Tseun Mon

We went all the way to the end of the MTR line to Tseun Mon to visit a tradition village and get some hot pot. First stop was some Vietnamese food somewhere past Austin...

LOVE Hong Kong..
Two of our friends decided to down some chinese medicine at a vendor on the corner..

Then finally, the traditional village. Many of the buildings were hundreds of years old. All of the people there have the surname "Tang," as they are part of the Tang village and most live in poverty.
This woman runs her restaurant in the square where she sells congee to whoever stops by. Often it is deserted:


AH! This vending machine sold pokemon cards!
Love the dragons on the rooves. Hey Mulan, Mooshu anyone?

Field Trip 1

Hiking...are you serious?

First thing the guide says when we get on the bus? "Be careful, there are monkeys."

Ah, excellent.

But luckily we didn't come across any monkeys (our second location was actually too high for monkeys to live, well past the tree line).

First was Tai Po Kau Nature Reserve in Kowloon. Pretty, but unremarkable.

Hey Mom, check out my dorm:

Next was the highest point in Hong Kong: Tai Mo Shan Country Park. We are IN A CLOUD.

Guess who is going to China next week!

Guess who else is coming to China?!

crazy monk kok nights

So after the monkey adventure I needed a little restorative street food, so we headed to Monk Kok.

Here's John showing off our giant bubble teas (which I ordered for us in Cantonese)..

Finally! I got myself some stinky tofu (tofu that has been placed in a container with rotting vegetable matter and water for months and then fried). It is tasteless, but the foul odor that accompanies it makes eating it tough. I had four bites and then threw in the towel..

Anyway, here's John ordering us up some vegetables with fried fish balls attached and the perilous stinky tofu.

There were lots of street performers. Most of them are hired in Mainland. They have horrible deformities (often children are mutilated for this purpose) to elicit sympathy and get money on the street for private companies. They have some of the most horrific injuries I have ever seen, burns all over the face and limbs missing.

We saw a man who had lost his eyes (not just his sight) and his hands, playing guitar and this man, who had no hands but demonstrated calligraphy with messages about hard-work and perseverance.
There was also a silent group protesting organ harvesting in mainland. Warning that it would soon invade Hong Kong. When I asked my friend Sophia (from Mainland) if this really happened, she said: "Probably."

Oh, Mong Kok.