The Adventures of Captain Z: Flitting Off to Hong Kong

I am officially a Mrs.!!! D and I tied the knot on May 24th in the same church where my parents and maternal grandparents were married. We had a wonderful time seeing so many friends and family members, and then 6 days later we are in a plane heading to Hong Kong. D has to present a paper at the ICRA 2014 conference and we decide that a week in a new country sounds like a perfect honeymoon opportunity. D's dad drops us off at O'Hare and we make it to our gate as they line us up according to boarding order. D is group 3 and I am group 4 so after grabbing snacks and taking a quick potty break we get in line for group 4. D commends my group 4 assignment as we get chosen from our line to go through the express line and we get to board a little earlier than the rest of the group. We find our seats and settle in for take off.

Heading to O'Hare's International Terminal.

The nearly 16 hour flight doesn't feel so long when we have a sandwich to share, followed by a hot dinner, a snack of ice cream and a small sandwich, and a hot breakfast provided by United Airlines and served by a friendly flight attendant who smiled at us every time he brought us food or drink. Of course we're grateful and are sure to say thank you. The screens on the seats in front of us also provide entertainment in the form of free movies, tv shows, and games. We watch Caddyshack, Whose Line is it Anyway?, play sudoku and solitaire, I learn a little Mandarin then upon landing remember Cantonese is the second official language with English so it won't help me here.

Our first views of Hong Kong.

We left around 1:15 in the afternoon May 30th and landed at 6:10 in the evening on the 31st.

Minion became our trip mascot. Here he is testing out the bed for us.

Flying was the easy part; the real challenge starts once we have all our luggage and need to get to the hotel. Once we exchange some cash for some HKs (Hong Kong dollars) and get our train tickets we hitch a ride on the Airport Express to see that it's already dark outside as we speed in and out of tunnels to Tsing Yi, Kowloon, and finally the Hong Kong terminal. We walk across many more moving walkways to get to the Central station on Hong Kong Island. Here we learn about the Octopus card for buses and trains so we each get one and hop on the subway to the Wan Chai station. The trains are so fast! Leaving the station we come up to a dark sky, but the city is full of lights and people bustling about. The two things I notice as we walk along Hennesey to our hotel is how prevalent smoking is among all legal age groups and how many really fancy cars are around. Every car shines as though it is a matter of pride to just own a car in this city. A large cockroach skitters across the sidewalk in front of me. I am starting to see a pattern in how new cities greet me. We make it to the OZO Wesley hotel, check in, shower off the gross feel that airplane bathrooms and the instant stickiness of Hong Kong humidity provide, walk behind the hotel to grab two large bottles of water at the 7-eleven (we were warned not to drink the tap water), then pass out in our super comfy bed. Success, we made it!

We wake up refreshed and ready to explore on our first day. Our next challenge is to find food. Google tells us about a place called Triple O's that is just down the street from us that is supposed to have a wonderful blueberry shake that is calling my name. We grab the camera, our trip mascot Minion, a pocket map and head west on Hennessy. Large, shiny skyscrapers fill the western vista and we guess that this must be a more modern part of the city. We find our way into Pacific Place and realize that our eatery is inside a huge, upscale mall. Versace, Bulgari, Cartier, Gucci, Chanel, Prada and so many other big names that you hear about but I avoid like the plague. I'm not even going to think about those price tags; my money is better spent elsewhere.

Made entirely of small plastic mustangs, I thought this was very eye-catching.

We walk by incredible window displays and find the basement food court. After we order a couple Canadian burgers, a blueberry shake, fries, onion rings, and a green creme soda (interesting color), we walk around the extensive food market. We want to eat in the mall so we can explore more but our next lesson is that seating in Hong Kong is extremely limited and we don't want to find out how rude we have to be to get a seat in this completely crowded food court. Instead we head upstairs and steal an empty table in the Starbucks seating area. The shake is incredible, like blueberries blended into real cream. The creme soda is sweet and refreshing. The onion rings and fries aren't over-fried so their flavor is perfect, and even the burgers have a healthier flavor to them like the burgers my mom made before turkey took over for beef.

There are mirrors or tv type screens in each horn.

We work off our meal by walking around the several levels of shops. There is a toy shop selling kits of not Legos but something similar and D points out the pirate ship for me. Large woven trumpets hang from the main mall ceiling and upon seeing many others with their cameras out I feel safe to take mine out and grab a quick shot. We walk by the AMC theater to compare prices and they are very reasonable, about the same as at home. For some reason the Spiderman movie has a separate price from the rest; we wonder why? With this successful food outing complete, we head back to the hotel for a quick nap before the welcome reception for the conference. Apparently that plane trip exhausted us more than we realize, though, because we don't get up again until 4 a.m.

Very little traffic to be seen. Not what we expected.

We dress nicely for the conference. I wear my purple dress shirt and dress pants with my black short heeled shoes and D wears a blue button-down with nice dark jeans. We munch on trail mix for breakfast since the conference is providing sandwiches during a lunch talk. Using the map we plan our walking route to the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre and run into D's adviser, Dr. S, a couple blocks down the road as he's out getting to know the area. He has also made the observation that it doesn't take long to get very sweaty and sticky walking around. The humidity is certainly a force to reckon with which is why my hair lives in a pony tail if we go outside. Dr. S goes back to his hotel to cool off and we continue on our way across many busy streets.

Minion made a new friend on the only grass we saw in Hong Kong. The conference center is on the right.

Luckily we find a footbridge that goes over the busiest street as my heels have me walking slowly and my feet are already starting to hurt. We walk through a green area with plants and elderly women getting morning exercise then finally find the door to the convention center. Once we reach the escalators leading to the check-in booth we realize there must be a better way to get here as most people enter from the opposite direction.

Nighttime view of the conference building.

We sign in, get our name tags and bags, and head to the opening speaker. D feels bad because my first conference speaker is completely boring. He talks about why China needs robots to do the labor due to a labor shortage in order to stay a top manufacturer for the world. He plays videos of robots at work and the audio of the multiple videos clashes and the speaker becomes inaudible. We are glad when he finishes and we can break out into the smaller talks.

We didn't see any dragon boats but we did find a tall ship!

We skip the first round to grab breakfast and take a walk around the building, and I take my shoes off to give my feet a break. We have a ham and cheese bun and I get a sour plum and kumquat drink that I learn I don't like, and D gets juiced watermelon from another place so we can sit at one of their tables. As we walk off breakfast, I grab lots of shots of the city behind us and across the waterway. Today is the Dragon Boat Festival but we can't spot any signs of it. We head to the second session of talks next. These are more interesting 17 minute presentations on the papers that the grad students wrote. We are hoping to meet up with Dr. S but we don't find him until we get in line for the lunch talk. We talk about our impressions of Hong Kong and marvel as the session line grows and grows.

Coastal construction with the city behind as seen from the conference center.

Thankfully we got in line when we did because it isn't long after us that the food runs out and there aren't many seats left inside. I eat my chicken and potato salad sandwich while this presenter shows us a very neat robot they are working on for underwater or land jobs. It is controlled by a remote control that moves as the controller's hands operate similar mechanisms. It can swim, walk, and manipulate objects while maintaining balance. This guy is looking to use robots in many different settings for different purposes and what his team has done already is quite interesting.

The walkway on a busier day.

D and I find a better route to head back to the hotel after lunch for a relaxing break until the evening Pecha Kucha talks. This new route is an elevated walkway that leads from the building to Johnston Road that connects to Hennessy near the hotel. Travelling here is so much easier, and we are amazed at how few people we see. Even traffic is good as the few shiny cars, buses, trolleys, and red taxis pass under us.

I didn't take a picture of the Ferrari but here's a Bentley instead.

After a lot of Googling we decide to take a walk behind our hotel to check out Star Street which is supposed to have a large selection of fancy-ish restaurants on it. We walk past the 7-eleven and head south onto a street that looks more like a place you wouldn't want to walk at night rather than the fancy restaurant location of town. Again we are met with many shiny cars and I am surprised to see a shiny red Ferrari parked on the curb. Well if the driver trusts this neighborhood enough to leave a Ferrari here, I guess it can't be that bad. We walk all along Star Street and realize the restaurants are down the side streets rather than actually on Star. There is a small park with neat curvy trees and cement benches hidden in a corner as we head back north.

Minion was really excited about the yummy cupcakes.

Hong Kong does a pretty nice job of keeping this bustling city quiet in small parks here and there. Heading back toward the hotel we walk by store fronts that I'd imagined Star Street would have, big glass windows, fancy lighting, and D points out a cupcake shop as I'm snapping a picture of a Bentley parked here. I give D my best pretty please? face and we head into the shop. My pretty please face wasn't even needed though, this is after all our honeymoon and D pointed out the shop for a reason. There are so many cupcakes to choose from! Finally we settle on a peanut butter cupcake and a dark uber chocolate cupcake to take back to our hotel. These cupcakes are SO rich they are well worth their 3-4 USD each. They taste homemade, fresh, and nothing like the Walmart cupcakes I'd buy at school when I had a craving.

That evening we take the easy elevated walkway route back to the conference center and enjoy the Pecha Kucha speed talks. These are 20 slides with 20 seconds for each slide on various topics. I think 4 out of 6 were very interesting. I loved the talk on soft robotics, but it was hard to get excited about the talk involving the cranes at shipyard docks.

Most things here are very well maintained and clean. It definitely adds to the comfortable atmosphere.

The air is much cooler when we leave so we take a short break in the courtyard by a large fountain enjoying 80 degrees vs 90s. We sit and talk about how so far we both really like Hong Kong and the conference is interesting, and we just marveled at the size and number of buildings squeezed onto the flatter part of the island. The trees near us are those neat wavy ones again. Not much here feels like home.

That night we eat dinner at a local restaurant just behind our hotel. This is our first experience of not fitting in. We enter and do not know if they have a seat yourself policy or if we should wait. We see a lady behind a register who ignores us for a bit before seating us. We are given menus that are in both languages (thank goodness because it doesn't appear the workers speak any English) but the pictures do not have English labels so we have to match the lettering to figure out what they are showing. I am surprised to see shark fin soup and other shark fin recipes and they receive a disapproving eye narrowing. We are served hot tea and some type of nuts that are very crunchy but D enjoys them. We let the tea cool, neither of us usually drinks tea, but when we try it we find that it quite tolerable. After we decide what we want to order we start watching other tables to learn how to get the wait staff who are just standing around, not busy, to return to our table. I make eye contact a few times but they do not come over. I see a woman wave the man over for the check and I begin to wonder if this is not a rude gesture in Hong Kong, but if it is the only way to get service. Finally they must take pity on us and they return to take our order.

The food is very good. We stay in our comfort zone and order foods similar to what we would order at Chinese places at home. The big difference is once again the flavor. The food made here tastes healthier, it isn't drowned in sauce, and there are no extra ingredients. Everything on our plates is there to add flavor and substance. I had chicken and green onions in a light sauce and D. We both sadly turned down the offer of rice as it would have helped to finish the lightly cooked and therefor strongly flavored onions. We will remember to accept the rice next time. D finishes his dish but stops helping with mine once the meat is gone; even he can't force himself to keep eating the strong onions. We pay and talk about the experience on the very short walk home.

We binge-bought but it took us days to finish all of these.

Conference Day 2 finds us both in nice jeans, t-shirts, and tennis shoes. I can't wear my devil shoes two days in a row. We listen to some talks, hang out in a window seat facing the firehouse while waiting for other sessions, then head back to the hotel for an afternoon snack and short break before tonight's dinner. We stop at Hoixe Cake Shop bakery on the way and buy way too many sweets and interesting looking baked goods, but the total price is still very reasonable. One more stop at a juice place for kiwi-banana juice and orange-pineapple juice. She juiced them right in front of us, the fruits plus a little extra water.

The view from the walkway. I love the bright lights and colorful buildings. To the right is a row of taxis.

The cheese-filled blueberry roll is amazing and we end up buying several more of those throughout the rest of our trip, the mystery biscuit that was probably bean paste or something was horrible, and the egg custard was ok but not very flavor-filled.

The centerpiece on a rotating platform. I expected the dishes to be placed here.

After this dinner I knew what I had to bring back for my sister.

Dinner that night is a completely different story! D and I get to the conference center to find the dining hall is decked out in a fancy way, the menu shows us what our NINE!! course meal will include, and we grab two empty seats at a back table since everywhere else is filled. D manages to locate Dr. S and let him know where we're sitting so we can talk afterwards and then the speakers give their speeches and food is being set before us.

The first plate is the Suckling Pig and Barbecued Meat Combination Platter. It has barbecued suckling pig (YUM!), jelly fish in spring onion oil (interesting texture: bouncy until your teeth cut into it then is just slices apart, good flavor), de-boned pork shank served with rice vinegar (not enough good flavor to make up for the multitude of textures), sliced beef marinated with Chinese herbs (the crunchy coating was too weird to make me want another bite), and cucumber with scallion oil (quite good). We ate what we wanted and then our plates were whisked away and shortly replaced with a new one.

Second course is Gratinated Crab Meat in a Shell. Oh boy! I have never had crab before tonight and I wasn't sure I would like it. I have been missing out! This crab was the best thing we had all night. Had I known it would be my favorite part of the night I wouldn't have let them take my leftovers away. It had a breaded coating with the shredded meat inside. I must point out we ate everything tonight with chopsticks and it was fun poking into this guy and devouring the delicious meat inside.

Third couldn't get close to topping second but it is pretty good: Sauteed Prawn and Jumbo Scallop with Vegetables. I am not a seafood person so one prawn is plenty for me and the scallop, I try, but it is a no go. The broccoli is good, though. A nice change from all the meat.

Fourth has us both half wishing we hadn't promised to try everything. It's a bowl of soup with mystery veggies and organisms that were probably slimy when they were still alive: Double-boiled Sea Whelk (what?) and Chicken Consomme with Morel and Brassica (again, what?). We determine that the brown wavy things must be the morel because I remember hearing that is a type of mushroom, the spotted chewy piece we assume is likely a relative of a snail, not very tasteful, and the veggies and broth are ok. So we survive and aren't too disappointed. It was ok overall!

Next is Steamed Oasis Giant Garoupa. We'd seen garoupa on the menu last night at the Ming Garden Restaurant. Now we learn that it's actually fish commonly known in other places as grouper. I am not a fish fan so after a taste I pass on the rest. Even poor D who got a bowl full of fins agrees that it has too fishy a flavor and doesn't eat too much of the meat. We sit back and ponder the giant fish head staring at us from the center of the table for the remainder of the course.

Sixth is back within my comfort zone: Chicken with Spring Onion and Smoky Tea Leave. YUM! I am already getting rather full by this point but I use my chopsticks to pick off as much meat as I can eat.

D is demonstrating his chopsticks technique for my sister's approval.

The Fried Rice with Egg White and Assorted Seafood with Vegetables seems to me to be a clever use of all the leftover bits from preparing the earlier dishes. D and I both pick at it a bit, but are feeling full enough to not eat a whole lot from our bowls. Plus, at this point I've had enough seafood to last me a month.

The last course before dessert is Noodles with Dumpling served in Supreme Broth. I don't know what supreme broth is but it was just ok in my opinion. The title also forgets to warn that more seafood is hidden inside, so after a taste of the dumpling I keep to the noodles. D enjoys the dumpling, he has a much higher seafood tolerance than I do.

Some ribbon dancing and water drums entertain us through dessert along with a bit more talking. The conference will be held in Seattle next year so they played a promotional video for what visitors can expect to enjoy after they write an acceptable conference paper and get their travel arrangements made. D hopes to submit a paper for this conference again. I wonder if that means I might get to see Seattle with him.

Dessert is a piece of cake that was initially cut with a samurai-looking sword, very ceremonial. It was full of fruit as Fresh Cream Cake with Fruits would imply. It was a fresh way to end the meal. D and I cleared our dessert plate and waddled home. Great job, Hong Kong! Thank you for giving us a wonderful sampling of local cuisine!

We briefly meet up Dr. S after dinner, but he is confident that D is ready for his presentation tomorrow. Back at the hotel D runs through is presentation a few times while I relax with a book.

Day 3 is D's presentation day and the last day of the conference. We miss the first round of presentations so D can get a little more sleep and practice time in. We make it to the lunch awards talk and end up eating Beijing duck breast sandwiches. D enjoys it but I find it hard to swallow thinking of our pet duck Katie back home. I enjoy my chicken sandwich, though.

D sets up his presentation while he waits for the session to begin.

D's presentation is right after lunch and I get the job of saving his seat while he sets up and presents. That job is apparently much harder that I would have guessed. After D rejoins me in the audience the man next to me leans over and asks if we're on our honeymoon. My best friend gave us Bride and Groom luggage tags for the trip and D has the Groom one on his bag. We say yes we are and he tells us he thinks that there's no better place to spend a honeymoon than in Hong Kong with 2000 of the world's finest robotics experts. We agree while laughing. For some reason this set of talks was very popular. 4/6 presenters are very interesting and do a nice job, so perhaps that's why this room is so popular. It could help that one presenter is from Disney. D's presentation goes very well and he talks with a researcher working on a related project after all the presentations as I watch the coastal construction going on outside the window.

We take our window seat again and play a game of War while waiting for the farewell reception to begin. They are serving beverages and finger foods although they clearly weren't anticipating the crowd that arrived. The food vanished quickly but the lines for the food held fast to their hope. D and I give up and hit up Yoshinoya for dinner and enjoy our horde of sweets back at the hotel. Can you call memory foam a sweet, though? I need to teach them how to make proper cakes. ;)