Hong Kong

Hong Kong

Ship docked at the Ocean Terminal right next to the Star Ferry pier in Kowloon. Perfect location across Victoria Harbor from the magnificent skyline of Hong Kong island.
This being HK, the Ocean Terminal is co located in a huge mall. Four floors, full of every manner of high end luxury brand imaginable. In a new wrinkle they had an entire level with only kids stores. Children's Burberry, Baby Dior, Kiddie Kate Spade, Manolo for Juniors etc. Nothing says 'I have too much money than dropping $540 on a pair of shoes for your 9 month old.
First stop: meet mark and tamara at first floor starbucks in Pacific Center Mall, a quick subway ride to the Island.
We had a lovely time with them. Much of it devoted to shuttling between my tailor in the Pacific Center and Doris' back over in Kowloon. After some cajoling Tam agreed to let us have a decent pair of pants made for her and buy her some closed toed shoes. It totally violated her 'i can live my life just fine with two pairs of worn out capri's and flip flops' ethos.'
Mark didn't need as much prodding to allow the generous brothers at Pacific Custom to donate a few custom made dress shirts to him, as well a suit case full of shirts and suits for them to take back home with them.

Tam's special relationship with the chinese remains unchanged. I wouldn't call it love-hate. Its more like barely tolerate-hate.
Mark's chinese seems really good. But then again my chinese vocabulary is limited to knee how mah, shea shea, and 'i dont want a fake rolex'. But based on the all double takes the little chinese shop clerks did when a relatively big black guy started speaking chinese with them he seemed pretty good at it.

We met up with a Tony,local brother, for DimSum lunch, in a bustling joint where we were the only non chinese and wandered about Kowloon.
Later we hopped the subway and met back with Tony and his lovely wife and two other couples from the local congregation. They all spoke cantonese so mark and tamara were pretty much as lost as we were.
They had arranged for for dinner at a very local, and allegedly very nice restaurant for hot-pot. This joint had a bucket full of live snapping turtles on the side walk and fish heads o plenty on display. Turns out that they didnt do hot-pot after all. Just a steady stream of somewhat sketchy looking mystery meat dishes on a lazy susan.
The did offer us pots of boiling water to sterilize our chop sticks, cups, dishes, etc. Apparently this is one of those aspects of 'real chinese' that doesn't get much attention.

For us it was all part of the adventure since we have a perfectly good cruise ship to go back to. For mark and tam it was a genuine annoyance.
They get sketchy chinese food all the time and really wanted some real cheese and recognizable meat for a change. They just can't communicate this to their local friends who are just trying so hard to be generous.
(See comment on Tamara's relationship with all things chinese)
Local Witness Custom Alert: The brother baptized the longest in any group gets the 'honor' to eat the head of whatever animal is being served. In this case a slightly cooked duck head, but it could well be a squirrel, rabbit or whatever fish they happen to be serving. Mercifully this night both the local brothers were baptized longer than i was. Phew.

The next day we made sure Dan Ryan's Steakhouse was on the travel menu. Tamara was so happy to have nachos, she couldn't see straight.

Then off they went to their home. It was really fun to spend time with them.