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May 17, 2004
Temple Street Night Market
After a full day of country presentations on May 11, all the speakers gathered in the hotel lobby for a bus ride into downtown Hong Kong. Being a large, diverse group, it seemed everyone had different priorities as to how we should spend the evening. Eventually we split up into two groups; the first group would go to a Chinese restaurant in Causeway Bay, while the second group would leave the bus in Central and take the ferry to explore Kowloon. I decided to go along with the Kowloon crowd.
We waited for a while at the ferry, which was running a little slow due to the skyline light show, which was just wrapping up. Suzanne Stein of Canada had just bought a bag of wasabi-flavored broadbeans from a vending machine, so it was fun seeing how people from around the world responded to their first wasabi experience. Eventually the ferry arrived and we rode across the harbor to Tsim Sha Tsui terminal. From there we walked north towards the Temple Street night market, which some of us had tried to visit on Sunday night but never made it to the center of the market. For most of the group it was their first time in Hong Kong; you could almost feel them soaking in the neon from the bright billboards suspended high above the streets.
Not too far from the Jordan Street subway station we found ourselves at the same small market we'd visited on Sunday. Alexander Felsenberg of Germany and Waheed Al Balushi of Bahrain spent much of the time shopping at camera and electronics booth, exploring the various tripods and high-powered flashlights, while the rest of us perused the rows of luggage and t-shirts. Many of the shirts had classic mangled Hong Kong English, like Haikus written by randomly selecting words or phrases from a hat.
We were eager to get dinner at some point, but we had a hard time settling on what we wanted. Some people were interested in eating in the Temple Street food pavilion, with its tented and open-air restaurants, so we worked our way north until we reached the area. The tents were packed with Chinese and western tourists, sitting around large tables covered in countless platters of Cantonese cuisine. We began to settle at a table when it became clear from the expressions of some in our group that they weren't too keen about eating in an open-air market, so we got up from our table before the waiters had a chance to put any tea on it, quickly sneaking out the back of the tent.
As we exited the tent we found ourselves smack in the middle of the Temple Street market. Closed off to vehicular traffic, the street was teaming with tourists exploring row after row of market stalls: clothing, paintings, electronic surveillance equipment, DVDs, Hello Kitty paraphernalia, chop stick sets, faux antiques, postcards. Suzanne Stein and Louise van Rooyen of Australia found a marvelous collection of hand towels decorated with cutsy-cute Asian cartoon characters, each containing another collection of cracked-English text. Alexander, Waheed and I discovered a booth with a variety of laser pointers. Alexander andWaheed got a set of them, probably for use in presentations; I, on the other hand, got a set as a toy for my cats.
We spent about an hour exploring the night market, picking up a variety of souvenirs for friends and family. Given the fact that I'd been nominated as the de facto guide for the evening, since I'd been to Kowloon on several occasions, I found myself spending much of my time trying to keep track of everyone so we didn't get split up. It was approaching 11pm and we still didn't have any consensus on what we were doing for dinner. Alexander and Lawrence Zikusoka of Uganda had picked up a beer while strolling around -- no open container laws here in Hong Kong -- and I started to get the distinct the impression that dinner in any formal sense was becoming less likely. Waheed and I walked down the street to the local 7-Eleven store to find some kind of snack. I was overwhelmed by the selection of Asian snacks available, so ended up purchasing an eclectic dinner of curry beef buns, M&Ms and pear juice. Before I had a chance to eat any of it, though, suddenly the group decided to get dinner after all, so I shoved my new purchases into my backpack and led the way to find a place to eat.
Since half the group didn't want to try food from the night market itself, we backtracked the route we'd taken to get there and found a Singaporean restaurant that was still open. As luck would have it, the restaurant had a private room that sat around 10 people, so we managed to get our own private space there, complete with a flat panel TV showing Japanese television and placemats with adorable little pigs printed on them (they were on display in the bathroom as well). Dinner arrived in fits and starts; Lawrence's vegetable fried rice arrived almost as fast as he'd ordered it, while my mee goreng took its time. Given the variety of eating habits around the table -- Lawrence was avoiding meats altogether while Effat El Shooky of Egypt, Waheed and I didn't eat pork -- but we still managed to get a taste of at least three or four entrees each. My mee goreng was outstanding, as was Louise's fish soup and Suzanne's curry. Lawrence's fried rice had a subtle curry flavor to it, a subtlety that could only be pulled off by a Singaporean chef.
We weren't exactly sure when the subway closed; I was under the impression it was some time between midnight and 1am. So we wrapped up dinner and managed to catch one of the last trains from the Jordan Street station. Crossing Victoria Harbor underwater, we exited the subway at Central and then split up into two groups to take a taxi back to the hotel, finally getting back to our rooms around 1am.
Posted by acarvin at May 17, 2004 5:52 PM
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