Our Next Adventure: Chicken feet and cake

When we got up in the morning, we packed up as quick as we could to get the hell out of the Chungking mansions and over to our spacious and clean hotel room up in the Mong kok region of Kowloon. For lunch we went to meet up with John Erik, a friend of a friend, at a dim sum place. The place was packed and there was just enough room for us at the table along with two friends of John's and other guests at the restaurant. John helped us order shrimp dumplings, rice noodle wrapped spring rolls, pork dumplings, bbq chicken feet, and tea. The chicken feet were quite the experience, having to tear off a toe at the knuckle, then separate the skin from the bone with your teeth. There isn't any meat on the feet, just skin and tendon, but the bbq sauce was tasty.

After lunch we headed to a little tea shop to drink some excellent chilled sweet herbal tea on some plastic stools on the side of the road. While sitting on the side of the road John pointed out how quiet the area was. We couldn't hear the drone of cars or hum of people. It was peaceful yet in the center of town. After finishing our tea we walked through Hong Kong towards Victoria peak. Hong Kong felt like New York but a bit cleaner.

At Victoria peak we took a tram to the top where there was a lookout over Hong Kong and Kowloon as well as some outlying islands. On the way down the peak we stopped at the (free) zoo. There was a reptile house with one boa constrictor and one crocodile. We saw some orangutans, lemurs, gibbons, and other monkey types.

For dinner we met up with even more people in an indoor food market. I think the total count at the table was 10 people. We had a blast meeting everyone and discussing jobs and traveling (with the exception of John and two others, everyone was a visitor to Hong Kong). Someone ordered a bunch of dishes of food that we all shared. My favorite was the roasted goose. I also tried squid ink pasta, which was essentially black pasta, but tasted like butter.