I love Fridays, because I have them off to do whatever the heck I want!
Like run errands! But first, we must dine!
Drool, Baggy noodles and Hui Lau shan drinks. A cheap and delicious meal.
People needed to get their hair cut, so I tagged along with them to @Hair, the place where we always go and I can catch a glimpse of my lover hairwasher boy. Man was he CUTE. Peter and I sat giggling together like little girls as we waited for people to get their haircuts.
Everybody looks well-groomed now!
Peter & Lily were actually wearing the same shirt that day! FUN FACT: Couples in HK looovveee to wear the same thing because they love to be mushy like that.
After roaming around MongKok and buying some snacks at a candy store, Lily headed to her aunts and the rest of us went to Chungking Mansions, which Chin said had a lot of culture. Apparently it’s the place where a lot of Africans and Middle Easterns congregate, and full of prostitutes and shady business.
There were a lot of vendors selling Indian food and fake cell phones.
There really wasn’t much to see other than a very diverse community that wasn’t particularly East Asian. People did try to hustle us to buy items or stay in hostels (hostels are super cheap here).
Chin met his future girlfriend here:
We roamed around looking for a place to eat and rode on an elevator that took us upstairs to a shady looking area. There were several Indian restaurants in these corridors, and we felt really uncertain being here because there didn’t seem to be a lot of foot traffic.
I think this corridor was the same one where two men came out trying to get us to try a restaurant with a good deal. They stood by the elevators, showing us a menu and hustling us. Chungking Mansions has the slowest elevators ever with a bunch of people crammed into it at one time, so waiting for one to come to us was excruciatingly painful. To make matters worse, one of the men made me uncomfortable because of how close he was standing to me.
“You don’t like me?” He said, noticing that my shoulders were stiff. “Don’t be scared, I’m not a terrorist!”
I was a bit bewildered that he would say that, and looked frantically to Peter/James/Chin for help. Peter mentioned that we just wanted to get downstairs and would come back, so the guy led us down the stairs because the elevator took too long. All the while, I was praying that he wasn’t leading us to our deaths.
As soon as we got downstairs and he turned away, we pretended to take off, but we ended up running back up the stairs to an Indian restaurant that we thought was pretty legitimate because it had an OpenRice Review Rating posted outside.
Openrice.com is the HK version of Yelp. In OpenRice we trust for saving us from either bad diarrhea or more shady people.
This Indian restaurant turned out to be pretty good.
We ended the night by being fatties and eating Frozen yogurt at a place called Crumbs, which is popular for their graham cracker crumb toppings.
Woo hoo! Finally an exciting day where we get to party, because Donna is turning 21! And what else do we do on a party night? We go to LKF, because it’s LADIES NIGHT, AND WE GET FREE ALCOHOL!
First stop is my all time favorite place: La Bodega. Delicious free mojitos, and since we got there early we just cam-hoed a bit. Obviously, lily is already done with her drink while the rest of us are still working on ours.
Alas, the birthday girl finally came, ready to drink and mingle!
Woo hoo, more guests!
And then the boys came, already slightly drunk from pre-gaming.
After a while we decided to move across the street to Zinc so that we could get some boogie on. Donna and Shannon REALLY got their boogies on, pole dancing on the counter.
The guys eventually got kicked out because the waitresses were hustling them to buy alcohol. Some of the girls remained to dance and drink, but I went outside to find Chin with his CUHK friends:
On my way out I felt an arm wrap around my shoulder only to find that it was an older, bigger black dude. “You look kind of cute,” he said. I threw off his arm, said “No thanks!” and ran because I don’t like being hit on by old dudes. Shudder.
Our next destination was the nightclub Volar, which turned out to be pretty boring because of the house music. Donna did get to climb on a unicorn!
I tried to as well, only to get dragged off by the security guard:
We ended up at Club 97, where they serve the disgusting Cosmos. Peter was enticed into buying light-up devil horns, because he was drunk and ready to throw away money.
We tried going to PI nightclub to end the night, only to find that it was closed. Donna was too drunk to care anyways, and kept yelling that she wanted to eat at McDonalds or Tsoi Wah.
Tsoi Wah was the closest restaurant we could take Donna to without her falling on her face, so that’s where we headed…
… where she passed out…
… and also how she ended her night. The hot mess was so plastered that she threw up a bit on the stairs and spent the rest of the night laying near a squatter toilet! James is really good at taking care of people even when he’s drunk.
Shocking, I know. But the food that they sell in Hong Kong is so much cheaper than it is in the US! My favorite part about eating lunch at school is just buying a SANDWICH at Starbucks because it’s only about $24 HKD (<$3 US), and you get a pretty awesome meal!
Granted, it is a bit small compared to “American sizes,” but this is just right.
I sometimes even have some friends to eat with.
The girl on the left is Tiffany, my Chinese Dynasties buddy. In class, I’m usually trying to stay awake and she’s streaming Lakers games on her laptop.
I don’t know why people said that it was easy to write essays at HKU. It’s a misconception that “Americans write better than natives.” I was given the gift of a hard-grading TA, so I actually had to try in all my essays. Trying just means sitting in front of the computer staring at the screen.
I did find solace in the Bueno chocolate bar and my aloe vera juice.
I ended up doing okay on the essay, but I did get pushed into working harder because of the TA.
I crave boba, all day, everyday. Luckily I have friends who like to indulge my cravings, even if it requires taking a 20 minute bus ride down to the city and walking to the boba place.
Unfortunately, I got us lost because everything looked the same at night. Courtney no le gusta.
But it’s okay, because we eventually got there and found boba, right before they were getting ready to close. SUCCESS!
School nights have become boring nights. We all stay in to study, and the breaks we take are to go eat at the canteen or to swing by Seven Eleven for some snacks. In this case, we bought mochi ice cream for dessert, and ate some together.
You don’t see any pictures of the mochi because we ate it all. But of course, I can steal from somebody else’s blog instead.
It was bound to happen. I stuff everything in that purse that Shelly gave me that the strap finally gave out, and I was forced to go look for a new one.
The whole day consisted of going around Mong Kok and TST to look for something that was affordable and durable. Obviously, since I’m cheap, it took me a while to find anything. We did see some pretty interesting things:
1. Half and half low crotch pants — SO ridiculous!
2. A super tall HK guy who towered over Chin:
3. Novelty toy stores
At the toy store Peter was suckered into buying a Kingdom Hearts collectible that worked like a grab bag. You don’t know which character you get until after you purchase it.
His disappointment was overwhelming…
… because he got Ursula. HAHAHA.
Our sad dinner afterwards consisted of Ajisen Ramen, because we couldn’t really find any place to eat. I wasn’t very hungry so I bought some fried chicken appetizers, and the rest got noodles. The ladles were really funky looking:
Then we headed off to find more purse shops. I was about to give up when we saw A-House, which seemed to have a good selection. I couldn’t seem to decide, but Peter is amazing at choosing purses, so he picked this one out for me. Unfortunately, because of my lack of skill in bargaining I ended up paying ~$30 for this thing, but I comforted myself by thinking that it’s probably a good quality purse that’s NOT made from real leather…
At least I have a purse again! Hopefully I won’t kill it so soon.
To end the night, the boys also found a cute necklace that I can now wear to replace the one I lost in the shower:
Happy birthday CHINAR. This is the day that you officially became the People’s Republic of China, and Hong Kong shall celebrate in your honor by blasting fireworks into the sky!
But first, we must eat dimsum.
Chin’s fail #10000: he ordered the sponge cake thinking it was the egg custard buns. We made him eat most of it. :D
Second stop: Edmond Travel agency to check out plane ticket prices for Taiwan & Japan. We saw elevators in a whole new light after watching the movie Devil. I half expected that one to drop all the way down to the bottom floors.
Third stop was to go to Cocky Bar, where we thought we could catch a nice view of the fireworks. Unfortunately, we got kicked out because we didn’t have reservations, and all the really nice bars with views of the harbour were booked. WHY DIDN’T WE PLAN AHEAD. :(
But that’s okay, because a nice officer told us that we could watch the fireworks show from a corner in Tsim Sha Tsui. I felt like I was in a zombie movie; there were so many people out walking in the same direction.
We parked ourselves in a spot near the harbour, which was actually not bad at all, if you ignore the SOGO shopping mall in the background.
Bromance:
GROUP SHOT YAY! Sorry Donna, your hair was out of control due to the wind.
The fireworks were so fantastic. There was an “Ooh” and an “Aah” every 5 seconds. My favorite ones were the shaped ones, which I wasn’t able to capture very well (these are flowers):
And these are hearts:
But it was still awesome to see light exploding everywhere in the sky — the ultimate big bang:
Since we all hadn’t eaten yet, we ended up going to TGIF’s for dinner, because we were all craving American food/steak. I finally got my hot wings and mozzarella sticks!
Oh yes, we creeped on a dude sitting near us because he was actually considerably cute compared to most of the HK dudes. I did not dig his white shorts and flip flops, though. Getting much better at taking side-creeper shots.
Btw, here are the shoes that Chin drew for me as an early birthday present (it’s supposed to be an Autumn night scene, but my first thought was of Tron and trees on fire, which is just as awesome):
I don’t think I’ve ever introduced my roommates before, so I guess I’ll just do that today since one of them offered to make porridge with grits instead of white rice (which I’ve never tried).
Here’s Xi Yue, the roommate from Fudan University in Shanghai. She goes by Twinnie because she likes Winnie the Pooh. I’m not sure where she got the idea to add the “T”, but it’s kind of a cute name.
Since our kitchen isn’t a real kitchen but a “tearoom,” the students do their cooking by using a flimsy little hot plate and gigantic pans. I’ve never cooked here myself because I’m too lazy, but it was nice to mooch off XiYue’s free porridge.
My second roommate is Mirror, whose Chinese name I can never remember. Her Chinese name has the word for mirror in it, jing 鏡， so her English name makes a bit more sense, although it’s quite a bit out of the ordinary. She’s from Nanjing University and is even worse than me at staying up and watching TV. I thought I was bad, but this girl sleeps at 5-6AM until 3-4PM.
I didn’t get to stay and play with my roommates some more, because some of the girls next door wanted to have dinner at Mos Burger. I was a bit reluctant because of the disappointing meal I got that one time with the rice burger, but I figured I could try something new.
Lily’s local friend Tania joined us for the adventure. Titi’s creeping in the back there.
My HK travel-mate Leanne and the Canadian Vivien:
And my not-so-disappointing-non-rice-burger-that-is-a-mos-cheeseburger-but-is-still-not-that-great burger (mainly because I’ve come to realize that I don’t dig tomato sauce that much — unless it’s on pizza or pasta — and the mos sauce is made to be very tomato-ey) :
It was still, nonetheless, better than rice burger.
Before taking off, we found balloons to play around and cam-ho with. They were set up for the promotion of the new store called Monkee, which does not sell very appealing clothing.
Titi and I tried to photobomb the couples taking pictures, but we only succeeded with friends.
She thinks I’m racist because I chose the black ones. But really, that’s not why, I just like the black balloons!
My uneventful posts result from my attempts to stay in and study. Right, like I actually can get myself to study. I’d rather play around with a sleeping person instead.
HI TITI.
YOU’RE AWESOME.
And so is your roommate Lily.
Too bad Leanne was somewhere studying in the library and she couldn’t join in on the fun. :D
