After a very eventful evening, we were all pretty lazy the next morning. I, being the zombie that I am, still woke up at 7am. I knew I should keep on sleeping, but I decided to wake up and do alan's laundry. Yes, I did his laundry and hung it up. I figured if I do it early, it would dry by the afternoon. After the chore, I tried to lay back down, but then got caught up on messaging friends that I haven't spoken to in a while on my blackberry. Then I hung up the laundry and tried to sleep again.
By the time I actually rolled out of bed, it was noon and alan was over to get me motivated. My cousin also called, finding it strange that I was in a shower at nearly 1pm, to arrange dinner plans with us. I haven't seen my cousins since I was 18, and wasn't sure if I would recognize them.
At first I wasn't sure if it made sense to meet up with my mom's family since I didn't really know any of them well and the only interaction I had with them was in my childhood years. In the end, I ended up giving everyone - cousins, aunt and uncles a call. I'm glad I did.
We gave a shout to steph and louisa on the other side of hong kong island - south bay - but they decided to be lazy since they were still hung over. Alan and I decided to take the tram to the peak that day, but first stop was lunch at a dim sum place called dragon-I. Alan found it in a tourist magazine and it said it was the best dim sum in town. Indeed it was delicious, but also triple the price of normal places and smaller portions. It was really posh with red lounge seating and beautiful lights. It was more lounge/club more than a dim sum place. Later ben confirmed it was a club in the evening. Since alan felt quite bad for bringing an unemployed backpacker that's counting her pennies to this place, he decided to treat. For 148HKD (~$20) we had all you can eat dim sum. We ate our monies worth.
The walk to the peak was pretty close, but a bit confusing. At one point, Alan claimed we were close by it because he heard the tram that brought us to the peak. But I said no way, he could of identified the sound. Later on I reckoned he heard the sound of the changing traffic light that does this clicking noise since the tram car was way far from that point.
The tram was really neat. It went really steep all the way to the peak. When it pauses for a few seconds, you actually feel the tram falling back a little. Scary.
On the way up to the terrace, we passed by the wax museum where they had a wax figure of bruce lee. Alan and I each posed in front of it flaunting our kung fu moves. From the looks of our photos, it looks like my moves could totally bring alan down with no effort.
The hong kong skyline is really nice. Lots of tall buildings all bunched up together, sort of like the view of downtown manhattan but much bigger and dense. Not to say the least, we took bunch of photos, including the famous jumping ones. Some people were nervous we were actually going to jump off We were also lucky enough to dodge the big black cloud blowing our way. Alan and I went for some afternoon coffee/tea while admiring the view at the peak. Eventually I took a cat nap on the comfortable chair and Alan finished up the blog that was posted yesterday.
By that time, it was almost time to meet my cousins for dinner. We stopped by the garden, which had turtles (not thousand year old ones though) and a man made waterfall to snap some more photos. We were also adventurous and took the double decker bus back to ben's place. We made sure to sit in the front seat to enjoy the view of the bustling streets.
We only stopped by Ben's place for 15 mins before we had to head out. Even though we rushed, we were still 10 mins late to meet my cousins. Definitely a bad impression after not seeing each other for 10 years. To my surprise I actually recognized them. It was more so because the younger cousin looked like my mom when she was younger. It was nice to see them. One is 10 days younger than me and the other is a year younger. I'm the old hag, but alan is a lot older. Hee hee hee.
They brought us to a hot pot place at tsim sha tsui, where ben met up with us. It was a lot better than the one at chengdu. We had good meats and veggies like beef, lamb, fish, bok choy, golden tip mushrooms in a tomato based broth. We opted to skip out the spicy soup. No need to repeat the discomfort at chengdu.
It was refreshing to catch up with my cousins. I get the feeling that family will always be family. No matter how distant or unknown you are with each other, you always feel a bond since you are related. We caught up with each others lives and relatives in hong kong. It was nice.
Ben went home afterwards, while my cousins took us to see the night skyline view, hollywood lane, and temple street market. The night skyline was pretty. We plan to go back one night to see the light laser show. Most of the major buildings (like the ifc which batman jumped into in the dark night) will be lit up with lasers beaming out of them. Sounds pretty awesome. The walk through hollywood lane was pretty uneventful since we didn't know any of the asian movie stars.
Temple street night market at jordan was filled with a lot of street stands selling skewered foods, t-shirts, junk souvenirs, and sex toys (lots of it). There were also a lot of fortune tellers and tarot card readers. I tried to convince alan to ask when he would get a girlfriend, but he refused. Boring.
By 11pm, we let my cousins go since they had to work the next morning. Steph decided to go out for a bit and asked if we wanted to meet up, but I thought it was best for me to sleep since I've been tackling allergies the last few days. Alan also went back to his hotel.
Back at Ben's I had to tell Ben the horrible truth that I made a mark on the wall of his new apartment. I was clumsy, as usual, and tripped on the iron board, which went crashing on the wall. It slightly dented the wall but definitely scratched it. When I tried to clean it with tissue it rubbed off some paint. I felt so bad, but he was very forgiving about it. But, he did move the iron board out of my room. Oops!
After some late night chatting with Ben, we got tired at 1am and went to sleep.
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