Hong Kong Trip -- The First Night

Before Mum and Dad were even called to their mission, Ben and I had strongly hoped that we would be able to visit them whether they stayed stateside or went international.  When they received their call to Hong Kong you can imagine how excited we were.  My parents were kind enough to offer to watch the kids and told us to spend no less than 2 weeks in Hong Kong so that we could really experience it.  I didn't feel comfortable being away from the kids for so long and Ben couldn't take that much time off from work, so we settled on 11 days.

On October 19th, we took off.  I had researched and researched for months the best and cheapest way to fly to Hong Kong.  I discovered a particular flight that I really wanted to get on, but it was really expensive. But then one day the price dropped almost 50% and Ben and I immediately booked tickets.  It was the cheapest and fastest way to Hong Kong -- only 19 hours of travel.  Not bad for a 12 hour time difference.

We survived the trip and we were so excited to meet up with Mum and Dad in the airport.  We took a shuttle and MTR to Hom Hung and walked the rest of the way to their apartment.  We had a quick meal of Chinese foods I've been waiting for months to try.

The persimmons were really good.  They look just like an orange tomato on the outside but are a really sweet and delicious fruit.

Steamed buns are a really common food here.  The inside is usually stuffed with some kind of paste.  This was stuffed with lotus seed paste.  It tasted somewhat similar to peanut butter, but sweeter.

These are sapodillas.  They taste like a mixture of melon and cucumber, but a little crunchier.

After we ate, Ben and I needed to stretch our legs, because, hello, 19 hours of traveling. We walked all through the streets and into different stores.  I enjoyed looking at the different products in the stores.

Black fungus.  Fungus is sold everywhere.  It really made me curious and I did get to try some, but that's in a different blog post.  All I can say is, don't knock it 'til you try it.   :) 

Mum and Dad treated us to coconut buns which are a regular bun filled with a delicious coconut paste.

There are randomly placed shrines on the city sidewalks.  You know you're getting close to one when you smell the smoke from their burning incense.

The market is several levels tall.  They sell vegetables, meat (both live and dead), and clothing all within feet of each other.  The wet market is given its name because of the live animals.  The floor is wet from blood, fish juice, and other things you can imagine that come from live animals -- as well as the water they use to spray the floors clean. The smell was not my favorite but not too terrible. 

Live fish

 Crabs

Live frogs

Lobster

After we left the market we walked back towards Mum and Dad's apartment.  They live right on Victoria Harbor which is absolutely beautiful.

Ben and I had been up for about 30 hours at this point and we were fighting some pretty serious jet lag. Mum took this picture of us on the bus on the drive home.

One of Hong Kong's versions of Neapolitan ice cream is vanilla, purple sweet potato, and black sesame seed flavored.  The purple sweet potato was okay but he black sesame seed was really good.  It had an aftertaste similar to chocolate.

And then we finally went to bed.