NO TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA
My Adventure in Hong Kong

By
Jimmy Mak

HONG KONG ISLAND

My wife Lydia and I were about to celebrate our 14th anniversary, which is the “ivory” anniversary.  Yeah, don’t think that goes over the way it used to. 

“My love for you is as big as a dead elephant.  Here’s a tusk.” 

We had been talking for a while about going overseas for our vacation.  Ireland?  Italy?  Then I thought about our friend, Mike Pizzuto, who moved to Hong Kong eight years ago.  Asia?  Hmmm, I knew more about the band than I did the continent.  We contacted Pizzuto and gave him the dates we were thinking about.
           
“That’s perfect for me!  I’m a great tour guide!  Come visit!”  (He’s a very loud Facebooker.)  We went out for Chinese to talk it over.  My wife asked her fortune cookie – “Should we go visit Pizzuto in Hong Kong?”  She opened the cookie and the little paper read, “BUY THAT TICKET TAKES THAT SPECIAL TRIP.”  Although not grammatically correct, we caught the gist.

           
Passports were obtained.  Childcare was planned (thank God for Grandparents.)  Neck pillows were bought.  We boarded a plane in Columbus at 7:20 a.m. Monday morning.  An hour and a half later we switched planes in Toronto and flew 15 hours straight to Hong Kong.  We flew into …THE FUTURE (DUN DUN DUUUUUNNN.)  Hong Kong is exactly 12 hours ahead of Columbus so even though it felt like 2:30 a.m. Monday night, turns out it was 2:30 p.m. Tuesday afternoon.  I kept telling my body that time was a manmade construct.  My body kept telling me to f*** off.

TUESDAY

Pizzuto picked us up at the airport.  We rode the train back to Hong Kong Island and then caught the ferry to Lamma Island.  This is where he lived and where we would be staying.  Lamma Island has a cool, artsy vibe to it.  It’s like if the Short North and Yellow Springs had a baby in China.  We walked around the island, taking in the various little shops and markets.  We walked into a little store called “Brothers” and each bought a beer to drink while we walked around.  Open container is 100% OK in Hong Kong.  I was going to like this place.

           
We hung out on the beach for a bit.  We visited Pizzuto’s house, played with his puppy, ate a crazy-good mango and then went to dinner at an Indian restaurant called “The Waterfront.”  The food.  Oh man, the food.  I’ll have plenty more to say about it but this meal – my first in China – was spectacular.  I still dream about it.
           
After dinner, Lydia and I were barely awake so we said goodbye to Pizzuto and went back to our room.  The room we were staying in was like a little apartment above a restaurant.  It had a patio that faced the ocean.  Oh, and it was owned by Chow Yun-Fat’s parents.  I asked Lydia if she wanted to play “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.”  She said no.  We were asleep by 8:30 p.m.

WEDNESDAY

           
I woke up at midnight and my body said, “It’s noon, get out of bed, let’s go!”  I forced myself to go back to sleep.  At 3:00 a.m. my body said, “come on man, what’s your problem, it’s time to move!!!”  I told my body to f*** off.  We were even.
           
We met Pizzuto at 8:30 took the half-hour ferry ride to the Hong Kong Island.  We took the train to Sha Tin and met up with another friend who had moved out here named Christopher Anders.  The four of us then trekked up a mountain to see the Temple of 10,000 Buddhas.
           
The temple is beautiful.  On your way up the many, many, many (many) steps there are a number of large, golden Buddhas in various positions and facial expressions – some praying, some screaming, some with arms coming out of their eyeballs. 

It’s kind of a “MacGuffin.” (Hitchcock term.  Look it up.)  You think these are the 10,000 Buddhas but they’re not.  Once you reach the top and enter the temple you really see them.  10,000 small Buddhas that line the inside walls of the temple from floor to ceiling.  It’s hard to describe and there was no photography allowed but it was quite overwhelming and extremely beautiful.  The view from up there is also remarkable.

           
We headed back down and had lunch at an “authentic” Chinese restaurant.  No orange chicken, no General Tso’s and no fortune cookies will be found in these places.  I got spicy beef and rice (simple enough) and it was delicious.  I also decided that starting here I would eat my meals with chopsticks.  Lunch lasted seven hours.  (Slight exaggeration.)
           
After this we took a taxi to the Heritage Museum where we saw a very cool Bruce Lee exhibit.  At this point Pizzuto had to leave us to do a voice over – he does a number of voice-overs in English for cartoons, commercials, etc. – so he left Christopher in charge of us.  Even though we were meeting up with Pizzuto for dinner later, he took us to Tim Ho Wan's in Sham Shui Po because he said, “We HAD to eat some Michelin star Pineapple BBQ pork buns.”  Since those are words I never thought I’d hear next to each other in a sentence I was game.  And he was right.  They were amazing. 
    
He then took us to Jordan to walk around the Temple Street night market.  Lydia bought a painting of Hong Kong from one of the merchants.  Assuming he was the artist, she even tipped him (which they are clearly not used to.)  We ended up seeing the exact same painting at about seven other locations.  Clearly not the one-of-a-kind original painting she thought it was.  We still like it.

           
Eventually Pizzuto met up with us and he was determined for us to have Korean food for dinner.  The only problem was he couldn’t quite remember where the restaurant was.  So we walked in the rain down many different streets and alleys looking for it.  Just as we decided to give up, Pizzuto sprinted up the street away from us and at the end of the block he stopped and jumped up and down.  “HERE IT IS!”
           
So we had Korean chicken and Korean other stuff.  And it was fabulous.  I was glad he found it.  We said farewell to Christopher and caught a double decker bus back to the ferry.  A good day.

THURSDAY

           
Thursday morning we took the ferry to Hong Kong Island and then boarded another boat for a day trip to Macau.  That's right – we spend our time in another country by going to … another country.
           
After an hour boat ride, we were there.  Macau is an interesting place.  It was once owned by Portugal and there are a number of Christian seminaries (as opposed to the Buddhist temples of China.)  It has also recently become a gambling mecca with new, fancy-looking casinos everywhere.  So, I guess it’s just your typical Asian-Portuguese Christian Historic Vegas-y type place.

           
We ate lunch at the top of the Macau Tower, which is 1,109 feet tall.  The restaurant has a 360 degree view of the city below.  On this day, however, it was still pretty rainy and there was a fog all around us.  The food was an international buffet – everything from squid to spaghetti. 
           
We hailed a taxi and asked them to take us to one of the seminaries.  Pizzuto showed him on the map.  The man looked utterly confused.  Pizzuto pointed to a different seminary.  The man still looked confused and just shook his head no.  We hailed another taxi.  Pizzuto showed him the seminary on the map.  The man pointed to a general area and asked a question in Chinese.
           
“You’re asking me?” said Pizzuto.  “Yes, it’s in that general direction.  Not up, not down, but … that way somewhere.”
           
We hailed our third taxi and the driver kinda sorta took us to where we wanted to go.    I learned that to be a taxi driver in Macau knowledge of the area is not really required.
           
We visited a number of seminaries and little museums.  We visited St. Paul’s façade – a giant church that had burned down and left only the giant front exterior.  We ate a Portuguese egg tart.  So.  Good.

           
Later in the day we hit the casinos – MGM, Wynn, City of Dreams.  Aware of our budget, Lydia and I hit the nickel slots.  Although the machines’ signs boasted a wide variety, they all ended up being the same game.  We lost a little bit of money.  Pizzuto cleaned up on the poker table.  Bastard.
           
We left Macau a little more broke and a lot more tired.  But we did get to see an Asian breakdance battle on the upper floor of one of the casinos.  So there was that.

FRIDAY

           
Met Pizzuto, ferry, Hong Kong Island, etc.
           
We started the day walking through Hong Kong Park.  This is like the Central Park of Asia except a lot more hill-y.  They have a very cool aviary there and we saw a number of interesting birds.

           
We caught a taxi to Stanley to visit the market there.  The markets in Hong Kong are like giant Asian flea markets.  They sell everything from clothes to toys to shark skins (really.)  They even sell cardboard replicas of things like ipads, cars and whiskey.  I found out that people buy these cardboard replicas, burn them at a temple while praying for someone and the idea is that the deceased person will receive these items in the afterlife.  So you burn a cardboard bottle of Jameson and then Grampa can keep himself nice and boozed up in Heaven.  When I die, please burn a cardboard Tom Waits record for me. I’d appreciate it.
           
After the Stanley market we took a minibus to Causeway Bay and walked around Hong Kong’s Times Square.  We jumped on a trolley, affectionately called the Ding Ding, and rode through the city.

           
Pizzuto had a wedding to go to so he showed us how to get back to the ferry.  We just had to go to that building, go up the escalator, cross the overpass and go straight.  No problem.  We said goodbye.  We went to the building, up the escalator and kept going straight.  We kept going.  And going.  We were going up on what we found out was the longest escalator in the world.  We kept going up and up.  We felt it was weird that Pizzuto hadn’t mentioned how long it was going to take.  Finally, the escalator came to the end.  Nothing looked familiar.  I asked someone where the ferry was and they pointed to the way we had just come from.  We had just gone 20 minutes in the wrong direction.
           
We went back down.  Of course, there’s no escalator on the way back down – just steps and hills.  We ended up back where we started.  I realized we were supposed to turn after going up the escalator – that’s where we had gone wrong.  Pizzuto later said, “You kept going UP expecting to see the water?”  Yeah, we’ll just blame that on jetlag.
           
This was technically our anniversary so Lydia and I were excited to celebrate.  We finally made it back to Lamma Island and the plan was to check out all the fun little bars on the strip.  We had dinner, hit one bar and … couldn’t stop yawning.  We went back to the room to watch a movie.  Again, we were both asleep by 8:30 p.m.  Happy Anniversary.

SATURDAY

           
Pizzuto, Ferry and whatnot.
           
We took the train to Wan Chai to walk around.  We visited a temple and a cool little museum called “Hong Kong House of Stories.”  The woman there played a record of Hong Kong music for me.  We walked through a local grocery market.  We rode a glass elevator and got a great view of Hong Kong.

           
We had dim sum for lunch.  If you’ve never had dim sum, I highly recommend it.  People push these little carts around with signs on them and you just tell them what you want and they give you a little wooden steamer bowl with usually 3 or 4 food items.  Things like barbecue rolls, shrimp noodles, etc.  We had mango pudding for dessert.  Oh man.  I tried to make this when I got back to the states.  It didn’t work.

           
After this we went “junking” in Soho – looking through a number of art and antique stores.  We went to the ladies market in Mong Kok.  I was searching for a coffee cup.  Little known fact – not many people drink coffee in Asia.
           
At this point Lydia and Pizzuto decided they wanted foot massages.  My lower back was killing me so I opted for a regular back massage.  In Hong Kong every fifth building is a massage parlor (only a slight exaggeration.)  Christopher had warned us a couple days ago that the ones with smiley faces on the sign or up a long flight of steps were the “adult” massage parlors, so to speak.

           
Pizzuto led us into one that had a smiley face sign AND was up a long flight of stairs. 
           
“It’s fiiiiiine,” he said.
           
I was steered into a small room with a cot in it.  On the cot was a pair of shorts made from thick paper.  I nervously got undressed and pulled the papery shorts over my underwear.  The woman entered and immediately got to work on my back.  She stepped up on the bed and literally walked all over me.  It felt really good actually.  My back was feeling better.  I knew time had to be almost up so I relaxed that I was just getting a good massage and that was it.  Then she motioned me to turn over.  I hesitantly did so.  She worked on my legs and then said “Hey.”
           
I looked at her.  She pointed at me with one hand and the other made the … ahem … jerking off motion.  “Yeah?” she asked.
           
“No.” I said.
           
“No?” she asked, totally confused.  I don’t think she heard “no” very often.  She shrugged her shoulders, waved and left.  I realized I had tensed up so much I pretty much undid all of the massage work she had done.
           
We left the Handy House and grabbed some Vietnamese for dinner.  Again, excellent food.  We headed back to Wan Chai to bar hop.  A lot of beer, a lot of live music and a lot of laughter.  A really fun night.

SUNDAY

           
A little hungover.  We ate breakfast at McDonald’s.  Yes, McDonald’s.  Say what you want – still the best hangover food on the planet.  We had given Pizzuto grief because he initially told us he would take us to Monkey Mountain but that had fallen off the agenda.
           
“We want to see monkeys, dammit!” we screamed at him.
           
So he decided to take us to Pineapple Dam Park located at the Shing Mun reservoir for a little walk in the woods.  We took a minibus to the park.  Lydia and I were still a little worse for wear.  We got off the bus and saw a bunch of steps that led up to the park.  I immediately began complaining about the climb.  We got to the top of the steps and followed Pizzuto down one of the paths.

           
We saw them!  We saw the monkeys!  There were signs that said not to look them in the eyes - they saw that as a challenge and would attack you.  These monkeys don’t mess around. 

After a half hour I realized we had been walking non-stop up a mountain.     

           
“Where are you taking us?” I asked.
           
“Just a little trek around the reservoir,” Pizzuto replied.
           
An hour later we stopped to rest.
           
“I got some good news,” said Pizzuto, looking at a sign.  “We’re about halfway there.”
           
I think Lydia started to cry.
           
“Maybe you’ll see another monkey?” Pizzuto suggested hopefully.
           
“It’s probably better if you don’t talk,” I whispered.
           
After the third hour hiking this magical mountain that seemed to only go up, I had a brilliant idea.  The next monkey I saw I would stare him in the eyes until he killed me.
           
We finished the nearly four hour “little walk in the woods” and were ready to collapse. 

There was only one thing to do – more foot massages!  I stayed out of any private rooms and paper shorts this time.
           
We met Christopher at Hong Kong Island and caught the tram up to the peak.  The view of Hong Kong from the peak is … awe inspiring.  No picture will do it justice. 

While up there we saw a restaurant called “Mak’s Noodle.”  How could we not eat here? 

MONDAY

           
This was our last full day in Hong Kong.  We took a sky-lift to Lantau Island to see Big Buddha.  This was probably the most “touristy” thing we did on the trip – it has a very Disneyland feel to it (except instead of Mickey Mouse it’s a 112 foot tall Buddha.)  There are an enormous number of (you guessed it) stairs that lead to the Buddha.  Actually, it’s pretty amazing and inside is a museum that tells the story of Buddha through wonderful artwork.

           
From here we took a bus to Tai O, a little fishing village about a half hour away.  We took a boat ride around the village.  The houses are all on stilts in the water and people go straight from their back door into their little boats.  After the boat ride we walked around the village some.  We had an afternoon beer, which tasted perfect.  I tried some squid-jerkey, which tasted … less than perfect. 

           
We took the bus back to Big Buddha and Pizzuto led us to an area called the Path of Wisdom.  This is where he proposed to his wife Bee.  There are giant pillars of wood sticking out of the ground with Chinese poems carved into them.  Even though you can’t read them, you can’t help but be moved.  Simply breathtaking.

           
We took the sky-lift back and met up with Christopher in Tsim Sha Tsui.  Christopher wanted us to eat at an Indian place in Chunk King Mansion.  On the way to this place people standing outside their shops aggressively tried to hand us their business card.  They would follow us, scream in our faces and wave their business cards maniacally.  It felt like they had to hand out all of their business cards or something terrible would happen to their families – it was that kind of desperation.
           
Chung King Mansion is the most un-mansion-like building I’ve ever been in.  It was run down and shady and the people inside looked like they were up to no good.  We took a tiny elevator up to the 7th floor where the Indian restaurant was.  Pizzuto had to fill out a form to become a “member” in order for us to eat there.  Luckily (and not unsurprisingly) the food was totally worth it.
           
After dinner we had a nightcap at a bar called Ned Kelley’s Last Stand.  It had an Australian theme.  A Filipino jazz band was playing some great Cole Porter tunes.  At one point I realized I was drinking Danish beer with my American friends listening to a Filipino jazz band in an Australian-themed bar in China.  Not a bad way to end our last night here.

TUESDAY

           
I got up early and got us coffee.  “The Coffee Guy” was located three buildings up from where we were staying and I’ve never tasted coffee better than his. 

We said our goodbyes to Lamma Island, met up with Pizzuto and rode the ferry for the last time.  We had dim sum again for lunch.  Pizzuto had to go to Singapore for work so he once again left us to our own defenses.  He was an amazing host and tour guide.  Lydia teared up as we watched him go.

           
We had some time to kill, so just for fun, we got back on the crazy long escalator we initially got lost on.  We popped into a bar and drank our last beer in Hong Kong.  We searched the area for a Portuguese egg tart but couldn’t find any.  We took the train to the airport.
           
On the way back home we had a seven-hour delay in Vancouver.  Hong Kong is 12 hours ahead of us and Vancouver is 3 hours behind us.  We left Hong Kong at 7:20 p.m. Tuesday evening and after flying 12 hours we arrived in Vancouver at 4:20 p.m. Tuesday afternoon.  At this point we gave up on time altogether.  We grabbed some dinner and walked around downtown Vancouver for a bit. 

Not a bad city, but we were clearly ready to be home.  We boarded a plane and after a stressful layover in Toronto, we were.

           
Overall, it was truly a magnificent vacation.  If you go I highly recommend the markets, the temples and the food.  Mostly though I recommend you have friends who have lived there a number of years.  I know that worked out well for us.