The One Where I Accidentally Went to a Cemetary

Last night I met up with Claire for dinner and we went to a noodle place. She got cold noodles and I got wonton soup. You could choose the amount of spice between little, medium, burning and very burning. I chose little and I was still choking on the spices. I like spicy but I hope I can survive the spicy food of Guizhou! We walked around Wan Chai a bit then decided to get a beer. The main two party areas of Hong Kong are Lan Kwai Fong, which often turns into a huge street party and Wan Chai, which is a bit of a more later night location (and late night in HK means like the party is getting started at 3 in Wan Chai) and a more older crowd, though it has a lot of fun places too. The beers they gave us were gigantic, it made us feel like they were giant people sized and we were tiny.

Today, I decided to try to give myself more direction so I didn't just wander and ride the MTR back and forth a lot. I slept in a bit this morning and then was starving so I just went to Yoshinoya, a Japanese fast food type restaurant. I overestimated my hunger getting a full meal though. Then I decided to go to the Temple of 10,000 Buddhas, which I'd never been to. It's in Sha Tin, so you take MTR out to New Territories, which is outside of the main city area. I just quickly looked up directions and found a couple places where it said that the temple was easy to find, that you could see it from the station and follow the signs. Well, I arrived in Sha Tin and found one lone sign. But it didn't seem obvious where it was. I saw a large white entrance way and a temple and thought that must be it, but now I know that I accidentally went to a cemetery. Oops. It was very quiet and pretty though. I tried climbing up, seeing buddhas in the distance on the mountain, but I couldn't go that far and then I felt awkward due to the fact that everyone was there to honor dead relatives so I decided to leave. I guess I could try to go back again tomorrow since now I've looked up where it is since I almost made it but just stopped too soon. It's supposed to be pretty fantastic but there are no escalators, all stairs, which in humidity and rain might not be fun. So maybe I'll find somewhere else to go that I haven't been to before.

After Sha Tin I was in TST so I decided to walk around and maybe see if I could find a new watch. The malls are so huge and so fun here. They have a great range of stuff, from Western to Asian and all price ranges, and a lot of really quirky cute things. I am trying not to buy much of anything though since I have no room in my bags. I had a snack at Hui Lau Shan and then headed back to the hostel. I pretty much always take the ferry between Central and TST because it's a really nice ride and it's super cheap. I am trying to figure out which buses can take me back to Fortress Hill because I enjoy riding the bus a lot, it's fine if you are not in hurry and you get a nice view from the double decker buses, plus I rode buses a lot when I lived here because my place wasn't near an MTR. I get nostalgic when I see good old minibus 28 or bus 40M.

Now you probably know that I am obsessed with Anthony Bourdain, who has a Travel Channel show about my two favorite things: traveling and eating. In his Hong Kong show he went to this place that serves noodles handmade the traditional way, with this guy who sits on a giant bamboo stick and flattens out the dough. So Claire and I are planning to go there tonight. We also passed another restaurant that Bourdain went to that had his photo on the front, might go there sometime too.