Food to Try in Cheung Chau Island, Hong Kong

This time around, we decided to hop over to one of the many islands in Hong Kong and we selected Cheung Chau. To get there is fairly easy as we took the MTR to Central station and follow the signboard to get to the pier. The ferry departs from Pier 5 and there are two types of ferry, the fast and the slow one, alternating half and hour each. Prices for the fast ferry is double of the slow one but we reached the island in approximately 40 minutes.

I had researched for some of the food to try in Cheung Chau and here are some of the food. Can't really recall the address of these places but since the island is quite small, all these eateries are within the town area. Cheung Chau is also famous for their bun festival which occurs every year in May.

Here's are some of the food that we tried

My parents trying out the fishballs and fish cakes

 
1. Fish balls, all types

甘永泰魚蛋

We tried a few types of fishballs at this shop and I quite like the salmon and cheese flavour. There are many flavours and many stalls selling fishballs in Cheung Chau. When we ordered, they will deep fried the fishballs for us. Overall, the fishballs are ok but a tad too salty for my liking. The stall is at one of the square not too far away from the jetty. When we were there, we saw some locals bought the fresh fishballs.

The dessert we ordered

Check out the real mango filling

2. Dessert

允升甜品

Originally, I wanted to try this Tin Yin dessert but found out it was closed on Monday. So we proceed to try another shop in the list. We ordered the Mango mochi, fruits tong sui and tau fu fa. Personally I love the mochi the most as it was huge and the mango filling is actually real mango filling instead of paste. Highly recommended just for the mochi.

Queuing up to buy the red bean pancake

Enjoying our pancake

Check out the red bean filling

3. Red Bean Pancake

故鄉俱樂部  Hometown Members Club

We actually stumbled into this place by accident after we took a stroll at the beach nearby. It was my mum who saw the signboard indicating red bean pancake and we decided to try. It was one of the best red bean pancake I ever tried. The filling of the red bean is the similar to the filling of the red bean pau that my grandma used to make. The only thing I regret was that we only bought two to share among three of us. Should have bought 1 each. 

4. Seafood

There is plenty of seafood restaurants along the coast and most offered lunch set which gives 3 dishes with one vege dish. I felt the food was quite meh though the prawns were not bad. I would not recommend to try them as the seafood in Malaysia was much better and cheaper. 

My dad insist on trying the 'put chai kou' aka bowl pudding

We only managed to try a few of the food in Cheung Chau as we were still full from the dim sum breakfast in the morning. There are plenty of street food in the small town and we saw many stalls selling mochi.

I quite like Cheung Chau overall as the island is quite laidback and not so touristy as there are many locals still living in the island. Highly recommend for a visit to Cheung Chau if anyone heading to Hong Kong. A nice change from the bustling city and a nice place just to chill and eat some pretty good mochi.

Best Food to Try in Hong Kong

Just came back from a 4 day food trip to Hong Kong which the main aim of the travel is to eat as much as we can. As my parents are huge Cantonese food lover, we had like 5 meal per day. Here's are some of the best food we savored for the 4 day trip.

1. Dim Sum
Dim Dim Sum 
112 Tung Choi St, Mong Kok (there are a few branches ie in Jordan and Wan Chai)
Hands down this is one of the best dimsum we tasted in Hong Kong. We reached the restaurant around 3.30pm on Saturday and had to queue about half an hour to get a seat. But the wait is worth it as this restaurant had the most innovative dim sum we ever tried. Some of the must have dim sum are the chu cheung fun with prawn spring roll, pineapple polo bun, wasabi 'ham sui kok', piggy buns. Do try their ice milk tea.

Polo Bun with pineapple filling

Wasabi 'Ham sui kok'

Piggy Bun (must have!!)
I won't disclose the filling here

Love this prawn roll in chu cheung fun

Ice milk tea
Notice that the ice is actually outside of the cup to prevent dilution of the tea

 Luk Yu Tea House
Hong Kong, Central, Stanley St, 24-26
The Monday morning before we embarked for Cheung Chau Island, I decided to bring my parents for a traditional dim sum experience. I was thinking between Luk Yu Tea House or Lin Heung Lau but went with this instead. My dad claimed that this is best dim sum he had, while my mum and I preferred Dim Dim Sum than this. And we got a shock of our life when the bill came to about HKD 550 for 3 person for 8 types of dim sum. So if you want more affordable dim sum, I won't recommend this place.

The egg tarts are quite good and this 'siew pau pastry'

Dim Sum in Airport
You can just forget about the dim sum in the airport. Not worth the money or the stomach space

2. Wanton Mee
Mak's Noodle 
77 Wellington St, Central
We had this no.1 wanton mee in Hong Kong on our second last day and it totally surpassed every wanton mee standard we had. Definitely one of the best wanton mee we had in Hong Kong minus the alkaline after taste. And I read that Mak's noodle are the origin of wanton mee.

Mak's noodle. The portion is smaller than other shop

Dad giving his thumbs up for the best wanton mee in town

Mak Man Kee
51 Parkes St, Jordan
Mak Man Kee actually opened a branch in 1 Utama in KL but I did not have the chance to try. So I wanted to try in Hong Kong, the origin place. I quite like the noodle but my parents were not too keen as there are some alkaline aftertaste.

Mak Man Kee 

Dad enjoying his wanton mee

Shek Kee Wanton Noodle
UG, 386 Portland St
We had wanton mee from this shop 6 years ago when we stayed at the nearby hotel. Back at that time, I did not research much on food and hence my parents still think highly of this place and this time my dad requested to go back for the noodle. We felt that the noodle is too hard.

3. Dessert
Kai Kai Tong Sui
29 Ning Po St, Jordan
I got to know about this dessert shop from another blogger and apparently it's one of the Michelin star street food acknowledged not too long ago. The shop is actually relocated due to the enormous hike in rental after being awarded the Michelin star. Read this in a Bloomberg article which depicts why sometimes having Michelin star award is not all good. We ordered the mango dessert, red bean and black sesame and added extra tong yuen. Nothing too spectacular but the tong yuen was good.

the tong sui that we ordered

Yee Shun Milk Company
513 Nathan Rd, Yau Ma Tei (there are a few branches but this is the nearest to our hotel)
I classified this as dessert as we had our supper here instead of breakfast/tea. We ordered the steam milk with red bean and the french toast. We actually went back on the last day of the night coz I was craving for their steam milk.

Steam milk with red bean

French toast, love this so much

Steam milk with ginger. Love the silky smooth texture

Cha Chaan Teng
1. Australian Milk Company
47 Parkes St, Jordan (it's just a few doors away from Mak Man Kee)
We had breakfast here on a Sunday and I had to drag my parents out early morning to avoid the crowd. We managed to get a table within 5 minutes in queue and I gotta admit that the staff are rather rude but we enjoyed the food especially the scrambled eggs a lot. It comes with a breakfast set with macaroni soup and tea/coffee and the portion are rather huge.

Macaroni and ham soup

One of the best scramble egg

Polo Bun
1. Kam Wah Cafe & Bakery
47 Bute St, Mong Kok
The butter melting in the piping hot polo bun. Need I say more.

Egg Tart
1. Tai Cheong Bakery
35 Lyndhurst Terrace, Central
We did not try much egg tart in Hong Kong. Only this and the egg tart from Luk Yu Tea House. The egg tarts here are so so and I have tasted much better ones in Malaysia.

Kind of meh to me

Overall, I am quite satisfied with all the food that we managed to had during this trip. A piece of advice though, go for the famous places during off peak hours. We were quite lucky that most of the time we reached before a long queue is formed and the most we waited was 30 minutes for a table for Dim Dim Sum. If I had to choose my top three food for this trip, it would be Dim Dim Sum, Mak's noodle and Yee Shun steam milk.

I will do another post covering food in Cheung Chau island.

Top Destinations for Photography

I was reading about this top 5 destinations for photography in Lonely Planet website the other day. The article mentioned that Rajasthan, India, Yellowstone National Park, USA, Venice, Italy, Hong Kong and Ladakh, India as the top 5. It's amazing that India has two destinations in the top 5 and it's a country that I always wanted to travel to, for her amazing colourful culture and of course Taj Mahal.

After reading that, I decided to name my very own top 5 destinations for photography. Photography here does not only reflect landscape photography but street and portrait photography. I find that getting a good shot at people is tougher than taking a shot of the non moving subject such as buildings and landscape.

My lists would be as follows:

The crowd during Gai Jatra festival in Kathmandu

Kathmandu, Nepal
I was lucky to be in Kathmandu during the Gai Jatra festival, which I had so much fun taking many shots of the people in colourful costume and unique culture. Do not be fooled by the chaotic and dusty environment as beneath all those, lies a very vibrant and friendly city.

One of the market streets in Hong Kong during a rainy day

Hong Kong
I agree with the list by Lonely Planet that Hong Kong indeed is suited for street photography especially when she is lit up at night with colouful neon lights. Visits to the Peak, Victoria Harbour and the famous streets in Mongkok during the night are a must.

Made in Peru stuff against the snow capped mountain

Basically anywhere in Peru
Haha, I am tempted to write Lake Titicaca as one destination but after that I realized the whole of Peru is very 'photogenic' and plus it's unfair not to include Machu Picchu as one of the destinations for photography.

Another side of Potala Palace, once a home to the Dalai Lama

 Lhasa, Tibet
When I first arrived in this city, my guide told me that we can't take photos around Lhasa especially those with army personnel in them. So I kept my camera in my bag until I climbed the Potala Palace. I watched 7 Years in Tibet acted by Brad Pitt recently, a real story based on the life of Dalai Lama and his friendship with this Austrian hiker/mountain climber and many of the scenes reminded me of Tibet. Tibetans are generally very religious people and you can see many of them circling 3 rounds around the Potala Palace for blessing. Oh, and it got to be in clockwise.

Looks like something out from the fairy tale books

The Highlands, Scotland
Just for the landscape, this got to be the most photogenic. You are basically transported back to Highlander movies, Lord of the Rings, Stardust (the real filming locations are in Scottish highlands) and any movies with witches, lords, knights, kings in them. And not forgetting men in skirts..ops..kilts. They are very accommodating for photos, haha.

Macau

So romantic

A long overdue travelogue on Macau. It's a family trip back in 2010 and it's a day trip from Hong Kong. I booked the ferry tickets from this website and it's advisable to do so as it was quite difficult to buy tickets on the same day.

The turbojet ferry can be taken from Hong Kong Macau Ferry Terminal, 3/F Shun Tak Centre at Sheung Wan. We then took a taxi from the ferry terminal in Macau to the Senado Square where the famous ruins of the cathedral remains. It was my second time here but I still enjoy the heavily Portuguese influenced country where colourful buildings and Portuguese on the signboards here. Although my grandma was seasick from the ferry ride, she was excited to be here for the famous egg tarts, pork burger and the cookies. We did not spend much time in Macau as it started to rain and we managed to line up for an earlier ferry ride back to Hong Kong.

signboards in Portuguese

with my grandma

a famous church in the square

window

Na Zha temple

Portuguese egg tarts

Wong Tai Sin @ Hong Kong

Wong Tai Sin temple located at Hong Kong is one of the famous temple and according to the TVB dramas that I watched frequently, if you come here for your fortune to be read, it is quite accurate.

I managed to visit this temple during my 3 visits to Hong Kong. However, when I brought my family to Hong Kong in 2010, it was raining non stop for 3 days and we didn't stop by the temple for very long.
To get to Wong Tai Sin temple, take the MTR and stop at the station with the same name. I still remember, the second time I was here with my friends, we bumped into some grandmas selling joss sticks and praying stuff and they kind of 'cheat' us into buying the stuff from them.

Inside the temple, there is also this lovely garden worth exploring.

Still raining

The gorgeous garden inside

The fortune reading stalls outside the temple