Hong Kong: Day 2 (Dimsum Bar, Coffee Academics)

Read Day 1.

We designated Day 2 as our free day, as the next two days will be jampacked (Macau, HK Disneyland).

We met up with C at Tsim Sha Tsui Station, and she took us to Dimsum Bar. 

Dimsum Bar

Shop G103, Gateway Arcade, Harbour City, 17 Canton Road, Tsim Sha Tsui

Exit A1/L5, Tsim Sha Tsui MTR Station/ Exit F, Austin MTR Station

Photo from here: http://hungryhongkong.net/2013/08/dim-sum-bar-harbour-city-tst-hong-kong.html

It's like a more upscale Tim Ho Wan. This was when I realized that I actually liked rice flour rolls. Confession: When we order rice flour rolls in Tim Ho Wan back home, they always feel slimy to me. And they fall apart. But the rice flour rolls we had at Dimsum Bar were firm and delicious.

You can see the food menu here. 

And thank goodness we now had a companion who could speak Cantonese and order (accurately) for us! 

C has been teaching at university for nine years and she said the medium of instruction is English. She said she could only speak and understand 75% Cantonese. I suppose it's a tougher Chinese dialect to learn. (She is fluent in two other dialects.)

We talked about a lot of things, but the two keywords that kept coming up: performance (as in theater, as in pretending) and narrative (as in story, as in sometimes we find ourselves just following one). (Of course we ended up talking about love and life and love lives.)

She teaches creative writing, and I asked her what kind of stories Hong Kong teenagers are writing nowadays. She said the stories were usually quiet, very internal, very slow, a stark opposite to Hong Kong's fast-paced city life. I wasn't surprised; if you lived in a city where everything can be reached by train in five minutes, the stories you would commit on the page would most likely be stories of contemplation. 

She also said Hong Kong is a very efficient city; if the train was late by five minutes, that news would land on the front page. On the one hand, you can do a lot of things in one day. For example, she teaches at uni but she also plays in a jazz band. Here, it's a hobby; in Manila, it would be a major project. Putting all of that together back home in Manila would entail a lot of hard work and take up a lot of time. Whereas in HK you just pay for a place to practice and hop on a train to see your bandmates. 

On the other hand, people will expect that kind of efficiency. How can you be late, when everything is on time? In fact, how can you possibly not do more? 

Back home, in the city, you try to do more, but the bus/traffic/train will fail you.

We moved from Dimsum Bar to Coffee Academics to continue our talk. Really good coffee. I'd like to return to try their food.

Coffee Academics

Kiosk 1, Level 2, Gateway Arcade, Harbour City, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon

Photo from here: http://eatdrinkkl.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-coffee-academics-scotts-square.html

Photo from here: http://www.todayonline.com/lifestyle/food/coffee-academics-founder-jennifer-liu-what-expect-its-cafe-singapore

Smile like your feet aren't killing you.

We said good bye to C and headed back to the MTR, grabbed some food and some beer. I got Hot Star chicken (as I've promised myself; HKD$47) and J got roast pork (HKD$30) from a local restaurant near Tan Hui.

Mall map in Braille. I'd like to see this level of thoughtfulness in Manila. 

The servers at the small restaurant (which had a menu with no photos and no English translations) didn't speak English, but they understood me when I said "roast pork" and "rice" and "one". (It's always a challenge when servers call out the order number in Cantonese; I'll have to linger by the counter to figure out if they meant me.)

Good night!

(To be continued.)

Read Hong Kong Side Trip: Macau.