period; including, duck tongue. Yep, that's right. It tastes exactly how it sounds. Never again. Gotta love HK and packing in the authentic experiences all the way to the bitter end... Sunday I hiked Dragon's Back one last time (my favorite for sure) and enjoyed Thai food at the best place in Shek-O. The weather had been touch and go all during the hike, but we finally thought it had subsided when we made our way to the beach. Not 5 minutes later, an alarm started to sound and people began sprinting for cover. Being the oblivious American, I casually looked around at what all of the commotion was about... Then the rain came. The combination of rain and wind felt like I was getting nailed with pellets. I couldn't help but laugh while I was running for shelter. It poured for about 5 minutes and then everyone went back in the water. Quite the experience! Naively I had assumed that was the worst of it. How wrong could I be...
Pool view from the hotel
Yellow Door Kitchen
It was a tasting menu so we got to try a number of traditional Asian dishes --
Sting Ray -- Once you chew it for a bit it is actually quite tasty. Of course the sauce helps :-)
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Monday there was a Typhoon - My first!! And it happened to be a Typhoon 10, the worst in 13 years. So crazy! I thought the highest was a Typhoon 8, but apparently thats just the level it has to be at when you don't have to go to work. Too bad I was at Disneyland for a media tour when it rolled in. The level was steady at 3 for hours, and then the government issued a warning saying they were going to hoist it to a level 8 at 5pm. When that happens, taxis, buses, and the mtr all shut down. Hong Kong becomes a ghost town while everyone rushes home for safety. I had to get off of Lantua Island where Disneyland is located or else I would have been stranded there. We had to cancel the media tour until further notice; I jumped in a taxi and safely made my way back to the hotel. By 5pm the wind was howling! I assumed it was only an 8, but around midnight they raised it to a level 10. The wind definitely made it difficult to sleep that night, but it sure was fun to watch from my hotel. Level 8 stayed in effect until 10am Tuesday morning at which point you have two hours to report to work. It was a nice leisurely morning for me as I strolled into work at noon :-) I must say it was quite exciting and I'm very happy I got to experience it before I left. Thank you weather gods, for packing in everything HK has to offer in my last few days :-)
View from my hotel as the storm moves in...
Can't even see the other side of the harbor anymore in a matter of seconds...
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On Wednesday I was able to go back to Disneyland to complete the media tour. A co-worker and I took a group of 8 media members from the Philippines to tour Grizzly Gulch, the newest Disney themed area in the park. There were producers, journalists, and a host from a Filipino TV show documenting the tour. I had no idea that the HK Disneyland was identical to the one in Anaheim. I honestly felt like I was in LA! (On a miniature scale, of course). Nevertheless, it was a fun day, exploring Toy Story Land and riding the new ride in Grizzly Gulch (a character and park that is exclusive to HK Disneyland). It's inspiration is actually from the Sierra Nevadas in California so when I met the designer I had to brag that that's where I live. As a fellow Californian herself, she was very pleased :-)
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I'm currently having a love/hate relationship with the rain. I love the rain, but I sure do hate it when I get caught in a torrential downpour with no umbrella! Rain, rain go away... Oh Hong Kong :-)
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