Ong arrived!!

Thursday, March 22nd, 2007 at 9:06 am

As I said in the last post, HG was getting better by the time we were in the limousine to the hotel. We were at the forth floor of Eaton Hotel waited to check in. What we should have done was going to check in on E-club floor, which dedicated for executive customers only. The girl who took care of us was still a trainee, so she was no so competence to deal with us. HG started to get too hot and sweating. Finally, everything was done, and we headed up to the room. We had Grand suite which has 2 rooms and a living room. Ong, one of my friends from Thailand who I love as a brother would come to join us the next day. He was in Beijing studying Chinese for almost a year. He had never been to Hong Kong before and it was a good opportunity for me to see him, because we haven’t seen each other since 2005 and I would not see him in Thailand this year.

Back to the hotel, we went to our room. The room was not as grand as its name. There are 2 bedrooms and one living room. Not very long after we were in the room and the baggage service came to deliver our luggage.

HG felt a bit sick from his so called First class hangover. He went to lie down in bed while I was watching television. About 8pm, I started to get hungry but he was not yet feeling any better. I was getting a bit pissed off because we should go outside and enjoy our first day alone before Ong arrived. I told him that I wanted to go out to eat but I did not want to go by myself and I did not want any room service.

HG tried to get up and get dressed for going out. We went out to Temple St. and went to eat in one of the restaurant that has photos in their menus. I ordered sour and spicy soup for me and wonton soup for HG. He could not eat much, only the liquid from wonton soup. I ate most of my soup and his wontons. We finished quickly and returned back to the hotel. We went to bed as it was quite late. I was hoping he would get better in the morning.

About 2am, HG woke up and felt a lot better. He said he was a bit hungry but by the time we decided to order the room service, it was too late. So he ended up hungry. We then tried to go back to sleep but he could not. He thought the sleeping spray given by British Airways might help. So he sprayed it on his pillow.

At 6am, HG woke up with a very bad headache. He could not sleep any longer. He went to have a shower and went down for breakfast. I went down a bit after him. When I met him at E-club floor, he looked horrible. He could not really eat and felt sick again. He needed to get back to the room to lie down. I was eating my breakfast by myself, feeling a bit upset. Then I went back to the room to check on him. He was not yet getting any better. Then he suddenly got up and threw his pillow away. He said his headache got back virtually immediately once he lied down. So it could have been from the spray. After that he got better and we went down to have another breakfast.

HG felt so guilty about his bad behavior which kind of spoiled our first night in Hong Kong. I told him that he was banned for drinking for a month. He agreed to accept the penalty and promised me that he will be good.

We went out for a walk and ended up at Temple St. again for lunch. It was not very far from where our hotel is. We found a restaurant that has photos on their menus again. When we were inside, the woman who served us brought us an English menu which was very helpful. I was first reluctant to order because most of the menus were about fish. I did not feel like having fish that day. We finally ordered stir-fried beef with black bean sauce, stir-fried green vegetables with garlic and Singapore-style stir-fried noodles. While we were waiting for the food, the restaurant was getting busier and busier because of the lunch time. Finally all tables were occupied. Some people had to share their tables with strangers.

Before we ordered, the lady who served our table brought us a hot tea pot. Our cutleries were already there on the table along with a big glass bowl. At first we weren’t sure what it was for. Then we saw someone pour the hot tea in to the cup and put their chopsticks in to clean. Then discard the water into the glass bowl. We did that as well. We also found out later that some restaurants will give you a glass of hot tea just to clean your chopsticks.

That lunch was fantastic. All the food we ordered was excellent. The only thing that I would change was the noodles. It would be perfect with steamed rice.

After the meal, we walked towards Tsim Sha Tsui. HG wanted to try their famous Star Ferry even though he hates boat but he said that would be part of his penalty. We paid a little bit more to stay on the upper deck because there was quite strong smell of the fuel in the lower deck. We chose to use Star Ferry to go to Central, Hong Kong Island. We walked down to Central MTR station to get the Octopus card. The Octopus card is very useful for all public transport in Hong Kong. It is also used for payment at some convenience stores, supermarkets, fast-food restaurants, even the telescope on the peak, etc.

Since we were kind of waiting for Ong to arrive later in the day, we did not want to do much sightseeing as we would have to do it again with Ong. So we decided to pass our time by went into MTR and used as much train as possible to get back to the hotel but only paid from Central to Jordan. We went back to the hotel about the time for cocktails. HG was quite tired so I let him have 2 glasses of gin and tonic. He was very thrilled. We had some snacks, checked our emails and went back to the room. We went out for dinner later. I found a small restaurant which sold roast pork and barbeque pork. I managed to order the pork and rice for us. I asked them if they had bottled water or not but they didn’t. So I went back to 7-11 nearby to get 2 bottles of water. The food was not that nice, the roast pork was too salty and the barbeque pork was too sweet. We ate as much as we could.

After that we walked around Temple St. night market. We did not tend to buy anything just looked around. Buying things in this type of market, you need a negotiator and our negotiator was on his way from Beijing. We then walked back to the hotel and waited for him.

Ong arrived to the hotel about 10pm, by that time we were a little bit hungry again since our dinner was not that good. Ong had some food on the plane but he did not refuse to go out to eat more. We would like to eat rice porridge (Jook in Chinese). Ong was getting useful for ordering food for us. We ordered Chinese donuts, as HG called them after he tried one, to accompany with the rice porridge (dip in). HG kept complaining that they should provide sugar for the donuts.