China Talk Tuesday: Vacation like a Hong Kong-er

I thought and thought about what I could share today...and decided to re-run an old post. This was originally posted on April 1, 2008, before I met most of you. This post chronicles one of our last trips we took up to Richmond, B.C. before our move out East. Read on, and prepare to be enlightened.

Original post:
About this post...I promised it to you almost two weeks ago. Shame on me! Our trip to Richmond, B.C. was so long ago, I can hardly remember what I wanted to say!

What I really wanted to point out, though, is this -
The first thing you need to know about Hong Kong-ers on vacation is that...they eat. That's all they do. Oh sure, they do things to occupy their time between meals...but then they eat again!

We drove up to Richmond, B.C. We met some friends and they let us into the apartment they were lending us for the night. We went to lunch. We went shopping. (Oh, yeah - Hong Kong-ers like to SHOP. A lot. For sale stuff. The bigger the price decrease, the better!)(We were in a grocery store. What's better than combining shopping AND eating?! In our defense, we stocked up on yummies you just can't get down here - like a WHOLE CASE of Schwepp's Cream Soda. Woohoo!)

We went to an all-you-can-eat Sushi place for dinner...with a time limit! You may stay at your table, ordering whatever you like, for two hours. We laughed when we saw the limit...and proceeded to order food for the next hour and a half. *erp

Saturday morning found us out to breakfast with family, and then back to their lovely home for some serious Wii action. After that, we met friends for...what else...dim sum!

Now, if you're not familiar with dim sum, it is basically a LARGE meal of SMALL dishes. Dumplings. Steamed vegetables. Noodles. Steamed buns. Our host and hostess run a very successful seafood import business, so they know their underwater friends! Their son ordered a 9-lb king crab for the 7 of us...and we polished it off! A few of the legs were split and broken into segments, then battered and deep friend and topped with chilies. Amazing! The rest of the legs were split at the joints, split lengthwise, smothered in garlic, placed on a bed of noodles and steamed. The noodles tasted like crab, the crab tasted like sweet garlic - heaven! We also had the other dishes we love - taro cake, white radish cake, Chinese broccoli with abalone, siu mai (little shrimp dumplings that look like flower pots) and rice noodles.

After lunch, we hit the road and headed back to our home sweet home.

I have to tell you of all the MIRACLES that happened on this trip!!

1) Going up to Canada, the line in front of us was...30 feet long. Seriously. We could see the line going back to the US...it was at least a mile long. We were not looking forward to our homeward trip!
2) BBJ would not drink her bottles the entire trip. However, even without that comfort, and sleeping in a small room that ECHOED, next to the entrance for the apartment's parking garage..she slept through the night, only waking up once!
3) On Saturday, BBJ did not break a single thing in Louh Gung's aunt and uncle's house. On the way to Dim Sum, she fell asleep in the car. Louh Gung and I let MaMa and YehYeh go into Dim Sum without us, thinking she would wake up soon. When she wasn't awake 20 minutes later, our hostess came out to find us and convince us to go back inside with her. (She sweetened the deal with a FANTABULOUSLY LARGE new handbag for me. I feel like Mary Poppins!) We relented, knowing BBJ would wake up AND be cranky to boot. Nope. Nothing. She slept for the next hour on MaMa's lap and let us eat our lunch!
4) On the way home, the line going back to the US was...30 feet long. The line up to Canada...a mile! We knew we would be stopped at the border - after MaMa's travel papers were stolen during a trip to China, we will be stopped at the border...every time we go through! Oh, the joy.) Our Customs officer was nice, nobody made us wake our baby up (like last time. Grr.) We got out quickly, and got home with minimal fussing from BBJ!

If those aren't praise-worthy miracles, I don't know what is!