Sai Kung - Our First Day

We’d been told the night before that breakfast would be available in the cafeteria associated with the day camp at a cost of around 20 HK dollars (around $2.50 USD). So we rallied ourselves to go to eat. Ordering a meal was one of the more challenging cross-language attempts I’ve ever made. The cooks and cashier didn’t speak more than a few words of English. The menu, on a giant sign on the wall behind the register, was in both English and Chinese, but none of the staff understood our English oral requests. So the cook came over carrying a long bread knife, and indicated that we should step behind the counter and point to our selection high on the wall using the long knife.

By this means we ordered several ham and cheese sandwiches for the guys, as well as French toast. I ordered a red bean drink, and “sweet bean curd” (slightly sweetened silken tofu in a sealed plastic container). Then I decided to be really adventurous and order the noodles with fried bean curd. This turned out to be ramen-type noodles with some unidentified kind of meat. Hmm. Not tofu. Possibly not chicken either. Well, I’d ordered it and I may as well eat it, I thought, and did.

After breakfast we went for a ride. First we headed up the road into the Sai Kung country park. The terrain was very hilly indeed, and the narrow twisty roads climbed to some stupendous views over the High Island Reservoir. At one point, the guys (riding ahead of me) shouted out to "take a picture!" and I saw ahead some kind of monkey (blog readers have since pointed out that it was a macaque, or rhesus monkey) walking up the road toward us. I could even say “swaggering,” ‘cause this fella (very manly if the size of his bright red testicles was indicative) had no qualms whatsoever about our presence, and practically ignored us as he made his purposeful way past us.

After dead-ending at some unfinished road and riding back the way we had come, out of the country park, we continued along to the town of Sai Kung. Described as a fishing village (both by my parents and by Louis), I looked forward to exploring a bit. The first thing we saw when we arrived was a produce market in full swing right near the bus station. We bought bagsful of bananas, oranges, and tangerines. Alberto and Pollo saw some small guanabanas and snagged them, proclaiming them the tastiest they’d ever had.

Pollo saw a gadget he wanted at a nearby stall, and in his typical unhesitant way asked the proprietor (an elderly lady) “how much.” She said a lot of things very fast in Chinese, but eventually pulled out a coin to show Pollo how much to pay. He tried to take the coin from her to see the denomination, but she angrily pulled her hand away, muttering threateningly and not the least bit amused by our gales of laughter! After accomplishing my goal of finding the HSBC bank and getting some Hong Kong dollars, the general consensus was to head back to the “barracks” and rest for a bit. We rode the 5K or so back to Po Leung Kuk. Passing the cafeteria on the way back to our rooms, we heard a group of 11-12 year old girls singing "Jingle Bells" with great spirit, which made me grin. Christmas is coming, even in China!

Once showered, Wilson, Amaurys, and I decided to go back to town on the bus to get lunch and look around more. We started by asking a group of chattering teens where to get lunch. They recommended a seafood place just around the corner from the bus station, so we headed there and sat outside just a few feet from the railing of the harbor wall. Every time we got up to look at the lovely view of sampans floating in the harbor with mist-covered hills and islands behind, an old lady would approach, asking “Boat? Boat?” to see if we wanted to get a sampan for hire.

Relishing the feeling of truly being in a foreign and exciting place, I ordered a seafood soup, which turned out to be a very simple gingery broth with very fresh fish, prawns, and what I think were tiny lobsters snuggled whole amongst the bright choy sum. Wilson “stayed safe” with chicken fried rice, and Amaurys didn’t have a clue what to get. I thought I’d play it safe and order noodles with chicken for him. However, the crunchy noodles that arrived, with chicken in a sauce of mushrooms and greens, made him wrinkle his nose. After unhappily pushing the bits around on the plate and eating a few mournful mouthfuls, he proclaimed it the strangest chicken he’d ever eaten and declared he wished for McDonald’s instead!

Wilson was cold so the guys left me to pay the bill while they removed themselves from the breeze coming off the water. As soon as they got up, an old lady made a beeline for our table, and gestured to the plate with remaining noodles. Speaking rapidly in Cantonese, she somehow easily got me to understand that she would like to take the noodles. I conveyed my agreement, and she quickly upended the plate into a plastic bag. Just then, the hostess swooped in and chastised the old woman, turning to me in chagrin. As the old woman made a universal gesture of appeasement, I tried to say “No problem, I don’t mind.” I asked to have the remainder of my seafood put in a bag, so that I could later surreptitiously pass it to the old woman. This is actually the perfect arrangement from my point of view: no guilt about leaving food on the plate to go to waste, and no need to have the remains wrapped up for an uncertain future in a non-refrigerated room.

I walked around Sai Kung for another couple hours, buying custard tarts (the sort you find at a dim sum restaurant) warm from the oven for dessert and taking about a photo every minute. There was so much to see and marvel at! Then I discovered the indoor marketplace. On the ground floor was the meat and fish, and I wandered in utter fascination among the stalls. The meat was pretty standard for a western butcher shop I’d guess, except for the odd pig’s head (skin only) or trotters, and a lot of tongue. But the fish was completely amazing. I saw so many beautiful fish, and they were either live or very, very fresh. Some friendly stallkeepers pointed out the more unusual fare to me, including sea cucumber and some moluscs I’d never seen before. The squid with iridescent teal eyes were gorgeous, and the lobsters, with rainbow patterned shells, truly lovely. There were huge flat fish, eels, and masses of crabs with their claws tied together with bits of red plastic string or something that looked like tough grass. Never have I seen so many beautiful creatures in one place, except perhaps for an aquarium. Somehow, I think their doomed situation made them even more exquisite.

We successfully caught the correct bus out of town, and I was able, with only a few tries, to communicate to the driver that we wanted to be let off at Po Leung Kuk. Which is where we returned, tired and sated with new sights, smells, and sounds, by 5 p.m. Pollo and I took a brief walk outside the dorm along the mini mangrove swamp edging the bay and admired the orange disk of sun across the water, setting just above the fishing village of Sai Kung.