Wednesday 17 June 2009 (Hong Kong)

Today was our relaxed day, whereby we stayed up late last night and slept in this morning in an early attempt to readjust to our next time zone. This was by far the hottest day here, as the sun was out without a cloud in the sky to protect us.

We decided to head to a different area of Hong Kong Island and just explore a bit, during which we found both mangosteens and actual freshly made roti canai (the rotis in Macau were pre-prepared). The mangosteens were tasty, but not all they were cracked up to be… although I had a feeling that they were not quite ripe, however the fresh lychees were delicious. The roti canai was from a Malaysian restaurant, which had the roti maker in his own window displaying some mad skills as he flipped the roti canai (something Jen had not seen before). Was very good value at around NZ$12 for a set lunch including soup of the day, south Indian style curry, roti canai, dessert and a fruit juice. Needless to say, the roti canai was the highlight.

There was also a local market in the area, which is frequented mainly by locals. It had a different variety of things from the tourist-aimed market, including a lot of rather repulsive smelling cooked and dried foods, most of which we had no idea what they were. We also passed a couple of local butcheries, who had no form of refrigeration whatsoever.

We went through a crazy busy dedicated computer and electronics mall, which had a heap of shops which seemed to sell all the same items as the others. The prices were disappointing, and it certainly was not worth buying anything here given the lack of warranty that you would have once bringing it home.

Dinner was at another street restaurant, that had more customers that were white than locals. We then finished our shopping and on the walk home we actually saw some of the shops were closed, which was rather unusual in the evenings. Yesterday and today we actually saw a lot more tourists than in the previous few days, but in overhearing them talk, a lot of them were not speaking English either.