Hong Kong Day One

I don't know what day it is anymore, but we've left London and are now in Hong Kong, on our way to Sydney. I think I'm in a state of shock to be honest.

Our cabbie to the airport couldn't have taken a route better designed to show off London and the weather continued to taunt us. As we scooted past the Natural History museum I commented that I still hadn't been there. I guess next time I am back in London will be as tourist...

So we're now at the Jia boutique hotel in Hong Kong. Our suite is amazing; two chaises longues, "the comfiest bed in the world" according to Brian (although I think this might have more to do with the fact we've been in smelly twin beds for the past month in that horrible appartment), power shower and three gnome stools. Indeed. You can really tell that it was designed by Phillipe Starck. I am slightly reminded of the Long Bar at the Sanderson (only with fewer high class hookers and no Dean Gaffney) It's the sheer white curtains...Bri keeps walking around and touching things and saying that it's the lovliest hotel room he has ever stayed in.

We completely screwed up on the jet lag front and I forgot to set an alarm, so rather than having two hours sleep, we slept for six, wasting most of our first day and missing two meals. We took a longish walk to Victoria City Seafood ((which the concierege really didn't want us to do for some reason. Kept saying it was far too far to walk. With hindsight I can see how this is the case in the middle of summer and the humidity is up, but it was really pleasant today) in the Sun Hung Kai Centre for dinner, skirting through Victoria Park and getting our first view of Kowloon from HK Island through the haze.

Dinner was a brightly lit affair in a very quiet restaurant. I'd been warned that tables were hard to come by here, but I think that Hong Kong might take dinner a lot later than two jetlagged Brits. We started with deep fried century egg and pork dumplings with roe. The eggs were one of my things that I really wanted to eat while I was here. The individual eggs are packed in a mixture of ash, lime and salt and are buried for 100 days. The lime petrifies the egg and makes the yolk harden and turn a bluish colour while the white becomes gelatinous, translucent and brown. The eggs were then breadcrumbed and deep fried. The results are a very complex textural dish, with a nice contrast of hot on the outside and cold inside and the flavour is musty and slightly cheesy. The dumplings were much more familar to me and a really great example and I enjoyed watching our matriarchal waitress make sure that Bri didn't burn his tongue. The dumplings did lack the advertised roe though, so I wonder if we got the ferengi ones.

Next up were some prawns, simply sauted in ginger and garlic, which squeaked with freshness and some beans with minced pork which were sweet, savoury and healthy all at the same time. Our centre piece was a half roasted chicken (pictured) which had lots of scrakly skin and creamy flesh. We also managed some choi sum, sauted with garlic, because it felt like days since we'd had anything healthy to eat.

The bill came to about £42 which seemed like a good price for carefully cooked, very fresh ingredients. We travelled back on the double decker tram (or rather, we went to North Point on the tram because we were loving the ride so much and then just got off, crossed over the road and came back on the top deck)

Bri's now on the sofa asleep. Am sure it's time for bed for me too.